by Jean Sasson
Over the next few weeks I discovered that Mayada was a daughter of the ancient land of Mesopotamia, known to the modern world as Iraq. She was proud of her country, for good reason—for much of its history, Mesopotamia was an ancient paradise with great glory. The culture produced artists, poets and scholars, and some early rulers were mighty builders who were devoted to literature and good works, and who gave the first established laws and freedom to the world.
Although many Mosopotamian reformers strived to improve the lot of the nation’s citizens, these judicious rulers were often violently overthrown by tyrants who embroiled the country in violence for generations. Long before the rule of Saddam Hussein, continuous conflict raged across Mayada’s land. Blessed with two major rivers in a region known for deserts, a desirable geographic location connecting busy trading centers, and great wealth, Mesopotamia was a prized target. From the ancient Sumerians to the Mongols to the Tamerlane to the Persians to the Ottomans, the country was repeatedly conquered and lost.
To understand Mayada’s family, one must know something of the rule of the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the entire Near East from 1517 to 1917, and Iraq itself from 1532 to 1917. This vast empire included Asia Minor, the Middle East, Egypt, part of North Africa and even a sliver of southeastern Europe. And in every region they conquered, the Ottomans appointed like-minded allies to govern. The sultans of the Ottoman Empire were Sunni Muslims, so they were inclined to appoint members of the Sunni sect to positions of authority. This gave the Sunnis, who were a minority group, authority over all other Iraqis, including the Shiite majority. The Ottoman rulers thus set the stage for a permanent pattern of ethnic tensions across Mayada’s country. But as long as the Ottomans remained in power, these tensions tended to simmer beneath the surface, rather than erupting into chaos. Once the Ottoman Empire buckled, festering hostilities exploded, and those same unstable forces are still alive upon the land.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, the death knell sounded by the Sultan’s decision to side with the German forces during the war. With the collapse of the Ottomans, there was great hope that Arabs—who had tolerated human rights abuses for centuries under Ottoman rule—would be able to build free nations and live lives of dignity. Unfortunately, their torment did not end with the demise of the Ottomans because the British and the French already had their armies poised to fill the abyss. The Arabs were shocked to discover that their new European conquerors believed themselves the rightful owners of every resource in the region, rather than the Arabs. And so the circle of dispossession continued. The British felt more at ease with the Sunni guardians, and so the Sunni minority continued to rule the Shiite majority.
These enormous shifts in the fortunes of the Ottoman Empire drastically shaped the lives of Mayada’s grandparents and parents, for their lineage led directly back into the heart of the Ottoman palaces. Both of Mayada’s grandfathers had lived as respected citizens of the vast empire and were witnesses to the disintegration of Ottoman rule following the Allied victory in World War I. And in their hope for prosperous and free Arab nations, both grandfathers were also involved in the formation and governing of the new Arab states of Syria and Iraq.
Mayada’s paternal grandfather, Jafar Pasha Al-Askari, was an extraordinary man who served as the Commander of the Arab Regular Army, fighting with T. E. Lawrence and Prince Faisal to help defeat the Ottoman Empire. Mayada’s maternal grandfather, Sati Al-Husri, was celebrated throughout the Arab world as a genius and the father of Arab nationalism, and was one of the first scholars to call for Arab rule over Arab lands.
Like her parents and grandparents before her, Mayada was born a Sunni Muslim. The Sunni sect is the majority sect of the Islamic faith worldwide, although it is the minority sect in several Arab countries, including Iraq. Mayada’s mother, Salwa Al-Husri, was the daughter of Sati Al-Husri, while Mayada’s father, Nizar Al-Askari, was the son of the famed warrior and government official Jafar Al-Askari.
Mayada’s family’s home was a popular “political house,” and visits and telephone calls from politically connected world figures were common. Because she was a beloved daughter and granddaughter, her family helped guide her life down a path of learning and privilege; she was expected to pursue a career in medicine or art and to live a life of culture.
