Reuters - comradeship, shared endeavour and laughs

The Lebanese army rained shells across West Beirut all night after Druze and Shi'ite militia expelled it from that part of the city on 6 February 1984, Alistair Lyon (photo)​, recalled as he bowed out after 30 years as a Middle East correspondent and editor.

“Some hit the apartment of Reuters correspondent Kate Dourian, killed several of her neighbours and destroyed her car. She left Lebanon after that - a trauma for her, but an ill wind that blew an opportunity my way.

“Dave Betts, who had hung up his spurs as one of the Four Horsemen to become chief representative in Lebanon, hired me as a stop-gap local correspondent, starting 30 years ago today [15 March]. I was in awe of Reuters and had no experience or training as a reporter. I felt sure I’d soon be rumbled, with my schoolboy French, self-taught Arabic and hazy grasp of economics.

“I’d started out teaching English in Yemen, churned copy for a Beirut-based economic digest and, for a month before joining Reuters, wrote headlines and “combined agency dispatches” for Lebanon’s English-language Daily Star, alongside other young hopefuls like Diana Abdallah and Samia Nakhoul.

“Reuters novice though I was, two years later when kidnappers were grabbing foreigners off the streets at will, I found myself the only Westerner left in the bureau. And then it all got much worse and I left too - but still clinging to my job with Reuters. The rest, as they say, is footnotes.

“In those early years, I was lucky to have editors like François Duriaud, David Rogers, Youssef Azmeh and Graham Stewart, who were not shy about ripping apart one’s copy, but who cared about their correspondents and stood by them when they were in trouble. From them and others such as Paul Eedle, Andrew Tarnowski and John Fullerton, I learned the basics of getting it first, getting it right and telling it straight. Preferably with a little flair.”

Throughout his subsequent postings in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan/Afghanistan, Egypt/Sudan, Lebanon again - “with the dream job of special correspondent Middle East” - and many places in between, he found working for Reuters “a tremendous source of comradeship, shared endeavour and laughs”.

There had been awful losses along the way. “It’s far too long a list, but I mention Kurt Schork and Aziz Haideri simply because they were the ones I knew best.”

Lyon said it would be a huge wrench logging off, “but I’m informed by those who have already escaped the Baron’s clutches that an after-life exists”. ■