Escape from Saddam Page 14

  I felt uncomfortable making the call. I had no idea who this man was, and I didn’t even know what I was going to ask him. Surely my call would seem suspicious—the chances were good that he would want nothing to do with this unknown Iraqi boy with nowhere to stay and hardly any money, never mind who his uncle was. I didn’t know what kind of favor Saad had afforded this man to make him so sure he would help me, but I did know that some favors were soon forgotten and reluctantly repaid.

  Still, experience had taught me that I could trust Saad’s judgment in these matters, and besides, I didn’t have any other choice. That crumpled-up piece of paper was the only collateral I had. I slurped the remainder of my milkshake and went to find a telephone.

  I dialed the number. The phone rang several times. I was on the verge of hanging up when someone finally answered. “Hello?” The voice at the other end growled its greeting rather unenthusiastically.

  “Good afternoon,” I replied as politely as possible. “My name is Sarmed Alsamari. I’m the nephew of Saad Al-Khatab from Baghdad.”

  The sound of his voice was like the sun coming out. “Saad Al-Khatab!” he exclaimed. “Of course! How is he?”

  “He’s well, and he sends his regards.”

  “Saad is a good man. What can I do for you, Sarmed?” His voice was booming and jolly.

  I lowered my voice slightly, though for what reason I can’t say—probably out of habit. “I’ve just arrived in Jordan from Iraq. I don’t know anybody here, so Saad suggested I call you…” My voice trailed off.

  “Of course.” His voice became more sober. “Where are you now?”

  “In Hashemite Square.”

  “And where are you staying?”

  “In a hotel on the outskirts.”

  I heard him sucking on his teeth in thought. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you where I live.” He recited an address in an unfamiliar-sounding area, before explaining which bus I would need to take to get there. “It’s a little way outside of Amman,” he told me. “Let’s meet tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  I thanked him profusely and put the phone down feeling more confident than I had in days.

  Before I could walk away, there was one more phone call I had to make. I lifted the receiver, dialed the operator, and for half an hour waded through the bureaucratic red tape that was necessary to make a call to Baghdad. Eventually, a familiar voice answered. As I spoke, I could hear my own voice cracking. “Uncle Saad,” I said quietly. “It’s me.”

  Saad was silent for a moment, as though he did not dare hear the answer to the question he had to ask. “Where are you?”

  “In Amman,” I told him, unable to withhold a grin even though I knew he couldn’t see it.

  Saad let out an explosive breath. “Thanks be to Allah,” he whispered. “Did you have any trouble?”

  “A little,” I told him, not wanting to worry his mind with the realities of what had happened since I last saw him. “I am meeting with your friend tomorrow.”

  “Excellent,” Saad replied. “He is a good man. I’m sure he will help you.” I couldn’t help feeling that he did not sound entirely confident about that. “I’ll tell your mother that you are well. In the meantime, keep your head down and don’t get into trouble. And Sarmed.”

  “Yes, Uncle Saad.”

  “Don’t forget what I told you.”

  His parting words echoed in my mind. The genuine man never forgets his family. We are sending you to freedom so that one day you may rescue them from this place.

  “I won’t forget, Uncle Saad,” I told him sincerely. “Hug my mother for me.”

  The conversation lasted no more than a minute.

  I spent the rest of the day simply enjoying being able to walk around without fear. As evening fell and the heat of the sun dissipated, I noticed more and more crowds of young people appearing in the area. There were all sorts of nationalities there—Jordanians, Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis—and they congregated in groups, laughing, eating ice cream, having something to drink. Not having eaten since early that morning by the roadside, I approached a stall selling street food. A group of young men about my age were hanging around there, and somehow we fell into conversation. “Where are you from?” one of them asked me.

  I looked around nervously. In Iraq, you entered carefully into conversations with strangers on the street, because you never knew who had the ear of the authorities. The idea of spilling my secrets to some person I had just met was anathema to me, but there was something about this guy’s demeanor—a lack of interest that suggested he was making idle conversation rather than pumping me for incriminating information—that made me feel I could trust him. “Baghdad,” I told him. “I arrived today.”

  “Staying long?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I want to get to England.”

  “To claim asylum?” He sounded as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and I nodded a little warily.

  “Have you been to the UN yet?”

  “The UN?” The question surprised me. “No. Why would I want to do that?”

  The guy smiled at me as if indulging a naive child. “To get yourself on their lists. Sometimes they provide refugees with passage to a safer country. You never know, it might be quicker than whatever else you had in mind.”

  Just then one of his friends interrupted. “Be careful, though.”

  “What for?”

  “There are all sorts of rumors going around that the place is watched.” Without taking his eyes off me, he took a slurp from the glass bottle of Coke he was drinking through a straw.

  “Who by?”

  “Spies,” he said shortly. “Military police from Iraq or wherever, put there to keep an eye out for people who skipped the country illegally. Not that I’m saying that’s what you did.” He smiled and winked knowingly.

  “What about the Jordanians?” I asked, a bit disconcerted by this news. “Is it worth asking them to grant me asylum?” It wasn’t something I had particularly planned to do, but I figured that it was best to know what all my options were.

