As American readers who venture abroad know, there is more than one TIME. There are, in fact, eight editions of the magazine outside the U.S., and each one can augment the fare in the domestic editions with stories of special interest to our foreign audience. The task of making TIME responsive to the regional concerns of its global readership belongs to International Editor Karsten Prager. Building upon the U.S. TIME, Prager decides each week which stories to add overseas with his staff of writers and researchers and, frequently, whether to put a different subject on the cover. When war broke out between Iran and Iraq last week, it was of course clear that the story belonged on the cover of all of TIME's editions--and that Prager was specially equipped to edit it. He knows the region intimately, having been TIME Middle East bureau chief from 1973 to 1976, and having first met then Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein in 1975. The story was written by the International section's Spencer Davidson, onetime acting Beirut bureau chief who has traveled extensively in the area since 1970. Says Davidson: "The Middle East has more crisis flash points than any other place in the world. This is an unfortunate circumstance, since the tradition of the people there is essentially one of great friendship and courtesy."

Davidson based his story on reports that included battlefield dispatches by Correspondent Adam Zagorin and Cairo Bureau Chief William Drozdiak. Zagorin, who is based in Beirut, flew to Amman and set out on a grueling all-night bus trip across the Jordanian desert to Baghdad. He helped cover the 1977 border skirmishes between Egypt and Libya for U.P.I., "But this was my first look at direct air attacks," says Zagorin. "It was a sobering and frightening experience." Meanwhile, Drozdiak was on his way back to Cairo from a four-day conference of Islamic ministers in Fez, Morocco, when the fighting erupted. He dashed to Rome to connect with an all-night flight to Kuwait, and by Friday he was surveying the bomb-shattered port town of Basra, Iraq. Middle East Bureau Chief William Stewart hastened back to Beirut to coordinate TIME's coverage of the war. He had been sipping tea in the royal palace at Amman, Jordan, waiting to interview King Hussein, when news of the Iraqi attack came. Stewart's audience with the King was soon postponed, another, albeit temporary, casualty of war in the gulf.

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