20/11/2008

Over the next few weeks, allmediascotland.com is to publish, each weekday, extracts from the memoirs of Scottish war correspondent, Paul Harris. ‘More Thrills than Skills: A Half-life in Journalism’, is to be published March 1 next year, by Kennedy & Boyd, Glasgow, and available from Amazon.com

With 24 hours to go, I had to make the decision to buy the air ticket out. I discussed the situation with my girlfriend, Sulee. She shrugged her shoulders: “Where you go, I go.”  I poured a glass of treasured Laphroaig whisky, from faraway Islay, and surveyed my apartment: the paintings on the wall, the framed photographs, the visitors’ book filled at my housewarming party.

Time to move on. I made a telephone call to the Maldives.

We left with three-and-a-half hours to go on my visa with just one suitcase and hand baggage.

The press were waiting outside and I didn’t take too much notice of everybody hanging around by the door. However, the driver, himself a former policeman, said he recognised several characters lurking in the street as CID officers. There was no time to protect my investments, organise my property, sell furniture or extract money in local non-negotiable currency in my bank accounts. Maybe I was naïve to expect better things but I had kept saying to myself: “This is not Zimbabwe, this is Sri Lanka.”

When I left the country, there was still no response to me, or The Telegraph, from the Ministry. But, even as I left, the media were being given a ludicrous list of my alleged visa infractions: arriving on a tourist visa, writing articles for the local newspaper The Daily Mirror, making unfounded allegations of surveillance by armed men, and that it had just come to their attention, via a press release from the President, that I worked for Jane’s Intelligence Review. “This disclosure only confirms the decision of the government not to renew Mr Harris’s visa . . .”

A local businessman, who I did not know that well, had taken the trouble to telephone shortly after 6.30 that morning. He professed to be ‘ashamed’ of his country, and kindly sent his Mercedes to take me to the airport. “This is an appalling injustice but at least you will leave in style.” Such small kindnesses are moving when you feel isolated and rejected. As I left the building where I lived, the security staff, three- wheeler drivers and local shopkeepers all lined up and shook my hand. Ordinary people, not your politicians or urban sophisticates. One simply said to me, “You told the truth.”

I then knew I had done the right thing.

At Colombo’s Bandaranaike Airport, a television crew was waiting. I told them that I loved Sri Lanka and hoped that I would be able to return. The immigration officer who checked us out immediately recognised me. “I read all your articles,” he cheerily observed as he stamped the exit visa. “You know what’s really happening here.”

I flew with Sulee to Male Airport in The Maldives. This 1,200 island archipelago is just over an hour’s flying from Colombo but a world away in so many respects. The Maldives are organised, prosperous and safe. Arrival at the airport reminds me of Venice rather than the southern Indian Ocean. Once clear of immigration and customs we are met by a representative of Universal and whisked to a motor launch tied up at the airport quayside. No broken, crowded roads to battle. No importuning touts, bagmen or taxi drivers to fight off.


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