  The guy laughed, a short, ugly bark that betrayed his contempt for the Jordanian system. “Sure, you can try,” he told me. “They’ll put your name on a list and you’ll never hear from them again. At best you’ll be forgotten; at worst you’ll be alerting them to the fact that you’re here illegally. Don’t let yourself feel too welcome in this town, my friend. They only tolerate our presence because of the cheap oil they’re getting from our country—if it wasn’t for that, we’d be out of here faster than you can say ‘Abu Ghraib.’” He laughed again, at his own joke this time, before wandering off with his friends.

  It had been a sobering conversation. In my overwhelming desire to get to Jordan, it had not really crossed my mind that such tensions would be something I would encounter, but now that it had been spelled out to me it made perfect sense. And as if to confirm my newfound discovery, as I was wearily making my way back to my hotel an incident occurred that underlined how careful I needed to be. I had just left Hashemite Square and was looking around, drinking in the sights and sounds of the quarter where I would clearly be spending a fair amount of my time, when I passed a group of young men and women not much older than myself. Suddenly one of them called out to me, and it was clear from his accent that he was Jordanian. “Alaa waaish bidahik,” he shouted. “What are you looking at?”

  I stopped, suddenly frozen by the aggressive sound in his voice, and didn’t answer.

  I shook my head. “I’m not,” I mumbled.

  “What is it? Do you want to fight me?” He was walking toward me now, his gait lurching in a way that suggested he had been drinking. I took a step backward, but he continued to bear down on me. He pushed me heavily against my chest and I stumbled.

  “Look, my friend,” I started to say. “I’m not looking for trouble…” But as I spoke I saw the sight of a uniform at the other end of the street. Immediately my fear of the confrontatio
n was supplanted by my inbuilt horror of uniforms. Every instinct in my body shrieked at me to get away, to avoid being asked questions I didn’t want to answer by a figure of authority.

  I walked briskly away with the words “Fucking Iraqis!” ringing in my ears.

  First thing the following morning, having showered at the hotel so that my body at least was a little cleaner, I made my way to UN headquarters. I had not forgotten the warning I had heard the previous night, but I had decided to take a calculated risk. If these talked-about Iraqi spies were real, how would they spot me from among the tens of thousands of other Iraqis in Amman at the time? My passport was good enough to pass a cursory examination, and after all this was the UN. If I didn’t feel safe there, where would I?

  The headquarters was housed in a quiet residential area of Amman, surrounded by pretty gardens and tall metal railings. A number of people were milling around outside, but as I approached the gate with as great an air of confidence as I could muster, I avoided meeting anybody’s eye because I didn’t want to betray my nervousness. I have legitimate business, I kept telling myself over and over again. I have a right to be here.

  Nobody approached me as I walked in. The scene inside could not have been more different from the calmness of the exterior. It was bedlam. Despite the early hour, all sorts of people were there, refugees from Sudan, Somalia, and all over the Middle East, chattering loudly to one another in languages that I did not understand. I stood there for a moment in a daze, not quite sure what to do, before joining a line marked “Asylum Requests” and awaiting my turn to be interviewed.

  When my turn came, I sat down at the desk nervously. “Fill this in,” the official in charge said without even looking at me. I scrawled the few details that were required of me on the sheet, then handed it back. Finally the official looked me in the eye, his contempt and boredom written plainly across his face. “Where are you from?” he asked me in a tone of voice that immediately reminded me of the corrupt checkpoint guard who had detained me on my way back to Baghdad.

  “Iraq,” I told him, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. This was not the welcome I had expected from the UN.

  “Do you have permission to be here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why do you need political asylum?”

  “I believe my life is in danger if I return to my home country.” I thought this sounded dramatic, but the official had clearly heard it a thousand times before. He looked at me with suspicion, as if deciding what to do with me—though in truth I don’t suppose he had the authority to do anything other than process me as he had everyone else. Finally he stamped my form and gave me a date several weeks hence when I was to return for further interviewing. He beckoned the next person in line before I even stood up to leave.

  I left the room feeling slightly bemused. I had expected UN headquarters to be a haven, a place where I would feel safe, where my past would be something to invoke sympathy, not suspicion. In reality, I was just another number, an illegal alien, a statistic. Nobody was interested in me as an individual. With a start I realized that I could rely on nobody but myself to ensure my safety—and the fulfillment of my dream to make it to England.

  Hitching the small bag that contained everything I owned farther up on my shoulder, I stood at the gates of the UN for a moment to gather my thoughts, this time taking in my surroundings in greater detail. There seemed to be more people outside now than when I had gone in, and I took a brief moment to scan the faces of those around me. Some of them were hanging around in groups, others sitting on benches across the road. On the street corner I noticed one man just standing there, loitering. He was wearing Western clothing, and he would have been entirely unremarkable had it not been for the fact that he was staring directly at me. I tore my gaze from him and tried to look nonchalant, but when I glanced back his eyes were still fixed on mine. Immediately I found myself short of breath, with nauseous waves of panic crashing over me as the warning I had received the previous night rang in my head. I started walking briskly away in the opposite direction. Desperately I tried not to look back so as to avoid calling attention to my nervousness, but in the end I couldn’t stop myself.

