Taking the emotional temperature of Tarek and John

As one who has found himself prevented from leaving the Middle East by bureaucrats, I think I know what emotions Toronto filmmaker John Greyson and London, Ont., MD Tarek Loubani are coping with as they inch closer to the aircraft that will hopefully soon fly them to freedom. Their spirits will be pumping like an engine piston from high to low and back to high as Canadian diplomats work to clear their names from the the Egyptian “stop list” that blocked them from boarding the plane yesterday that was to fly them to freedom in Frankfurt, Germany, shortly after being released from the prison in Cairo where they have been held for the last seven weeks. As I write this, there is a new low for them to cope with and that is some suggestion that they may not yet be free to leave the county pending further investigation by Egyptian authorities. But they are out of jail.

In my case it was the Saudi authorities — who for some reason did not want me to leave Saudi Arabia after just under a month of being in the Kingdom covering the Gulf war in 1991. I had to surrender my passport to authorities as a condition of entering the Kingdom before the war began so they had full control over when and how I could leave.

To make a long story shorter, I’d had enough and wanted to get out but that isn’t easy when you are in a war zone. There are no commercial flights to choose from. The only planes flying in those skies are fighter jets, AWAC’s and aerial refuelling tankers. I was able to get on a list of Canadians eligible to be evacuated from the area by the American military cargo planes coming into and going out of the region a few times a week, but I had to remain on a U.S compound until one of the planes was scheduled to leave.

Canadian consular staff were on hand to do the paperwork but for some reason, Saudi authorities would not relinquish my passport. The consular staff wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me why, but I sensed that it was because in order to board one of the cargo planes, I would have to be escorted into the heart of the coalition’s air field — which is something I would never have been allowed to witness as a working broadcast journalist. I also think the Saudis were curious as to why a journalist who applied for clearance to cover a war was wanting out long before the war was over. Whatever the case, it was a three-day on-again, off-again wait that played with the emotions and the mind.

When the moment for departure arrived, I was accompanied on a small shuttle bus to the waiting American cargo plane by Canadian and American consular staff, who were by this time in possession of my passport. They passed it to me with instructions to hold it up along side my face when asked to do so by two Saudi officials who were waiting on the tarmac, but not to let go of it under any circumstance even though the Saudis may try to take hold of it (which they did ). The consular staff gave the Saudis about 15 seconds to verify the passport picture with my real face before pushing me towards the evacuation plane’s loading ramp. Becoming a monkey in the middle of a diplomatic ping-pong process is stressful and requires emotional resilience you never imagined you possessed.

I have no doubt that John Greyson and Tarek Loubani are calling on that reserve now as they wait for clearance to leave Egypt on a commercial flight to freedom. What I know for sure is that the pent up emotional reserve they have been drawing upon throughout their ordeal will release as the wheels go up on the aircraft that takes them out. I also know the sweetest sound they have ever heard and perhaps a sight they will never forget will be the skyline of lights that ring the north shore of Lake Ontario, punctuated by the CN tower as the flight captain’s voice cracks from the cockpit “ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts in preparation for final approach into Toronto.”