But Iraqi political conflicts tended to dramatically alter every carefully laid out plan. In 1968, when the Baath Party came to power, most intellectuals fled to neighboring countries, but Mayada’s father was dying of cancer and receiving treatment at a local hospital. Mayada’s family decided to remain in Baghdad.
Despite Saddam Hussein’s rule, which became more tyrannical with each passing year, Mayada lived her life in Iraq. She grew up in Iraq. She pursued a career in newspaper reporting in Iraq. She was married in Iraq. She gave birth to two children in Iraq. She survived the Iran-Iraq war. She survived the Gulf War. She survived the sanctions. Mayada suffered through nearly every phase of modern Iraq’s turbulent history. Despite these hardships, she always believed that she could live out her life in Iraq, the land that she had loved since her childhood.
On one occasion, we were visiting the children’s ward in a hospital in Baghdad. I was so overcome by the misery of those children listlessly handling the special toys I had given them that I had to fight my emotions. Just as I was about to break down in tears, I felt the comforting touch of Mayada’s hand on my shoulder. She was sorry to witness my sadness. Then a nurse came into the room and without preparing the children for the needles, began to give them their shots. At the sight of so many screaming children, I became desperate to stop their crying and I began to dance and sing, hoping to take their minds off the painful needles. My foolish behavior brought a few weak smiles from the children and loud laughter from their parents, since I have no talent for dancing or singing.
Mayada asked me to step outside the hospital. I was shocked when she began to confide in me how she detested Saddam Hussein, and her one dream in life was to live to see the end of his rule. She said what we all knew, that he was the main reason for the misery of those children. Not only had the dictator started the wars that brought on the sanctions, but she claimed that Saddam was so eager to lay the blame for infant deaths on the sanctions that he was known to hold back medicine from the hospitals—he might, for example, allow only one cancer drug to be issued for leukemia patients who clearly required two or three different drugs to battle certain cancers. Saddam was also known to display empty baby coffins on the streets, in an effort to inflame the world against the United States.
Afraid that a Saddam loyalist might overhear, I was frightened for her safety and tried to calm her down, but nothing I said could stop her tirade.
I had seen with my own eyes that Iraq had been turned into a big cage by Saddam Hussein. It appeared that every Iraqi was waiting to be arrested and tortured for one state-imagined violation or another, but Saddam’s rule seemed permanent, and I had little hope that the Iraqis would know freedom anytime soon. When I asked Mayada why she didn’t leave to go to Jordan and live with her mother, Mayada justified her loyalty to her country—but not to Saddam Hussein—when she explained that she must live in the country of her father’s grave. As an Iraqi, she belonged in Iraq—regardless of danger.
My visit to Baghdad was fleeting, and after only a few weeks Mayada and I had to say goodbye.
It was a sad day when I left Baghdad, but from our first meeting, Mayada and I knew that we would be friends for life. After I arrived back in the States, we settled seamlessly into our long-distance friendship. We wrote letters and telephoned each other, keeping in touch on a weekly basis.
A year after our first meeting, Mayada disappeared. There was no answer at her home telephone. I received no response to my letters. But just as I was feeling desperate, she called me. She was home in Baghdad, and she told me that she had been in “the can”—that she had been in prison. I knew better than to ask specific questions, and it was only after sh
e fled to Jordan that I was able to learn the full story of her arrest, torture and escape.
After her arrest, a chain of events set this book in motion. In 1999, Mayada escaped Iraq. In 2000, her daughter, Fay, escaped Iraq. In 2001, New York and Washington, D.C., were attacked by terrorists. That same year, President George Bush sent American forces to root out terrorist factions. In 2002, Bush determined that the Iraqis had suffered enough under Saddam Hussein, and in early 2003, coalition forces removed Hussein from power. That year, Mayada decided that she wanted the world to know the truth about Iraqi life, the truth as told by someone who had seen Iraq from every angle, from Saddam’s palaces to Saddam’s torture chambers. After discussing the possibility of this book for weeks, Mayada asked me to write the story of her life, and I agreed.
