Thomas Enger - Pierced

‘That depends entirely on how you look at it. Do you want me to go through the other expressions?’

Iver stares at Henning for a long time, initially with amazement, until he realises that Henning isn’t joking. Iver looks at his watch.

‘We haven’t got time,’ he says, getting up. ‘The Eagle awaits.’

Entering the TV2 building in the middle of Karl Johansgate, Oslo’s main street, has always instilled in Thorleif Brenden a feeling of being a part of something important. It has nothing to do with the size of the building; it is the knowledge of all those people working in one place towards a common goal and yet in fierce competition with each other. He feels proud when he nods to the receptionist, when he swipes his staff card through the reader with practised ease and enters the lift, greeting producers, editors, reporters and anyone else there with the same purpose: creating programmes that will enlighten or entertain the people of Norway.

Thorleif remembers his first weeks working for TV2 and how he would look at everyone, surreptitiously, to see if he recognised them. And he did, of course. Everywhere. Glamorous TV personality Dorte Skappel, without make-up and in jeans. Journalist Oddvar Stenstrom, for once not wagging his finger at a hapless guest. News anchor Pal T. Jorgensen, just as well groomed off camera as he is on. Everyone who was anyone was there. And they were all normal people.

Thorleif began his TV2 career in 2000 after nearly five years of studying in the USA, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in film and television and started a master’s in documentary filmmaking which he never completed. He much preferred working to writing even though he has always enjoyed the latter. For a man with his background, getting a foot in the door at TV2 was fairly easy. The corporation always needed freelancers with his skills, and to begin with he worked thirty days every month — even in February, or at least that was how it felt. In the end he had to slow down. It wasn’t a realistic long-term plan, especially after he started seeing Elisabeth. And certainly not once Pal was born.

In 2002, he covered someone’s leave of absence, and he was offered a full-time employment contract the following year. Since then, he has worked for various departments within the corporation to avoid doing the same thing every day. However, he mostly works for the news desk. He has been to Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya and several African countries — places where history is being written. He has helped tell their stories, risking his life on occasion. The trip to Kenya in 2008 was a particularly bad time.

It was just after the election. Several hundred Kikuyu had sought refuge in a church in the town of Eldoret because no one could make up their mind who had won. A furious mob set fire to the church, and between fifty and one hundred people were killed, many of them children. Anyone who tried to escape was hacked to death with machetes.

Thorleif was working on the day it happened, and the international news editor decided that TV2 should cover the situation because it was starting to look like another Rwanda. Accompanied by the seasoned war correspondent Frode Greverud, Thorleif packed his camera and sound equipment and set off. Having landed in Nairobi, they travelled to Eldoret the next day. They could only travel during daylight because it was impossible to know what or who you might bump into at night.

They had talked to local people and the Red Cross in advance and had learned where it was safe to go, but on their way to Eldoret they came across a bus of refugees. Thorleif and Greverud stopped and decided to make a feature about them. This delayed them by forty-five minutes, which meant they didn’t reach Eldoret before sunset. Three kilometres from the town the darkness was total. Either side of the road were lines of narrow, rickety houses. Suddenly they saw that the road had been deliberately blocked with hundreds of rocks. It was impossible to drive through.

Twenty to twenty-five men approached their car with gleaming machetes. Thorleif looked at Greverud, a man with years of experience of areas torn apart by conflict. He didn’t know what they should do either. They were unable to drive on or to reverse. The driver they had hired for the trip was black, but fortunately he was from a neutral tribe, otherwise he, and possibly they too, would have been hacked to death.

The men let them pass, and the next day they visited the church. There they spoke to two young men who claimed to have witnessed the massacre. Thorleif and Greverud didn’t notice anyone approaching but soon found themselves surrounded by twenty locals. Foreign visitors were exotic; the cameras and microphones were attracting attention.

Suddenly they heard a gunshot. Then another and another. The bullets whizzed over their heads. Total panic broke out. Greverud signalled to Thorleif that they had to get out of there, but there were only two dirt roads, one leading directly towards the shooter while the other would take them further into the bush. The men they had been interviewing ran that way. Greverud pulled Thorleif into the car where they took cover.

But the gunman came closer. For a few frantic seconds they sat as if frozen in the front of the car. Should they drive in the direction of the shooter or follow the people being shot at? They decided to drive towards the gunman, to make themselves known to him, to show him that they were white. When the car was only a couple of metres from the gunman, he stopped. They saw that he was carrying a Norwegian AG-3 battle rifle, of all things. There was no chance of escape. Thorleif was convinced that he was about to die. It would take the gunman three seconds to shoot them down. Possibly not even that.

But rather than kill them, he crouched behind their car. Thorleif filmed the gunman as he shot at the men they had just been interviewing, footage which was broadcast on TV2 later that day. The shooting was a personal vendetta by a soldier from another tribe. But the fear of death that overcame Thorleif when he thought the gunman was going to kill them was impossible to describe. He has tried since, using pen and paper and in conversation with others, but he has never succeeded. It happened so quickly. Once when he was young he was in a car that aquaplaned on the motorway at 115 kilometres an hour. Three seconds later the car had come to a standstill with broken windows in a thicket of bushes and trees. On that occasion he had not managed to think anything at all before the crisis was over either.

Later that day in Eldoret, Greverud and Thorleif visited a hospital where they filmed a man who had had half his face destroyed in an acid attack. ‘Show the world,’ he said. ‘Show people what is happening here.’ And it’s moments like that when Thorleif understands the value of his work. Its importance. To uncover cruelty, to draw attention to it, to expose it to the world so that the global community can take action.

Not long afterwards, two Nobel Peace Prize winners visited the area to broker a ceasefire. The conflict was resolved. It was unlikely to be as a result of the footage Thorleif had shot, but it might have contributed to saving some lives. Shortly after returning to Norway he went to Parliament to interview opposition politicians who were unhappy about the state of Norwegian roads and he felt like throwing up.

Today probably won’t involve a trip to Eldoret, Thorleif thinks, as he takes a seat at one of the vacant workstations in the technical department on the second floor. None of the producers or photo editors is there. A quiet day in the office is not to be sniffed at.

Thorleif goes on the intranet and finds DeskPlanner to see if anyone has booked him for a job today. At the moment it looks quiet, but he knows things can change without notice.