  The man was no longer on the street corner.

  I stopped, turned around, and scanned the crowds to see if he was still among them. No sign—until suddenly he walked out from behind a group of people. He started ambling coolly toward me, and even though I had no way of knowing whether he really had any interest in me or not, I was overcome by a paranoia that would let me do only one thing: run. Not caring how conspicuous I made myself, I turned and fled, losing myself in a maze of backstreets. I ran with a painful limp for five or ten minutes, all the while glancing back over my shoulder to check that I wasn’t being followed. I invited curious glances as I hurtled down the streets in my filthy clothes, seemingly running from nothing and with sweat moistening my skin. But when I stopped, it was not out of a desire to stay still. Out of the blue I was almost floored by an excruciating, burning sensation in my stomach. I stumbled to a halt, then bent double as I gasped for breath—half on account of my exertions, half on account of the terrible, piercing pain that was ripping through my abdomen. I collapsed on the side of the road, unable to move, and waited until this sinister pain had subsided.

  The relief I felt when it had done so was like a balm. I touched my hands to my cheeks and realized they were wet from unnoticed tears, so I wiped my face with the back of my hand and tried to regain my composure. Part of me felt foolish, as though I had been running from shadows; but I knew that in the same situation, I would do the same thing again. I had come too far to throw everything away through carelessness. What the pain in my stomach had been I had no idea. Probably just hunger, or maybe stress, but I couldn’t worry about it now, as there was too much to do. I went to find someone of whom I could ask directions back to Hashemite Square, from where the buses out of Amman departed. It was time to meet Saad’s friend.

  Wissam lived with his wife and children in a well-to-do Christian area some miles out of Amman. After an uneventful bus journey, I approached his house with a certain amount of trepidation. It was a large, beautiful place draped in grapevines and with fruit trees in the courtyard, not the sort of place I expected to find myself on my second day in Jordan. I knocked rather timidly at the door, unsure what to expect. The man who greeted me was friendly, if formal at first, tall and good-looking with piercing green eyes. He introduced me to his family, his wife brought us some tea, and we sat down to talk. As we dealt with the necessary pleasantries, I immediately gained the impression that despite his friendliness, he was a firm man, somebody who knew what he wanted in life and was comfortable with the position he had achieved. I could trust him, I knew; but I would not be able to overstep the mark. He would help me so far, and no farther.

  “Now that I think about it, I remember you,” he said mysteriously when we had made ourselves comfortable in the shade of the vines forming a canopy over the courtyard. I looked at him questioningly. “When I came to Baghdad to study in the seventies, you were just a little baby.” He smiled at the memory. “Your uncle took care of me when I was a stranger in a strange land. He showed me where to go and what to do, and even let me stay with him for a while. I would be repaying him poorly if I did not do the same thing for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said sincerely.

  He sat back in his chair. “Why don’t you tell me everything?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and started to tell my story: how they had wanted me to join military intelligence; how I had escaped the barracks; how Saad had helped me to get out of Iraq. Certain things I kept to myself—the shooting, the journey across the desert with the Bedouin—so as not to make myself sound too dangerous a charity case. All the while I spoke, Wissam stayed silent, nodding gently, and I realized that although some Jordanians—like the youths with whom I had had a run-in the previous night—resented the presence of Iraqis in their territory, oth
ers, like the man in front of me, understood what the reality of life was like in our country and were prepared to help us. It was a reassuring moment.

  When I was finished, he was silent for a while as if he was mulling my story over in his mind. Finally he spoke. “Do you have money?”

  “A few American dollars. Not enough.”

  “And what is your plan from now on?”

  “To get to England and study to become a doctor.”

  He nodded silently. “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “I don’t know. There must be a way, but I’ll have to make inquiries…” I knew it sounded feeble even as I spoke the words, but it was the truth.

  Wissam waved his hand as if to indicate that he didn’t want to hear about such things. He knew that I was alluding to an underground world of false documents and people-smugglers, and he clearly didn’t want to go down that path. He clapped his hands briskly to divert me from the subject. “You’ll need a job, then,” he said in a businesslike fashion. “What can you do?”

  Of all the questions he could have asked me, that was the one for which I was the least prepared. I had never really had a job, and my academic qualifications, such as they were, seemed next to useless now. “I can speak English,” I told him with a shrug.

  “Okay,” he told me. “That’s good. Tomorrow I’ll take you around, speak to a few friends. We’ll see if we can find you some work. In the meantime, until you get a place for yourself, you can sleep here.”

  As he promised, the following day he started taking me around to places he knew that might be able to offer me a job. We started out at a baker’s shop, but when they found out that I had never worked in a bakery before, they rejected me out of hand. “I’m sorry,” Wissam was told. “He has no expertise. We’ve got Iraqis who know how to bake bread lining up for jobs.” Everywhere we went it was the same story, and as the day progressed I started to grow demoralized—and so, I think, did Wissam.