Except for the frantic pace of the newspaper business, Raghida Dergham is pretty calm for a woman who was 15 minutes away from being blown to smithereens.

On Monday, security officials at the United Nations discovered four letter bombs addressed to the offices of Al Hayat, a widely respected, fiercely independent Arabic newspaper where Dergham serves as New York bureau chief. Its offices are located in the U.N. headquarters.
The bombs were discovered only after Dergham, finding out that the home office in London had been rocked by a bomb blast, contacted the security officials to let them know that they might have a similar problem on their hands.

Within an hour, she says, the security officials found the bombs, contained in, of all things, greeting cards. Another quarter of an hour, she says, and the greeting cards would have been delivered. There are many theories as to who might have sent the bombs. Al Hayat is owned by Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan. The New York Times on Wednesday speculated that someone might be trying to warn bin Sultan not to cooperate with U.S. authorities in the investigation of the bombing of the Khobar Towers that killed 19 members of the U.S. Air Force last June in Saudi Arabia. But the newspaper, according to the Times, shocked many in the Arab world by opening a Jerusalem bureau and running stories with a Jerusalem dateline.

Such a move is blasphemy to those Arabs who refuse to recognize Israel as anything other than an illegitimate Zionist entity and who still call Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al Quds. To call the city anything else is unthinkable. To tacitly recognize Israel is unforgivable.

In the finest of newspaper traditions, Al Hayat —"The Life" — has been pissing people off since its founding 50 years ago. And it is no stranger to violence. In 1966, its founder, Kamel Mrowa, was shot to death, his killers never brought to justice. Over the years, the paper has been closed down in various countries, banned in others.

So who sent the bombs this time? Raghida Dergham says she has no idea.

All she knows is what she broke in her paper - yet another scoop by Al Hayat, which was also the first to report that Saddam Hussein had amassed a stockpile of arms in the months prior to his invasion of Kuwait. All the bomb-laden greeting cards, says Dergham, had Egyptian stamps and Egyptian postmarks. They were all mailed on the same day. "There were no calls, no letters taking responsibility," says Dergham. "Neither were there threats before this act. We are not accusing anybody."

In my own limited experience covering the Middle East, I found first-hand that folks out that way have a severe humor deficit.

One day, I was arrested by Israeli soldiers for taking pictures of a patrol in Jerusalem hassling a Palestinian. A few days later, having hooked up with a Palestinian journalist in the West Bank, the two of us were forced to run for our lives just ahead of a barrage of stones thrown by an angry mob of Palestinians leaving a funeral of a man allegedly slain by Israeli soldiers.

In both cases, I was probably just the wrong guy in the wrong place. But, even though in the United States I have been the recipient of bomb threats and been on the wrong end of officials with no sense of humor, I have never experienced the kind of organized terror campaign that is being waged against Al Hayat. So, in addition to wanting to express my solidarity with Dergham as a fellow journalist, I wanted to know what, if any, effect the letter bombs will have on her job.

After two decades in the business, will she finally opt to save her own neck by lightening up on covering the news in an area famous for its animosity toward a free press?  Hardly.

"I am not going to panic," she says. "I am not going to let this make me step away from the profession." In yet another fine journalistic tradition, Dergham seemingly brushes off the danger posed by the discovery of the bombs. "First, you avoid opening your mail. Secondly, you file your story. That is how I look at it. As a fellow journalist, you know [the importance of filing] a story. Right now, I am filing my story, only this time, I am literally filing mystery. I am going to report it exactly as it happened." She is quick to admit, however, that she is not taking this lightly.

"We understand the dangers of this profession," she says. "But when we see it take a shape as it has taken toward my newspaper, it becomes even more acute."

While refusing to go into specifics, for obvious reasons, Dergham says she and her colleagues have changed their routines according to security guidelines set up by U.N. officials. Perhaps the most admirable of Dergham's fine journalistic traditions is the naive optimism that lurks underneath her nonchalant exterior.

If there is one thing I have learned in my years in journalism, it is this: It is impossible for a journalist, no matter how outwardly cynical, to do the job without believing in the simple beauty of hope. In our short conversation, Raghida Dergham confirmed this theory.

"Look," she says. "Any independent newspaper which circulates in as many countries as Al Hayat will have to have criticism, objections from more than one quarter. Otherwise, we would not be doing our job. But I see no justification for this act. We are reporting as fairly and as professionally as possible and we think this is unwarranted and undeserved. We hope that whoever is behind this will come to their senses and realize that this doesn't serve their purpose. If they have a message, we will print it."

Salam alekam, Raghida Dergham. May you be around to print stories for many years to come.