Posted on 05/15/2004 4:14:35 PM PDT by Rennes Templar
If you didn't see this posted earlier, it's worth a read. A story on the front page of The St. Petersburg Times, written by a photo journalist who ran into Berg and had a conversation with him, following his release on April 6th.
Here's the story: it was entitled,
I Crossed Paths with Nick Berg, by Jamie Francis
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/15/Worldandnation/A_jolting_awareness_t.shtml
A jolting awareness that I crossed paths with Nick Berg Jamie Francis has made two trips to Iraq, most recently in April when he and senior correspondent Susan Taylor Martin spent four weeks there looking at the war's effect on the country.
On a warm evening in Baghdad's old Jewish quarter last month, I was taking photos in a crumbling building when I was literally pushed toward a Westerner with ivory skin and a red beard. He was lifting weights inside the Arnold Classic Gym. He wore black steel-toed boots as he grunted out exercises beneath dozens of portraits of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Iraqis called him Mr. Nick.
I was amazed to meet another English speaker inside the local gym, but I was there to photograph Iraqis and had little interest in being sidetracked with small talk. But soon, I found myself in a casual conversation with an engaging young man, whose intelligence and friendly nature allowed him to move easily in and out of a strange culture.
Now, more than five weeks after the chance meeting, I have learned that Mr. Nick was actually Nicholas Berg, the 26-year-old Pennsylvania man who was beheaded by a group of hooded men in Iraq. The grisly murder was videotaped, and it's now thought that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden, carried out the execution.
Times colleague Susan Taylor Martin and I were first lured to the gym by a small sign along one of Baghdad's most traveled streets. The sign, which showed a bare-chested man with rippling muscles, seemed out of place in Arabic culture. The owner of the gym, Sabah Taleb Mehdi, hung the advertisement for his business, which is an homage to Arnold Schwarzenegger, his childhood idol.
I suppose Mehdi felt compelled to push the two Anglos together. He said Mr. Nick was a regular who had been coming for weeks, and he seemed to enjoy shouting the American's name: "Mr. Nick, Mr. Nick, Mr. Nick," he would say as if singing an Arabic melody. "Mr. Nick good, Mr. Nick very good."
And the young man would cast his brilliant smile and try to answer back with a few words of Arabic. At the end of his workout the two embraced and patted each other on the back. As always, Mehdi refused payment from Mr. Nick for the use of his gym.
We were together for maybe 45 minutes or an hour and exchanged a few personal details. He made his way around the circuit of dinged weights, doing arm curls, squats, military presses, pull ups. He was curious about my digital cameras and the places I have traveled for the Times.
Mr. Nick told me he was a contractor. I didn't push; I waited for him to say more. In today's Iraq a pleasant conversation can spoil quickly with aggressive questioning, since everyone is defensive about security.
We both expressed a level of comfort about Iraq, even as conditions spiraled out of control all around us. Just a few days earlier four American contractors had been killed, dismembered and burned in Fallujah. Each hour seemed to bring new tension. Gunfire and explosions had become background noise.
Berg didn't mention being held in custody from March 24 until April 6. According to news reports, he was jailed in Mosul because his activities aroused suspicion. And if the reports are correct, our meeting came only one day after his release and two days before his kidnapping.
He said he was not working because conditions were too violent, but yet he had taken to traveling the country by local taxi - highly unusual for most foreigners. (Susan and I were doing the same thing as we filed stories and pictures to the Times.)
Mr. Nick described trips to Mosul and Kirkuk, riding in the ubiquitous orange and white taxis with car loads full of Iraqis. But he said nothing of where he might go next.
I was unsure about his nationality. He talked of family in America but also of being in Israel. He looked the part of a construction worker, but there was never a mention of who he worked for or more specifics about what he did. It's impossible to know much of a person in 45 minutes, but this much is sure: He had a wonderful smile, and he was likable, engaging and adventurous.
His skin, hair and thin beard made him stand out in a gym filled with Iraqis. But his muscular build placed him in the brotherhood of those who pump iron, and although language was a problem they managed to hold a warm, if halting, conversation with his fellow bodybuilders. When a street vendor arrived selling apple juice, the Iraqis and the American drank from the same cup.
I only learned late Thursday evening of Mr. Nick's identity. CNN was pursuing the story and had learned he was a regular at the gym. Mehdi gave them our names and a producer called.
I immediately told the CNN producer that she had made a mistake. No, I had never known a Nicholas Berg. She would e-mail me pictures, she said. But as she strung together the words - Arnold Gym, Sabah Taleb Mehdi, Nicholas Berg - I didn't need the pictures. I went numb.
Then the pictures arrived on my computer. In an endless five seconds of silence I gazed into his eyes. I imagined the video of his beheading and was disgusted. I recalled an NPR report that described the details so vividly that I turned the volume down so my 3-year-daughter could not hear.
