The Independent
by Robert Fisk

It was the same lunatic corkscrew landing in the same little Lebanese plane, barrelling down into the sandstorm of Baghdad airport. Piloting his 20-passenger twin-prop aircraft - from Flying Carpet Airlines, no less - Captain Hussam has three things on his mind: American helicopters, pilotless reconnaissance drones and incoming missiles. So we all scan the dun-coloured runway and terminals and the grotty slums beside the airport road for the tell-tale pink flame surviving pilots have sometimes caught sight of.

But we landed safely and a scruffy bus took us to the terminal where I bid the customs officer Salaam Aleikum and he cheerfully asked me if I was a Muslim. “English,” I replied, which seemed to be good enough to him. He couldn’t break the airline security string on my bag so he waved me through. Then there came The Airport Road. We all need to put this in capitals these days. As my Iraqi fixer put it very well: “It’s really just a matter of luck.” Sometimes you glide safely across to the city, sometimes you get caught up in a firefight, sometimes - like poor Marla Ruzicka, the American girl who tried to count casualties - you are too close to a suicide attack. “I’m alive,” she cried just before she died.