By Darrin Zammit Lupi

With the body of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat being exhumed as part of an investigation into whether he was murdered eight years ago, it was pretty clear that we were going to need some reaction from his widow Suha, who has lived in Malta for the past few years. A journalist from The Times, the local paper I also work for, and I fixed an appointment to meet her at her apartment in the seaside town of Sliema, a short drive from the capital Valletta. Coincidentally it’s only some hundred or so meters away from the spot where Fathi Shaqaqi, the founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, was assassinated by Israeli Mossad agents in 1995.

Ms Arafat welcomed us into the bright and spacious seafront apartment. Sideboards and tables were full of framed photos of Yasser Arafat – some showing him with world leaders, others depicting him as a family man playing with his young daughter. She asked that I shoot the photos I needed before we started the interview, so my eyes immediately settled on a large painted portrait of her late husband, which I felt would make an ideal background.

Conversation was relaxed and friendly. I had the pictures I needed after shooting for a minute or two, so I sat down, enjoyed an exquisite cup of Arabian coffee prepared by her personal assistant, and listened in on the interview. The plan was to then get a brief comment from her on video afterwards.
She talked at some length about her memories of her husband and wanted to set the record straight that, contrary to what had been widely reported in the build-up to the exhumation, she had refused to allow an autopsy to take place in 2004, that she was never asked for permission and that his body was never in her possession, but that it was with the Palestinian Authority and was taken to Ramallah and buried there.

The interview was interrupted intermittently by her ringing phones – “they hadn’t stopped all morning,” she sighed.

On the stroke of noon, she suddenly sprang up from the sofa and hurried to the next room and switched on her TV, inviting us to join her. She wanted to watch the wreath laying ceremony at Yasser Arafat’s mausoleum in the West Bank live on TV. She sat down on the sofa beneath a large landscape oil painting in her TV room just as the live transmission started on Palestinian TV. This was unexpected for us. My colleague and I never imagined we would have this kind of opportunity. We suddenly found ourselves witnessing a small slice of history, as this 49-year-old woman, wiping tears from her eyes, watched people she knew and recognized paying their respects at her husband’s tomb as his body was exhumed behind large blue tarpaulin sheets by an international team of forensic experts.

Convinced that she would ask me not to take pictures (the arrangement had been only for a few posed portraits before the interview) I nevertheless asked her if she would mind if I made some pictures. A lesson I learned a long time ago – if you don’t ask, you definitely won’t get. She nodded that she was fine with it and I immediately sensed that I was extremely privileged to be able to witness and document this historic but intimate moment. She then seemed to forget I was in the room, as her eyes glazed over and memories came flooding back to her – memories of a man the world knew and regarded as a freedom fighter, a terrorist, a statesman, the father of a people, but who she knew primarily as a loving husband and father to her daughter.

I attended a brief and very poignant ceremony; the funeral of four Nigerian would-be immigrants who drowned while attempting to reach a better life, crossing to Europe by sea, crossing the central Mediterranean that has become a graveyard.

Six immigrants died on that crossing last August. Four bodies were recovered, including that of a fourteen year old boy.

The burial took place months after the accident, because DNA tests were necessary to confirm the identities of the four who died.

Bridget Ezukuse’s husband died moments before a merchant ship came to rescue the migrants. His body drifted away and was never seen again.

I had photographed 32-year-old Bridget as she disembarked from a Malta Armed Forces rescue boat in the early hours of August 16. She was in tears. I didn’t know why at the time, though it wasn’t hard to guess why.

I met her two days later, in a detention camp. She was inconsolable at the loss of her husband, the father of her unborn child.

She has since been released from detention; much sooner than is the norm for most immigrants. That’s because she is considered a vulnerable case. Procedures and paper work are fast tracked in such cases.

Bridget attended the funeral. She was looking a lot better than she did when I first met her. Her memory of those early days is hazy. Though her husband’s body was not there, being at the funeral and throwing a bouquet of flowers served to give her a sense of closure.

Photographing this sort of event is always a tricky one. There is news value, but there are also privacy issues. You want to strike the perfect balance between capturing the emotion while not being intrusive or obstructing anything. I’m grateful to the authorities, and more so to the immigrants themselves, for allowing me to infringe in some small way on what is essentially a very private and personal matter.

Say a little prayer for them when you finish reading this.

