UK -Politics & World Current Affairs

London- Adel Darwish 
Like every year on March 15^th, I went up the hill to Highgate cemetery, with two small pots of hyacinth, one about to open to white and the other purple. It is the anniversary of my late friend Farzad Bazoft, murdered by hanging on this day in 1990 by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. After planting the hyacinth on the grave tray next to a pot full of roses left early in the day by Ruth Fisher, who was Farzad’s girlfriend at the time and just in front of a small lantern where a candle was still lit, I sat on the edge of the next gravestone drowning deep in my thoughts, remembering Farzad and some very sad, tens and crowded days in March 1990. I left 30 minutes later after talking a bit to Farzad’s spirit about what happened since my last year visit, including Saddam’s hanging in the same jail in Baghdad where he was murdered 18 years ago. Now home I decided not to write any thing more than what I did. Just to upload here what I wrote in 2000  the 10^th anniversary of Farzad’s murder.
15 March, 2000: 
Holding a pot of blue hyacinth in my hand, I visualised Farzad Bazoft wearing his cheeky smile. I almost heard his hearty laughter livening up this cold wet typical London afternoon in a calm deserted corner of Highgate cemetery where he once said, in a passing comment, he wanted to be buried. The scene was livelier ten years ago. His photographs in newspapers and carried by some mourners at the same spot where I stood drowning in my thoughts. Not only fellow Journalists who came to the funeral. But the crowd was made of a mix of humanity: Iranians from different religions, many other nationalities, just friends, neighbours and three of his girlfriends, for Farzad, to say the least, was ‘popular with women.’ I remember the Anglican dean of St. Bride’s church, the spiritual home for many generations who passed through Fleet street, was there listening, with his heart, to Koranic verses recited in a language his mind didn’t understand, as Muslims started placing earth on the freshly occupied grave. The churchman didn’t know Farzad, but a day earlier he conducted his memorial service in a crowded church. Fixing my gaze on the rain-washed headstone, and inhaling the scent of hyacinth I reheard the 10 year old sad symphony: whispers, words of comfort, sighs of grief, some soft gentle sad chanting by Muslims mourning Farzad on that sad day in 1990. British writers, and journalists, some knew him, and some didn’t, but they were united by a sense of – more anger than – grief at his murder. Many faces I remembered from the memorial service, where I recognised people belonging to at least seven different faiths, as well as atheists, singing hymns and praying, in an English Church, for Farzad’s soul. It was more of a festival of protest and solidarity than a funeral. A joint expression of love for a young man who died doing a job he loved and glamorised. We were also grieving for many fellow reporters, killed for being journalists in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were angry at Farzad’s murderers, as well as at the faceless ‘Sir Humphreys’ of an officialdom that let the whole British media down, when they deserted Farzad letting him taste a bitter lonely death in nose of the ‘Butcher of Baghdad.’ It is that chilly lonely feeling that still blows on my heart, every time I recall his smiling face, his jokes laughing during comparing notes on women and wine. I still taste his loneliness during the last days, hours and minutes of his short colourful life. Perhaps that is why I always went alone – never with any one – to visit Farzad since his funeral in 1990. His death, I remember, brought me face to face with my own loneliness, the life long companion of writers and foreign reporters. I didn’t realise then, how much the tragedy would affect me. I only met him three years earlier. Then we met many times in press conferences and in the course of covering events. I grew to like him. He was fun to be with, simply loved life and recruited his companions to the same belief. He was excited about his job, giving analysis of the region, an attractive character, a typical Middle East charmer, as well as a typical energetic reporter. He helped me in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988 when, on several occasions, he used his influence and, ironically, good contacts with Iraqi officials, succeeding to facilitate filling my story after the hotel telex-room clerk – usually in the service of Iraqi intelligence – had gone home. Farzad never believed that his ‘Iraqi friends’ would betray him. It was part of his character to trust, and be open with, everyone. He was a naive playboy who never meant to do any harm. He was looking for a good story, but he also liked to create a romantic picture of which he believed he was a central component. Even before his execution he thought, somehow, that the Iraqi dictator, in a dramatic romantic gesture would give him a last minute reprieve. I guess, looking back now, I was angry with Farzad, like your anger against your own children when they carelessly harm themselves while having fun. Farzad was a gentle soul, happy, playful, flamboyant, womanizer, who worked hard, played hard and enjoyed life to the full. He helped colleagues and strangers whenever he could. He did not deserve to be murdered that way.