While writing this book I have come to know and love many members of Mayada’s family. These great men and women played vital roles in the creation of modern Iraq, and although those wonderful people who came before her are now gone, I am comforted by the fact that all of the history of modern Iraq flows through Mayada Al-Askari’s genes, and it is through this remarkable woman that the real truth of modern Iraqi life will stream through the ages.
MAYADA’S FAMILY TREE
Courtesy Dale Hajost
MAP OF IRAQ
MAP OF IRAQ AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES
MAP OF PRISON
1
The Shadow Women of Cell 52
At about 8:45 on the morning of July 19, 1999, Mayada Al-Askari was driving to her office at full speed. Mornings at her print shop were always the busiest time of the day, and from the large number of orders that had streamed into her shop the day before, Mayada knew this morning would be an especially hectic one. When she opened her business the year before, she had purchased the finest printers in Iraq, and for this reason, the work produced at her shop was considered the best in the entire Mutanabi area. As a result, Mayada had more business than she could handle. She accepted a wide variety of jobs, designing logos and writing text for milk cartons, boxes and bottles. She printed books as well, as long as the print order arrived with a stamp of approval from the Ministry of Information. Mayada ran such an efficient business that many other printing houses in the district out-sourced their work to her, their competitor, and passed off her work as their own.
Mayada glanced at her watch. She was running late. She careened around corners, but made certain she didn’t exceed the speed limit. She glanced through the windshield at the sky. It was growing dark with blowing sand, looking much like a foggy day in England. The wind was beginning to gust, rising and falling in heated blasts. July was an unpleasant month in Iraq. Mayada yearned to escape the heat and fly to the mountains of Lebanon for a holiday, but she no longer had extra money for vacations, so she pushed those thoughts aside. She parked her car on the street and stepped to the sidewalk. To keep the wind from stinging her eyes and irritating her throat and lungs, she tilted her head down and placed her hand over her mouth, walking rapidly. To her relief, the door to the shop was unlocked. Mayada’s dedicated staff was already at work. She had a committed group of employees, and not only because she paid higher salaries than most other printing offices. They were simply a well-educated, serious bunch.
Mayada took a quick look around the office. Hussain, Adel and Wissam were already at their computers. Her eyes strayed to the little kitchenette at the back of the shop. There was Nahla, making coffee. Nahla smiled and walked toward her, holding out a cup. Before Mayada could raise the cup to her lips, she was approached by Hussain and Shermeen, both talking at once about the graphic design projects they were working on. They were interrupted by a new client who rushed through the unlocked door, anxious to start a conversation with Mayada. The young man said he was a Tunisian student and that he had been referred to her by another shop owner in the area. He wanted her to translate and prepare a questionnaire for him. Mayada was discussing his job when the front door flew open and three men strode into her small office. Her heart skipped a beat, sensing instantly that the men were too rigid to be customers.
The tallest of the three men asked, “Is your name Mayada Nizar Jafar Mustafa Al-Askari?” His question astonished Mayada, for few people knew her full name. She used “Mustafa” particularly rarely, though it was a name she bore proudly. It harked back to her great-grandfather Mustafa Al-Askari, who, like her grandfather Jafar, was an important officer in the once-great Ottoman army.
Mayada stood quietly, searching the eyes of the men before her. For a moment she considered fleeing or lashing out, but her father was dead and she was divorced. Mayada did not have a man in the family to protect her. She uttered a weak reverberation that sounded enough like “yes.”
The tall man curtly informed her, “My name is Lieutenant Colonel Muhammed Jassim Raheem and these are my two colleagues. We will search this place.”
Mayada found her voice by this time and managed to ask a simple question, “What are you looking for?”
The lieutenant colonel lifted his neck only a little and the loose skin swung one way and then the other before he answered, discharging each individual word like so many bullets: “You tell us.”
Mayada was silenced. She did not know what words or actions might save her as the three men began to tear her small business apart. Waste bins were emptied; the undersides of the chairs were scrutinized; telephones were opened with screwdrivers. Then the men seized her cherished computers and printers. Mayada knew she would never find the funds to replace them as she watched the men load the computers into the trunks of their two white Toyota Corollas, the choice vehicle of the Iraqi secret police. Helpless, Mayada slowly crumpled the Tunisian student’s papers she held in her hand, watching as the men destroyed her future.
