Escape from Saddam (19 page)

“Maybe I could talk to your family,” I persisted. “Persuade them…”

“No, Sarmed,” she said firmly, “because I don’t want to leave them either.” She lowered her eyelashes in a sorrowful way. “Sarmed, there’s something I have to tell you. I’ve been waiting for the right moment but it has never arrived. I’m engaged to be married.”

I was momentarily speechless, before feeling a hot flush of embarrassment creep up my neck. “I’m sorry, Shireen,” I said finally. “If I’d known I wouldn’t have asked you. Forgive me.”

Gently she kissed me on the side of the cheek—a particularly forward gesture for a young Arab girl. “Of course I forgive you, Sarmed.”

We stood there in awkward silence, which was finally broken by Shireen. “Is it safe, what you are doing?”

I shrugged, effecting more bravado than I felt. “I’ll be okay. I have good people helping me.”

“I hope so, Sarmed.” And then the words that I desperately didn’t want to hear. “I don’t suppose I’ll see you again, shall I?”

I shook my head.

“Good-bye then,” she said quietly but firmly. “
Allah maa’k.
God be with you. I will miss you.”

Shireen turned and continued down the street. I watched her until she disappeared from sight.

I returned to the flat, shut the door, and kicked the wall in frustration. My emotions for the rest of that day were more confused than they had ever been. There was sorrow, certainly, tinged with shame at the embarrassment my request had caused. But as time wore on and I was forced to come to terms with what had happened that morning, I realized how improbable it had always been that Shireen would come with me. Not everyone was as displaced as I was. Not everyone felt the need to cross over the fence to a greener field. In a strange way, I stoically told myself, it was a relief. Shireen was the only reason I had left for wanting to stay in Amman. Now she was beyond my reach forever, and as a result I felt a renewed sense of purpose, a desperate drive to continue with the rest of my journey.

When the day arrived, I rose early. My bags had been expectantly packed the night before, so I put on my suit, straightened my tie, and checked my two sets of documents for the umpteenth time. Then I placed my Iraqi passport in one inside pocket, my UAE passport in the other, picked up my bags, and went to catch the bus that would drive me on the thirty-minute journey to the Amman airport.

It had been more than seven years since I had been at an airport—not since my father had brought me back to Baghdad—and I had forgotten how busy airports could be. Businessmen—some in suits, others in more traditional Arab dress—marched purposefully across the concourse paying little or no attention to the young Iraqi standing alone in the middle with his luggage and wondering where to go. Eventually I located the desk I needed and checked in nervously but without any difficulty. I was in good time for my flight, but I decided nothing was to be gained from going through passport control too early. If they decided to question my documents, I did not want them to have too much time in which to do so, so I remained on the main concourse, pacing up and down, trying to keep out of sight of any officials as my anxiety increased with every minute that passed. At one point I killed some time at an airport café, where I ordered a Coca-Cola and sipped it slowly. If things didn’t go as I hoped, I thought to myself, this might be the last time I would taste it for a long while, if not forever.

I had been mentally preparing myself for this moment for weeks; but now that it was upon me, every instinct in my body screamed at me to leave the airport. It was too dangerous. So many things could go wrong, and if they did I would be on the first transport back to Baghdad. Every time that thought struck me, I shuddered, closed my eyes, and tried to put it to the back of my mind.

Eventually, I could put it off no longer. Taking deep breaths to calm my nerves, I approached passport control, where an unsmiling border guard took my Iraqi passport. He had a computer terminal in front of him and, glancing through my documents, typed something into the system. “What’s your father’s name?” he asked.

I told him, wondering what that had to do with anything.

He tapped at the keyboard again without looking at me. “Hmm…” I heard him grunt.

I tried to keep calm. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Wait here,” the guard said. He left his post and went to talk to another official. I watched them in huddled conversation as they examined my passport and looked back toward me. Eventually he returned to his post. “How did you enter?”

“My entry stamps are there,” I told him curtly.

The guard shrugged. “I think you entered illegally,” he told me. I remained silent, and as I think back on that awful moment I remember that everything around me seemed to fade into silence as every ounce of my concentration was directed toward what this man, on whose whim my future lay, was saying to me. “Even if you didn’t, you’ve overstayed. They’re cracking down on people like you. It looks like you’re in trouble. Come with me.” His words made my body feel suddenly crumpled, and it took every effort just to stand up straight.

He led me to a side room that contained nothing but a desk and two chairs. “Sit down,” he told me without ceremony. I did as I was told, watching him as he appeared to be wondering what to say next. “We’ve had our eye on you,” he said finally.

My heart stopped. How could that be the case? “What do you mean?” I breathed.

“We’ve had you under surveillance. You’re a smuggler. You’ve been coming in and out illegally. You’re not on the system.”

“That’s not my fault.”

