Youssef Ibrahim: Two decades, and the making of opinion Pressing engagements Profile by Laila Sa'ada

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'I got to know the history makers before they became anybodies. I used to meet them in their pyjamas and we became close friends. Now they're still very valuable sources to me' 'Strange things happen in wars that do not take place in ordinary life. It's like living in a fictional world. It's bigger than life'

Youssef Ibrahim placed his hand in front of his face to shield himself from the imminent sniper attack. His colleague jumped in front of the Israeli jeep and shouted at its occupants that he would photograph the killing and expose them if they hurt Ibrahim. They didn't and Ibrahim survived. The photographer took the picture anyway. Over 20 years later it hangs in Ibrahim's study at his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

In the early 1980s Youssef Ibrahim was a foreign correspondent at the New York Times. He was stationed in Bethlehem in the Palestinian territories covering the first Intifada when his colleague and photographer Micha Baram took this picture.

"I was finishing a number of interviews going from home to home," said Ibrahim, "I came out of a house in Beit Suhur, a small town next to Bethlehem, when the Israelis raided the town ordering everyone to go inside their homes. We didn't have one and doors were locking as people rushed in."

Ibrahim, now 50, is currently a fellow at the Centre for Foreign Relations, one of the leading think tanks in New York. He writes op-eds for national newspapers and magazines.

"Now is the point in my career life when I actually have an opinion," he says. "It took 19 years of covering international news at the New York Times, punctuated by six years at Newsweek, to reach this stage."

Born and educated in Cairo, Egypt, Ibrahim joined the Faculty of Engineering and failed miserably the first two years.

"Back then, if you got good grades in high school there were only two schools for you, medicine or engineering. My father wouldn't hear of anything else."

But Ibrahim's heart was far from architecture. He wanted to be a foreign correspondent. "Ever since I saw the movie Love is a Many Splendid Thing, when I was 13 I had made up my mind. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, just like the hero of the movie, and the idea never quit my head."

After an ongoing battle with his family Ibrahim finally prevailed and convinced them to allow him to join the American University in Cairo where he helped shape its currently popular Journalism Department. He developed AUC's first and only student journalistic publication, The Caravan. Ibrahim proudly skims through editions from 1963, and points at The Caravan's worn-out yellowing pages where his name crowns articles about students' lives and concerns.

He graduated in 1968 and gleefully admits that he "didn't study much, though I'm sure I learnt hard core journalism".

Two years later Ibrahim travelled to the United States where he joined the University of Columbia to study journalism. The Vietnam War was at its peak and the university campus a hot bed of student riots and demonstrations.

"I struck double by being at Columbia at that time," he says. "I got to learn all about journalistic America as well as political America."

Yet it is his early years at the New York Times to which he attributes the foundations of his subsequent success. He joined the organisation as a news clerk after his graduation.

"It was a great learning experience," he explains. Assigned to the foreign editor's desk Ibrahim daily organised, filed and read through the stories coming-in from the Times foreign correspondents as they came-in, in their raw format, before the editors chopped at them and altered their style.

"I got to identify the good reporters from the bad ones. It was better than ten Columbias put together."

In 1978 Ibrahim was offered a long awaited positing as a foreign correspondent with the Times. He went to Tehran, Iran.

"Little did they know when they sent me to that sleepy, lazy backwater job that this would be my big break," Ibrahim says as he recounts his memories of the Iranian revolution which erupted in 1979.

"I got to know the history makers before they became anybodies. I used to meet them in their pyjamas and we became close friends. Now they're still very valuable sources to me."

After spending two years covering the Iranian revolution Ibrahim was promoted to regional foreign correspondent covering the Middle East from Paris. He spent ten years in Paris covering the Iranian/Iraqi war, the civil war in Lebanon and the Palestinian uprising against Israel.

"My sources from Iran proved very useful. The bonds we created back in 1978 transcended history. They even apologised when they finally kicked me out of the country along with the rest of the foreign journalists!"

"To be there at the place of action is incredible for your adrenaline," Ibrahim explains. He then appears to lose himself in his thoughts, gazing at an Iranian painting hanging on the wall of his living room.

"Strange things happen in wars that do not take place in ordinary life. It's like living in a fictional world. It's bigger than life."

War, though, has its darker side. Ibrahim recalls a colleague and roommate killed in front of his eyes.

"It was 11 September 1979, the day the Iranian army collapsed. He was standing in front of the window of our room and was shot in the head. Just like that... he lost his life."

Even Ibrahim's 22 years of marriage couldn't withstand the difficulty of a foreign correspondent's lifestyle. Suzan, Ibrahim's American wife, travelled with him for many years but the experience of the evacuation from Iran traumatised her. Even when she finally settled with him in Paris and became a university professor the couple couldn't pull it through.

"If you're on the road six weeks of every eight how can you maintain a good marriage," laments Ibrahim. "We're still in touch, though, and we have become very good friends."

Ibrahim lives alone in his cosy apartment in Manhattan. He refers to himself as an "American citizen motivated by national interests". Yet step inside his home and you are automatically transported to another, a very un- American world. Painted the deep hues of sunset, the reception area reflects his Egyptian roots and passion for Arab culture. Paintings of Egyptian scenes cover the walls. There is a Moroccan painted plate in one corner, a silver Bedouin sword in another and two tall green plants in copper pots by the window.

The incredible mess of papers and newspapers scattered on colourful kilim rugs bring Ibrahim back from his reveries.

"It's not enough to be a good reporter, you have to be in the right place at the right time. And you have to write everyday," he says.

When he was in Tehran in 1979 Ibrahim wrote everyday for a whole year. "That was 365 stories in 365 days."

Ibrahim emphasises his edge over the reporters currently covering events in Iraq, explaining how crucial it is for a foreign correspondent to know something about the language and culture of the region he or she is covering. His fluency in English, Arabic and French remains a major asset.

"When I arrived in Iran the Mullahs spoke Arabic and within two hours I was plugged into their network," he remembers. "My Middle Eastern looks saved me in Kasbah, Algeria, when they were killing the journalists. Same in Baghdad, I would not be spotted as an outsider."

He shakes his head in disdain as he describes the media coverage of the American/Iraqi War as "lamentable". Having spent over 17 years out of the US, Ibrahim was shocked at how sensational television coverage in the US has become.

"When you start your shows with words like 'Showdown' and when you use embedded reporters to cover the war how can you maintain objectivity and get a fuller picture of what's going on?" "I remember the first Gulf War in 1991," continues Ibrahim. "Everybody in the Middle East tuned in to CNN for news. Now my nephew in Egypt tells me they have stopped watching it and have tuned in to competing Arab channels." It is these channels, Ibrahim believes, that are now shaping the opinions of millions of Arabs. Even in Indonesia they watch other European channels, he insists, because they don't trust CNN's objectivity anymore.

"If we shake the pillar of a free and objective press, we're harming our American national interests."

His dark eyes grow bright and a smile shines through under his grey mustache as Ibrahim contemplates his next assignments.

He is preparing for a trip to London, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and possibly Baghdad. His step has a positive spring as he paces up and down his living room in anticipation.

"I'm having so much fun," he says. "Sometimes I wonder why I am getting paid for it!"