Off The Cuff: A wry look at life

I am not too fond of August as it was on this month some 12 years ago that I was cowering under a makeshift shelter in my apartment as Saddam's Scud missiles fell out of the night skies like old, decrepit boilers.

A couple of years on pagers would be the in-thing and everybody had to have one, not realising that you would be electronically tied to the office desk. But in 1990 the status symbol was the ubiquitous gas mask.

The Civil Defence did not have gas masks for me or my wife, but they kindly handed me one for my baby boy. It was made in one of the East European states and a tag showed that the expiry date had passed three years ago. Those working in multinational corporations had brand-new ones flown in from Germany and they slung them stylishly on their shoulders like they were going for a hike.

"Where's the gas mask?", hissed my wife urgently, and I explained to her that our baby wouldn't last a couple of hours alone after we cop it. It would be better if we all cashed in our chips together, I said.

Fellow journalists, specially from the cool medium, did a great job of giving everybody the heebie-jeebies, explaining in gleeful detail what exactly happens to your nervous system when the sarin gas canisters explode near you.

But canny Saddam knew very well that the American response would be even more horrific if he armed the Russian-made Scuds.

Getting my wife and child out of Riyadh required a very close contact in the airline industry as passenger jets were to be banned over the capital's skies in a few days.

The scene at the airport was not as dramatic as the last chopper out of Hanoi, and there were no women thrusting their babies into the arms of total strangers, who were lucky to get out. But usually war is total chaos. And the flight only went as far as Jeddah.

The cold of the desert can be very harsh, but every evening a long line of cars would head off away from the city and many Saudis and expats spent the night there huddling under blankets till the crack of dawn.

The frightening part was not the Scuds, but the eerie sirens which slowly turned into screaming banshees, raising the hair on the nape of your neck.

As soon as the mournful noise started people clogged up the phone lines calling each other up to check if anyone had been hit. After a couple of weeks of this, everybody got fed up of the whole thing and went on the roofs to get a ringside view of the incoming missiles.

The Americans had set up Patriot missiles near the military airport, a couple of blocks from our flat. The Patriots caused even more damage when they intercepted a Scud and exploded, sending deadly shrapnel into apartment blocks. But the fireworks in the skies were spectacular.

The Iraqis were doing a great job, playing hide and seek with the coalition fighter jets and would quickly get out of hiding from under the bridges with their mobile launchers and lob the Scuds towards us.

Their aim was near perfect, but one day one of the Scuds blew away the local burger outlet and the exodus out of the city started. There was an unkindly joke doing the rounds at that time that the only things left in the place were 'expatriots'.

I always found two men in black, wearing Raybans, at the site the next day where the missile landed.

Some of the dud Scuds looked like they were made at the local garage and had ancient looking valves and levers. Seems there is going to be a Road to Baghdad, Part 11 coming up soon. Washington just can't seem to keep away from sequels.