He stared directly into my eyes, waiting for me to say something else, and instantly I understood. He was trying to intimidate me. What he wanted I don’t know—a bribe maybe, or perhaps he was genuinely suspicious of my documents and was trying to break me down. I resolved to make sure he would do neither. “You’re mistaken,” I told him.

“You should have left the country months ago.”

“So let me leave.”

He shook his head with a nasty smile. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, my friend. If you want to leave, you have to pay a fine. One dinar for every day you have overstayed.”

It amounted to a sizable sum. The only money I had I needed in Malaysia to buy my ticket to the UK. There was no way I could hand any of it over to this guy. “I don’t have the money,” I told him firmly.

The guard shrugged and looked at his watch. “Your flight leaves in fifteen minutes,” he said. “I’ll be back in ten to see what your decision is.” He left me alone in the room.

I sat there, sweating in my suit while I decided what to do—though in truth the decision was made for me. I couldn’t give him any money, so I had to stick to my story and pray that the business of dealing with me would be too much of an administrative headache. If he wanted me out of the country, the easiest way was to get me on that plane.

True to his word he returned exactly ten minutes later. “Have you decided?”

“I told you,” I said. “I don’t have the money. I can’t pay you.”

He looked me up and down, clearly taking in the fact that I was well dressed. “You realize I have the power to deport you? All I need to do is say the word and you are on a police van back to the Iraqi border.” He must have seen the fear flicker across my face when he said that, because he nodded in understanding. “Okay, my friend,” he said in a nasty tone of voice. “I’ll do you a deal. Pay me half the money and I’ll let you go.”

But even half the money he wanted would have ruined me, so I stood firm. “I’m sorry,” I said. “My papers are genuine, but I simply don’t have the money to pay you.”

He considered that for a minute before speaking abruptly once more: “Come with me.” He led me back to the passport control desk, and as I heard the final call for my flight, I felt the eyes of everyone in the waiting line on me. Another official joined him and started asking me the same questions I had already answered, perhaps trying to spot an inconsistency in my story, perhaps just trying to intimidate me more. Still I stood my ground.

Whether the official who was trying to haggle with me about my fine intended the money to go into his own pocket I can’t say, but eventually it became obvious to him that I was in no position to pay it. He started huffing and puffing like a spoiled schoolboy denied some treat, and finally he took a big black stamp, opened my passport, and brought the stamp firmly down onto one of the pages. I looked at it:
NO RETURN WITHIN FIVE YEARS
. “Get out of here,” he muttered under his breath before turning to his next passenger.

I looked at him, amazed, but he had already lost interest in me. So I turned away and sprinted to the gate, where my plane was ready to leave.

CHAPTER
11

THE KISS

A
s I scrambled onto the plane, I received a host of evil looks from my fellow passengers—the flight had been delayed and it was clear to them that it was on my account. I found my seat and stared blankly out of the window waiting for takeoff, my natural fear of flying overwhelmed by the excruciating need to get off the ground. Not until we were in the air would I feel as if I had put enough space between me and the passport control official who had nearly thwarted all my plans. As the flight attendants walked up and down the aisle, I avoided catching their eyes, my paranoia having convinced me that they seemed to be looking at all the passengers with suspicion, as if searching for someone. Only when Jordan was far behind us did I begin to relax, and then only slightly. My satisfaction at having made it onto the flight was mixed with a sense of anger at the passport official, and trepidation: I may have been out of Jordan, but I was by no means safe.

My trip would take me first to Muscat, the capital of the kingdom of Oman, where we would wait in transit for six hours before changing planes. That didn’t worry me too much, as I doubted officials would check my papers while in transit, but I still felt uncomfortable with the two counterfeit passports in different pockets of my jacket as per Abu Firas’s advice. Abu Firas had told me that at some stage, on the flight between Muscat and Kuala Lumpur, I should dump my Iraqi passport: that way I couldn’t be deported back to Iraq if my UAE passport was spotted as a fake. But it was too early yet—I might need that document before I got on the flight to Malaysia.

The transit lounge in Muscat was as faceless as such places always are. Bored- and tired-looking passengers sat around, some of them reading, some of them chatting, most of them simply staring into space as they waited for the connecting flight. For me, though, the wait seemed to distill my panic, and I hadn’t been there long before the familiar pains in my stomach started to make themselves known again. I winced as I felt the stabbing in my abdomen, not because it was bad—not yet—but because I knew how debilitating it could become if I couldn’t get it under control. Relaxation was the key—the pains always seemed to be exacerbated by stressful situations, so I made my way to the airport mosque. Perhaps a short period of prayer and contemplation would help me refocus my mind.

The mosque had a comfortable carpet, so I prostrated myself in prayer and then found a quiet corner away from prying eyes where I tried to sleep. But sleep would not come, and the pains grew increasingly bad. They had never been this intense—terrible, excruciating pangs that bent me double and made walking a near impossibility. I did my best not to let the pain show in my face, but before long I was sweating, my dark skin pale and my eyes screwed up in agony. I needed help, so I went to find a flight attendant.

