Early Travels of Isobella Giles

Packing properly is very important. It calms one before the journey, makes the transfers and the searches bearable, allows one to focus on the point of the journey. Isobella Giles from her first excursion made a list of absolutely everything she would put in her single wheeled travel case, plus, sometimes, in later years, irritatingly, a notebook computer.

At Dar es Salaam, ex British Airways, economy class (this being more than ten and a bit years ago), she took a pre-arranged taxi to the old, now the domestic, terminal where a three seater single prop plane was ready to take her and one other to Zanzibar. A watcher, observing her disembark, noted she wore a frock patterned with red pastel roses, though she was logged wearing worn denim blue jeans at Heathrow. On landing, she ducked out the cockpit, walked long stride to the terminal not glancing back allowing porters to collect her bag. She gave, "an impression of carefree confidence," when coming through the glass door of the small arrivals hall, arm extended, long white hands,

"Hi, I am Bella Giles, so pleased to meet you".

Later she was to express a moment of irritation at the presence of the watcher, brown eyes flashing anger. This flare of eye was to become a point of mention since her voice and expression was always, unfailingly, calm and diplomatic, professionally unemotional. Of the watcher she had said "There is such a thing as trust you know" but at the end of her early travels, when she had concisely, in excellent grammar perfect English, summarised many a watchers scribbles, ran her own teams too, there was no more mention of trust. "It is too big a word for what we do".

The plane from Chipping Norton dropped in tight circles so as to avoid the danger of rocket propelled grenades on the descent to Baghdad airport. Bella Giles had been concerned that this stomach to gullet falling would make her sick but to her quiet satisfaction it did not at all, Her steady smile and relaxed manner all the way through the airport, into the armoured truck, through the gates of the Green Zone entrance impressed the Officers, both serving and retired. Lt Col (ret) John T. Snelling, in charge of the Project ground operations, had been told, by radio, "our visitor is a tough one" and was further charmed by Bella's poise and politeness, perception and ability to take note. Others, ambitious men for whom this, like other wars. was a chance to shine, noted Bella too. The first night, accommodation being tight Bella got a camp bed in a room shared with two other Officers, "but it was ok, I put on a coat over my pajamas, went out like a light" Eight months earlier Bella had watched on a TV images from a Baghdad square showing the toppling of a large statue of Saddam Hussein. She remarked, when writing up, that she had never connected the image with her journey. "The reconstruction presents us with opportunities". The image of the statue falling she associated with eating choclate whislt watching TV.

Eighteen months after the earthquake the road to Kashmir was still badly damaged. The hours of consecutive hairpin bends, the sudden sight of chasmic drops, two days of hard driving in an BHC Landrover, were very tiring. "I had to wear a burka, for modesty, though I did not find it very flattering. As usual none of the chaps wanted to go. Family commitments" There is a picture of Bella standing beside a landrover, it is raining there are, as always in these pictures, a crowd of wide eyed children. There are broken buildings, water filled craters, gaunt proud men eyes directly in the camera. Bella is at three quarters profile, face hidden by the shadow of the burka. There are no recent pictures though she owns her own digital camera bought on a whim in Dubai. "I am not sure why I went. Though they think it is good to show a face at the site of disasters"

For most of her twenty four trips to Washington DC Bella stayed in a functional hotel near to the Office. It was more rooms than a hotel, you got in with a plastic key, there was no reception though in the morning breakfast was offered in a side room. Bella, being English, went there to get hot water for the tea she had packed and to observe who might be familiar. She walked each morning to the Office dressed smartly, dark skirts, jacket, lipstick. The Office rivalries were occasionally intriguing, sometimes, when she had to respond, annoying. "Most of my colleagues, not all, are decent people who believe in what we do and are very friendly and helpful." Her reports were well written often read. more perceptive than in the beginning, aware of other options. Bella observed that as the scope of electronic surveillance has increased the only way to keep something confidential was to write in pencil, on paper, then shred and burn the shreds.

Bella said "You just think, remember the truth you have decided on today, forget it for a new one tomorrow!*

Bella said "When I started my travels there were the bad and the good, now, I am as likely to be arrested as you"

When Bella started travelling she was twenty two, when the early travels were over she was nearly thirty seven. Although there are no photographs, her hairdresser stayed the same, a chap she had grown used to with a shop on the High Street. "Isobella has kept her hair a little shorter in recent summers."