"Brisbane is my home but
I live in Baghdad. For almost six years now I have
only lived war. I leave Iraq twice a year and the
first thing I do when I come out is go to a Thai
restaurant; it's my first meal anywhere I go. I just
arrived in Paris to cover the Rugby World Cup and
I've already had two Thai meals. I love it and miss
the taste. I miss the currency of the flavours, the
richness of the food, the sparkle. I'm not a gourmet
- I'm a man of very simple tastes - but, to me, Asian
flavours are part of being a contemporary Australian,
so I'd have Thai food for my last meal.
Today I'm having Tom Yum Goong. I haven't had a
spring roll in months so I'm going to have some of
those too. And then there's the eternal decision -
stir fry or curry? I think I'll go with the prawns in
curry sauce.
Before I left for Paris, I had just eaten in a
restaurant in Iraq for the first time in two years.
It was in the western Anbar province where the US
Marines have a division. I went back to an important
al-Qaeda village that Sunni insurgents had reclaimed
from al-Qaeda only weeks before. They used to hang
severed heads from butchers hooks on the main street.
Al-Qaeda had owned this particular restaurant for
years and had closed it when they shut down the
village and all communal life. Now that the tide has
turned there and Iraqis have the upper hand again,
reopening the restaurant was a big deal.
When I arrived in Iraq, after living in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, for just over a year, it felt like a
food revolution. For a while it seemed like the food
had taste - we were eating kebabs, mutton, rice and
chicken. Occasionally you'd see a salad and do
cartwheels, particularly when you're eating the same
lunch and dinner every day. I'm back to the same
weight I was when I was 17.
Forget Atkins. Forget the fad diets. You want to go
to fat camp? Then get yourself to Iraq. The food is
unattractive and poorly prepared so there's no
motivation to eat, and when you do it can have
serious consequences! Sometimes you starve for days
so you're constantly hungry and you end up dreaming
and fantasising about food all the time.
At my last meal, I'd just have two members of my
family. I don't like to talk about my personal life
but the people I count as real friends wouldn't even
fill this table. My world is actually very small. I
come from a traditional Australian working-class
background which I'm immensely proud of. My
upbringing has helped to shape the man that I'm
slowly evolving into.
My favourite memory as a child was being with my
father and stopping at these roadside food vendors -
roaming meat-pie salesmen - who would sell food from
the back of their trucks. They would park by certain
main thoroughfares and roads in the neighbourhoods
where we grew up and my father and I would stop for
pie'n'peas. It's an English thing - a saucy pie
filled with ground beef. The pie man would slice the
crust off the lid and peel it back to spread mashed
peas across the top before resealing the lid.
To me as a child that was manna from heaven that came
in a little white paper bag. Dad and I used to have a
competition to see who could eat the thing without
spilling it, because it was a very messy affair. I
have very strong childhood memories of that.
The sad indictment on my current culinary life is
that I will go into a US military embed just so I can
get to the chow hall. I'm not kidding. I remember
watching M*A*S*H when I was growing up, and you'd see
the slop they dealt out to the soldiers in the army
mess hall; but it's certainly not like that now.
They have salad bars as long as football fields,
sandwich bars, ice cream parlours, and burger and
corn dog stands. Then there's the main meal section,
with fruit, veg and salad and an assortment of
beverages that boggles the mind. I've been known to
fake interest in military operations just to get to
the food, and I think it's well known within the
multinational force command that if they want to
entice me out for an interview or a sit-down with a
general, they offer a lunch and we'll do it in the
chow hall. If they want to own me, they go via my
stomach."