The woman who took me under her wing was like an angel. She sat me down, put her arm around me, and cared for me as solicitously as if I were her own child. Once she had established what was wrong with me, she called a doctor in central Muscat. It took him the best part of an hour to get to me, an hour that passed as slowly as a day as the pains grew worse and worse. Once he arrived he led me to a sofa in the far corner of the transit lounge and laid me out flat before starting to ask me questions about the pain. Where was it? Had it happened before? I tried to answer him as best I could, but I immediately found myself distracted not only by my condition but also by the group of airport officials who had crowded around and were looking down at this well-dressed young man who seemed to be attracting so much attention.

After listening to my responses, the doctor shook his head and turned away from me. “I can’t diagnose him here,” he told the officials. “He needs special care, in the hospital. I have to get him into Muscat.”

I remember the officials shaking their heads as one. “He needs a visa,” one of them said slightly apologetically. “I’m afraid he can’t leave the airport.”

The doctor shook his head in disgust at this display of red tape, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He knelt down in front of me. “I’m going to give you a quick fix,” he said. “Something to relieve the pain. You’ll need to remove your jacket so that I can give you the injection.”

I shook my head to indicate that I was not going to remove my suit jacket. Despite the pain I was still acutely aware that I was carrying two fake passports on either side of my suit, and there was no way I wanted strangers to get their hands on them. Instead, the doctor rolled up my sleeve, and before I knew it he was approaching me with an injection.

Almost as soon as the needle punctured my skin, I started to feel drowsy.

“What was that?” I heard myself mumbling.

“A tranquilizer,” his voice told me, sounding curiously disjointed from his body.

The doctor’s face became blurred, as did the faces of the officials standing around him. I became overwhelmed with the desire to close my eyes and succumb to the blanket of sleep that was billowing over me, but I desperately tried to fight it. I’d had no idea I was going to be tranquilized, and although the drug had had an immediate effect on the pain in my stomach I knew I had to combat sleep. I had already attracted attention to myself, and if I was unconscious there was nothing to stop the crowd of officials around me from removing my jacket and discovering the illicit secret it contained. I forced myself to sit up. There were still people hanging around, so I folded my arms so that if I did fall asleep it would be a bit more difficult for them to remove my jacket.

Gradually the crowd of airport staff started to melt away, leaving just the doctor and the flight attendant beside me. Stubbornly I continued to fight off the urge to sleep, much to the surprise of the doctor. In my wooziness I heard him say, “It’s not having the right effect. I need to give him a stronger dose.”

“No,” I muttered, feeling crushed by the effort of speaking.

“But you need to sleep,” he insisted.

I shook my head. “Give it to me right before I get on the plane,” I managed to ask. “That way I can fall asleep when we’re in the air.”

The doctor and the flight attendant looked at each other nervously.

“You don’t want to have to carry me on,” I muttered.

“Why won’t you take my advice?” He sounded a little annoyed now.

“I don’t want to fall asleep. Not yet.”

The doctor shifted uncomfortably, aware that he couldn’t force me to be injected but clearly worried about me nonetheless. “Okay,” he agreed finally. “We’ll do it your way. I’ll stay with you until it’s time for you to board; but when I say so, no arguments. Understood?”

I nodded my head and spent the next couple of hours desperately trying to remain awake. Then, just as exhaustion threatened to overcome me, my flight was called. I rolled up my sleeve once more for the doctor, received the injection, and then stumbled, accompanied by the flight attendant, toward the plane. As I boarded, I was practically unaware of anyone else. I didn’t know if the plane was crowded or empty, or even if there was anyone sitting next to me. I slumped into my seat and instantly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When I awoke,
it was dark outside. Confused by the drugs that had been injected into my veins, I was momentarily surprised to be waking up somewhere other than in my little apartment in Amman. Even when the reality of where I was and what I was doing came rushing back to me, it took a while to shake off the chemically induced drowsiness. Gradually I became aware of someone sitting next to me. She was perhaps a couple of years younger than I and looked to be of Asian origin. She was extremely pretty.

“Am I keeping you awake?” she asked with a smile as I yawned rather rudely next to her.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I was very tired.”

“You must have been,” the girl replied. “You’ve been asleep for more than three hours.”

I looked at my watch. She was right—we were well into the flight. The tranquilizer had done its job well, and I was relieved that the stomach pains had subsided; I even found that I was hungry.

“Have they served any food yet?” I asked my companion.

“Not yet.” And as if summoned by our conversation, a flight attendant started rattling a cart of plastic meals down the aisle. I ate mine hungrily while the girl and I fell into easy conversation. She was traveling back to Kuala Lumpur with her family, who were elsewhere on the flight, having been to Saudi Arabia to perform the
Hajj,
the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. I told her that I was visiting friends in Malaysia.