The TV pictures and still images of a captive Nicholas Berg were nothing like the man I met. His skin was pale, his youthful beard thick and sculpted, and he seemed smaller.
I failed to connect the dots, I think, because Mr. Nick was so confident and comfortable surrounded by people unlike him. He displayed a faith in humanity common to all of us who travel in dangerous places and sometimes must entrust our lives to strangers.
So when I heard the news of an American's beheading, I just assumed it was someone I never knew. Someone who made a huge error in judgment. Someone who had made a tragic blunder. Maybe someone who had trusted the wrong person.
I don't know how much we had in common, but I recognized Nicholas Berg as a kindred spirit, someone who sometimes sees adventure where others see danger. I saw a piece of myself in him, and that's what frightens me. That's why on Thursday night, I lay sleepless in my bed listening to the wind, with Mr. Nick's smile etched in my mind
I beg to differ on that one. Unless you are armed and wearing Cammies, being an American in Iraq is a foolish thing these days unescorted. Even escorted for that matter, these animals want us dead.
He was a fool to wander out alone acting like he was just an innocent traveller.
Ok. I'll give you that.
LOOK AT THE F@CTS! ufo'S IN MEXICO, UFO'S IN iRAN!CaN'T YoU PEOPLE sEe WHAT'S GOING ON!
tHE EnD IS nEAR! IT's AlL bUSH'S FAuLT!
We can share it, that's what friends are for. :)
5,4,3,2....
how about:
The Berg Identity
The Berg Supremacy
The Berg Ultimatum
Yeah, funny thing about these terrorists, they seem to have a penchant for making the dumbest possible move imaginable.
You are way off base. Did you just sign up here today to make that statement?
Your article stinks. Michael Berg in unAmerican. HE is the reason his son is dead. If he hadn't mouthed off constantly with his vitriolic anti-American viewpoints, his kid may have stayed home, instead of escaping to another continent.
Nick would be alive today if that fascist punk father of his didn't drive him away.
Or,
Prepare to be absorbed by the Berg.
/star trek
Oh, sorry. I see you've been here for a year. My mistake.
I think I'll go to bed now.
His family last heard from him on April 9, when he reported he was looking to leave Iraq via Kuwait as soon as it was safe enough. They have indicated Berg told them he was wary of trying to fly out to Jordan on the grounds it was too dangerous. At the time, much of Baghdad was in engulfed in heavy fighting. Large parts of the city, including the roadways leading to the airport, were under constant attack by the Iraqi resistance and Westerners and Japanese had been taken hostage by various groups.
He was afraid to fly out my aunt fanny! Any danger in Baghdad or anywhere else was shrugged off by Nick. He was out roaming the streets at night and pumping iron with the locals at a gym AFTER his jail time (and btw this was the second time he'd been "detained" because of suspicious behavior). The hotel taxi drivers said he was unbalanced because they'd offer to drive him safely but he'd refused so the last anyone saw of him, he was wandering down the street by himself.
I'm confused. I thought the intelligence agencies were following FreeRepublic. You mean they are actually looking for enemies of America on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website? That is shocking. They are in favor of soldiers shooting their officers. They call the U.S. an evil colonial power. They want our troops removed from everywhere. They love Castro and Arafat. Why in the world would anyone get the idea that these guys are the enemy while we are war against the Islamofascists who want us all dead?
Whoever made that is pretty brilliant--now they just have to make the letters more red. Is this the work of Registered??
Except in an email, Nick wrote that he was indeed detained by the Iraqi police (btw, this was the second time) but that US officials and FBI checked on him to make sure he had tootbrushes, etc. and to question him. He also wrote that there was some concern amoungst the other inmates that he was Israeli so he was moved to what he said was a bathroom - but with his odd turn of phrase it might have just seemed like a bathroom. Ya know, I'm not sure about his use of language in the emails. The wordings is a bit off and at times sounds as if English isn't the writer's native language.
Horsesh*t.
The death of Nick Berg & Dan Pearl need to be properly labelled . The proper label for these deaths is HUMAN SACRIFICES IN THE NAME OF Allah & Islam carried out by people who practice Islam .
This idea needs to be pushed in the media as well as with the American people! If the Islamic clerics object point out to them that the folks who did the killing where literally having a religious ceremony for the sole purpose of committing a HUMAN SACRIFICE, complete with prayers (Allahu akbar)proudly & loudly proclaimed by those taking part in the HUMAN SACRIFICE .
This will put those Islamic scholars in a dilema on the one hand they can object in which case they are admitting that those who killed Dan Pearl & Nick Berg are not good muslims but in fact apostates/heretics/bloodthirsty barbaric infidels; or look like fools trying to explain that the ritual of reciting muslim prayers while you saw a mans head off on camera is not really a HUMAN SACRIFICE in the name of Allah or Islam.
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