When the Arab Spring got underway late in 2010, few of us imagined it would spread to Libya with any tangible effect. To those of us of my generation here in Malta, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was the bogeyman – he’d always been there lurking not too far from our shores – Libya is less than 350 km to the south of the island, and Gaddafi was a frequent visitor and close friend of the Maltese government in the 70s, my childhood years.

A year later, when I look back on the events that kicked off on February 17, 2011, I’m amazed it all happened so fast. Who would have dreamed that Gaddafi would be overthrown within six months, and dead within eight?

The start of the uprising turned Malta, normally a rather quiet news backwater spot in Europe into the center of world attention, as countries from all over the world struggled to evacuate their nationals from Libya. As soon as we got the first indications that there may be evacuations, I immediately started looking into ways of how I could get as comprehensive a coverage as possible.

My plan was to try to fly into Tripoli on an evacuation flight and fly straight out again – the shots I was looking for were of Europeans boarding the aircraft. Evacuations seemed to be starting off slowly – my first point of contact was the Austrian Embassy in Malta, as they were the first to send a military plane to the island to be on standby to fly into Tripoli. The Reuters Vienna bureau got in touch with authorities there, but no luck. There was no way they would take a journalist with them, occupying a very precious seat on the plane on the return flight.

We next tried the Maltese national airline Air Malta, who were laying on extra flights to try get as many Maltese and other nationalities out of the country as it descended into chaos. Though I made it clear to the airline that I wouldn’t even need to walk away from the bottom of the aircraft stairs, they refused to take the risk of flying me in without a visa. And no visas were being issued by the Libyan embassy in Malta.

Wanting something to start covering the story, I headed to the embassy where members of the Libyan community, normally a very discreet docile one, were protesting against Gaddafi. Such a sight seemed unthinkable until then – no Libyans, not even in Malta, ever dared speak out against Gaddafi. There was a lot of loud shouting but little more, though that would change in subsequent days.

I next headed to the airport to cover the arrival of some evacuees on an Air Malta flight, but didn’t get anything too exciting out of that. Things got interesting as I was driving away from the airport.

Without any warning, two fighter jets flew right over my car at an altitude of around 500 feet. Malta has no military air force. It was immediately obvious that something major was happening. I made the quickest driving U-turn of my life and saw that the aircraft were beginning to circle the airport. I suspected they were planning on landing, so I headed to a vantage point where I’d be able to shoot that from. I got there just moments after they touched down and shot off a few frames as the Libyan Mirages F1 jets taxied along the runway. I dashed back to my car, and sped down to where I thought was the most likely airport park they were heading for. My hunch was correct.

Once again I shot a few frames, whipped out my laptop and immediately filed a couple of pictures to the Reuters picture desk in Singapore, as well as to the local newspaper I shoot for.

The first pictures were on the wire being picked up by clients worldwide before the pilots had even disembarked from their planes. This was big news – The two defecting colonels would soon offer the first conclusive evidence that Gaddafi was bombing his own people.

Canada’s CTV called me up later that evening and did a live phone interview during their lunchtime news broadcast. Thankfully no coughing fits or major gaffs on my part, but I think I’d rather stick to shooting pictures, thank you very much.
The next morning, members of the international media started flooding in. By the evening, every major TV news network and agency had their people on the ground in Malta.

The embassy became a focal point. Protests there became noisier and angrier. Flags were burnt, Gaddafi posters ripped to shreds, and people were quickly becoming hysterical. The police guarding the embassy were evidently very nervous. Embassy staff erected razor wire along the outer walls of the building. Clashes broke out when both the protestors and pro-Gaddafi supporters tried to demonstrate there at the same time.

Working days became longer. I needed to be at the airport whenever an evacuation flight came in. We needed pictures of aircraft of all the different air forces taking part in the operation, to keep clients in those countries happy. Possibly more importantly, I needed to speak to evacuees to see if they had pictures Reuters could buy off them. I got lucky the first time I tried that, and though the pictures were rather poor quality-wise, they were the first we were seeing of the chaos at Tripoli airport.

The pressure to get good shots out on the wire as quickly as possible never let up, most especially so when a catamaran arrived in Malta carrying a large number of American evacuees. Their late evening arrival was being shown live on several TV news networks. All the media were gathered on a rooftop overlooking the arrival quay. I got my laptop set up and connected to the 3G network, though not without problems – possibly caused by all the satellite transmitters all around. I prepared my captions beforehand, and once things got going, I was able to switch cards back and forth from the cameras to the laptop and get my pictures transmitted extremely quickly.