“Where are you from?”

“The UAE,” I lied. She seemed to accept my story without question.

“And what do you do for a living?”

“I’m studying to be a doctor.” That at least was half true, and it made me feel good to be able to say it.

She told me her name was Khadija, and she started asking me about my family. In my hand luggage I had a small envelope containing some old photographs that were very precious to me. She would not know that they actually had been taken in Baghdad or Mosul, so I showed them to her, pointing out my mother, Uncle Saad, and my brother and sister. She seemed genuinely interested in them, and I found the process therapeutic. I had not talked to anyone about my family for such a long time that to do so now made me feel closer to them even if I was traveling thousands of miles away from where they were.

After a while the overhead lights dimmed and the hubbub of conversation in the plane ebbed away. We fell silent too, and I suddenly became aware that the girl had rested her head against my shoulder. I could hear her breathing deeply. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

She sat up again, nodded, and smiled. There was a momentary tenseness between us, something unspoken that made me want to break away from her wide-eyed glance, but I couldn’t. And then, spontaneously, as though by some prearranged signal, our lips touched and we gently kissed.

We stayed in that embrace for several minutes. When she pulled away, she looked sheepishly at me, her cheeks faintly rosy and her big eyes blinking just a bit too much. Once more she put her head against my shoulder and we sat there in silence, our fingers interlocked, while everybody about us fell asleep, lulled by the calming hum of the plane’s engines. It was a comfort to me to feel her warmth against my shoulder, and it allowed me to relax and collect my thoughts.

My encounter with Khadija lightened my spirits, but my Iraqi passport still felt like a weight in my jacket and I needed to get rid of it. That way, if I had any trouble entering on my UAE passport, the officials would not find it on me if I was searched, and with no Iraqi passport I could not be deported to Iraq. But hiding a passport on a crowded plane would not be easy, and in any case I wasn’t entirely sure that the document wouldn’t come in useful at some stage in the future. I needed to do something quickly, however. We would soon be in Malaysia, and I couldn’t have the thing on me. I glanced down at the girl, whose head was still on my shoulder. There was no doubt in my mind that she would help me if I asked her to, but it would not be right of me to let her know the truth about what I was doing. What she didn’t know couldn’t incriminate her.

But what if she could help me unwittingly—safely? An idea started to form in my mind, and with it my justifications for acting on it. Looking back, I have to say that I am not particularly proud of what I did next, but it was the only way I could think of achieving what I needed to do.

Surreptitiously I placed the envelope containing my family photos into my pocket. Then I excused myself and walked up the aisle to the lavatory. Safely locked inside, I took my Iraqi passport out of my jacket, slid it inside the envelope with the photographs, then sealed the envelope before walking back to my seat. Khadija and I started talking again in hushed voices, and I waited for an appropriate moment in the conversation before making my request.

“Do you think you could do me a favor?” I asked.

“Of course,” she replied. “What is it?”

“I’m not very familiar with the Malaysian postal service. I want to send these photos to my uncle in England, as he was asking for some pictures. Would you send them for me?”

For a moment she didn’t reply, and I silently cursed myself. As I spoke the words, the plan sounded a lot less probable than it had in my head. But I needn’t have worried.

“Sure,” she said.

Thanking her, I wrote the address on the front of the envelope and handed it over. She placed it with the rest of her hand luggage, and the matter was not mentioned again. I comforted myself with the thought that, as a Malaysian coming back to her home country, it was unlikely that she would be searched; and that even if my Iraqi passport was found on her person, it would probably cause her only some small inconvenience, whereas for me it could spell deportation and the horrors that awaited me back in Baghdad.

And then we landed. As the wheels touched down on Malaysian soil, the familiar feeling of sick apprehension reintroduced itself in my gut, and I found myself wishing to be anywhere but where I was.

“Are you all right, Adel?” the girl asked me. I nodded. “Well, I guess I should say good-bye. It was nice to meet you.” She gave me her phone number and address in the area of Petaling Jaya and then flashed me a coquettish little grin, which I struggled to reciprocate. As the plane came to a halt, she stood up and went to join her family.

In the airport terminal I held back at passport control as I wanted to make sure that my Iraqi passport had made it safely through before I presented my documents. I saw the girl and her family waiting to pass through the control booth, and it was with a sense of relief that I witnessed them being waved through without any difficulty. They were Malaysian, of course, but it didn’t seem as if anybody was being questioned in any great detail—not that that did anything to allay the panic I was feeling at what I was about to do. I felt my stomach churning and droplets of sweat dripping down my back; out of the blue I realized how much more crumpled my appearance was than when I had put on my suit the previous morning. It wasn’t long before my turn came.