She took a quick look at her frightened employees. They had gathered in a corner of the room, not daring to breathe. Nahla’s face was pale and her lips trembled. The Tunisian student tittered, rubbing his hands, his face filled with regret that he had come into her shop.
Mayada did not doubt she was the next item to be loaded into the ominous automobile and she begged the lieutenant colonel for one phone call. “Can I please call my two children and tell them where you are taking me?”
He gave her a sinister look, then shouted, “No!”
She spoke as gently as she could. “Please. I must call my children. My children have no one but me.”
Her heartfelt plea failed to touch the man. “No!” He snapped his fingers and his two cohorts surrounded her.
Sandwiched by the two men, she was led away. At the front door of her office she turned her neck and looked back, wondering if she would ever return.
From the backseat of the Toyota, Mayada saw the sympathetic eyes of a passerby steal frightened glances at her before he scurried away.
As the Toyota sped through the busy streets of Baghdad, she grew lightheaded. She willed herself to concentrate on the orange and yellow sky outside that swirled with billowing dust. The sandstorm now fully cloaked the city. Normally her only concern when churning sands approached Baghdad was to protect her home by blanketing windows and shoving papers under the doors. She would wait out the fury of the windblown sand and then seize a broom and dust cloth to fill small buckets with sand, which she emptied into her garden. Mayada’s stomach plunged.
She glanced out the car window and watched as tattered but once-proud Iraqis passed. Twenty years ago when she was a young woman, Iraq had hummed with promise. The country boasted splendid avenues, fine shops, beautiful homes and a promising future. But under Saddam, Iraq grew diminished and dilapidated. Corruption clogged every government department. Iraqis were even reduced to standing in long lines for miserly tins of flour, oil and sugar distributed as rations in exchange for Iraqi oil exports under the U.N. 661 agreement.
It was a bitter time for nearly every Iraqi. Even Mayada’s mother, Salwa Al-Husri, a strong, intelligent woman intent on supporting Iraq, could no longer maintain her faith that Iraq w
ould soon rebound. Salwa had finally given up on her country and left to live in nearby Jordan.
Mayada’s real troubles began after she divorced her husband, Salam, in 1988. The year after, she had left her job as a newspaper columnist and gone into the printing business for herself. But the Iraqi dinar had been drastically devalued and she lost everything. Once again, and in a weakened job market, Mayada was seeking employment. After the wars and the sanctions, few Iraqis had jobs. But for women, the challenge of finding work was even more daunting than for men. An unspoken government policy kept as many men working as possible, but evinced no concern for women who did not have a husband to support the family.
With two children to support and on the verge of complete financial collapse, Mayada asked God for a small miracle.
Her miracle came in the human form of Michael Simpkin, a television producer for Britain’s Channel 4. He sought Mayada’s mother in Amman and asked Salwa’s assistance to meet Prime Minister Tariq Aziz or Minister of Defense Sultan Hashim. Salwa’s contacts and influence in Iraq were deep, and she still knew the private telephone numbers of high Iraqi officials. She placed a few calls and established Michael Simpkin as someone government bureaucrats should meet. The British journalist met with Aziz, Hashim and Saad Qasim Hamoudi, the man responsible for foreign relations in Saddam’s palace.
Salwa also encouraged Simpkin to meet her daughter Mayada while he was in Iraq, and Simpkin paid a visit to her home on Baghdad’s Wazihiya Place. While there, Simpkin told Mayada he needed to hire an interpreter. Once he learned of Mayada’s credentials as a journalist and heard her fluent English, he hired her, agreeing to pay her salary in U.S. dollars.
Simpkin’s TV program, “War for the Gulf,” was a success, and the moment the British journalist departed Baghdad, Mayada formed a plan to go back into business. She had been capable of running her own business, which was destroyed only because of Iraq’s precarious financial situation. The business failure had been no fault of her own. She would simply try once again.