The pressure didn’t let up much for the next five weeks or so. Several passenger ferries and naval vessels repeatedly brought evacuees to the island – once again it was important to get pictures of evacuees of as many different nationalities as possible to serve as wide a range of clients as possible. They came at all times of the day and night in very often wet, cold and windy weather. I certainly became very deprived of sleep, but I wasn’t complaining. Few things in one’s professional career can beat the satisfaction of working on such a major story.

Though the tempo did ease off eventually, Malta’s involvement never stopped. It remained a humanitarian and logistical hub throughout the conflict, for a long time also providing the only viable sea-link to the besieged city of Misrata.

Recently, the two Mirage jets, their roundels of the all-green Gaddafi-era Libyan flag replaced with roundels depicting the Kingdom of Libya flag, were returned to Libya. I felt honoured to briefly meet the two pilots who had defected and to shake their hands. It’s not everyday that you get to be in the same room as two real-life heroes like Libyan air force pilots Colonel Abdullah al-Salheen and Colonel Ali Al-Rabti.

I got the call to head to Malta’s international airport VIP lounge around lunchtime, to photograph Shwejga Mullah arriving on the island for medical treatment. Shwejga Mullah is the Ethiopian nanny who was recently discovered weak and alone in the home abandoned by deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son Hannibal. It’s been reported that Hannibal’s wife Aline threw boiling water over her, causing horrific scald burns and scars, when she did not stop his daughter from crying and refused to beat the child.

As she was being brought over in a private plane chartered by the Maltese government, there wasn’t going to be any need to shoot on a long lens from outside the airport perimeter fence. The government officials wanted to show the world that Malta was still playing a crucial humanitarian role in the Libya crisis. We would be allowed right up to the foot of the stairs of the aircraft, so just 2 camera bodies, one with a 70-200mm lens and the other with a wide angle would be necessary. This was what all the other photographers were doing.

But this was one of those instances in which a persistent voice in my head kept telling me I was going to need something longer. So, I decided to take my 6kg (13 pound) 400mm f/2.8 lens with me.

The arrival of the plane kept being pushed further back. What should have been a fifteen minute wait soon stretched into a three hour wait.

When the aircraft finally arrived, it taxied to a spot on the apron right in front of us. We all prepared to move to the foot of the stairs as soon as the engines stopped, when suddenly, some security officers decided we couldn’t approach any closer. They said they hadn’t been consulted regarding our photo position, though for three hours we’d been told the exact opposite.

My gut feeling paid off – I was the only one in a position to get good quality shots of Shwejga as she was slowly helped off the plane and walked to a waiting ambulance. Sure, you can always crop an image, but the loss in quality often renders the image unusable.

Important lesson learned; if your gut feeling tells you you’re going to need a particular piece of your camera kit even when reason tells you otherwise, follow your gut feeling even if it means lugging around extra heavy equipment for a few hours.

Once she boarded the ambulance, everyone decided “to hell with the security guards” and started running forward, creating a scrum around the ambulance door trying to get an image of some sort. Personally, I’ve always felt that once a patient is inside an ambulance, then they’re entitled to their privacy and should be left alone. I was somewhat disgusted at the pushing and shoving taking place, though I can understand the pressure my colleagues would have been under to get a usable image.

After exchanging a few angry words with the security personnel who were responsible for this ruckus and bringing my profession into disrepute, I noticed that a high-ranking government official was helping some cameramen into the ambulance. So, I deduced Shwejga herself must have had no problem with the cameras. The crew of the U.S. TV network which had originally broken her story was even joining her in the ambulance for the journey to the island’s main hospital, so it seemed like a good time to shelf what I thought was a sacred principle. It seemed to no longer really apply and as the saying goes – if you can’t beat them, join them. So into the melee I plunged and came away with some tight portraits, which I hoped preserved the dignity of this quiet and demure woman.

My hunch is that Shwejga will be in Malta for quite a while as she undergoes medical treatment and recovers. The Maltese government has offered her asylum, should she want it. She has said however that she wants to eventually return home to Ethiopia.

For centuries, Malta has been known as ‘the nurse of the Mediterranean’ – and it seems it will continue to be known as such for many more years to come.