Escape from Saddam

by Lewis Alsamari

  The two Red Berets looked at each other. “Okay,” one of them said. “You’ve got ten minutes. If you’re not back then, I’ll tie a rope around your neck and drag you all the way back to your unit.” He opened the back of the truck.

  As I jumped down from the truck, I heard my fellow soldiers clamoring “I need to go! I need to go!”

  “Ukulkhara,” the Red Beret shouted in no uncertain terms. “Eat shit!”

  I walked into the main restaurant area. It was teeming with people, and I soon became lost in the crowd. In the far right-hand corner was the door to the lavatory; to my left was a partitioned-off area for praying. I weaved my way toward the lavatory, where I freshened myself up and splashed cold water on my face in an effort to wash away the grime and sweat of the past week. As I walked back into the restaurant, I looked out the front window. The Red Berets were standing by the truck smoking cigarettes; there was no way that they could see me from that distance in the hubbub of the building.

  What happened next occurred as if in a dream. It suddenly struck me that the coasters were leaving every couple of minutes. If I could board one without the Red Berets seeing, I could be speeding away from the service area before they even knew I was gone. It didn’t matter too much which direction I went in. Once I was away from them, they would have no means of finding me. My leave papers still had a couple of days to run, so with the luck I was surely due by now I could get through any checkpoints and be in Baghdad by the end of the day. It was dangerous, but I had only a split second to make the decision either way. I determined to make a run for it.

  With my head bowed, I hurried toward the prayer area, intending to walk out of a side entrance to where the coasters were lined up. To my right were three men, kneeling with their faces to the floor, deep in prayer. On pegs by the door were their robes. Checking that nobody was looking, I quickly grabbed one. As I pulled it down over my uniform, I realized it was far too big for me, so I pulled up some of the extra material and held it between my teeth, as was the custom in the south of Iraq. My army boots were visible beneath the robe and must have been a curious sight; but I reasoned that if the Red Berets were to come looking for me, I would have more chance of melting into the crowd like this. I took a deep, tremulous breath and stepped outside. I headed for the coaster at the front of the line, noticing that there weren’t too many passengers and that there were seats free at the back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Red Berets: they had finished their cigarettes and were looking impatiently toward the restaurant. I bowed my head once more, stepped onto the coaster, and found myself a rear seat.

  Gradually passengers started to return to the bus, having gone about their business in the service area. One man approached me. “Is that your seat?” he asked me curtly.

  “No,” I apologized. “I only just boarded.”

  “Well it’s my seat. I was sitting here.” He pointed to a free place by the door. “You can go and sit over there.”

  “Please,” I whispered, not wanting to make a scene to attract attention, but equally wanting to stay well hidden at the back of the vehicle, “let me stay here.”

  The man looked pointedly at the boots below my robes. He raised his voice. “I’m not giving up my seat for some shitty little soldier,” he shouted. I cringed as he did so and looked out the back window, where I saw the two Red Berets scouring the area, talking to other members of the military with urgent looks on their faces. Please, I silently implored the driver, please just go!

  “Why can’t you sit over there?” One of my neighbors started standing up for me, but it only infuriated the man more. Before I knew it, a shouting match was taking place around me. As it reached a peak, I saw the heart-stopping sight of a Red Beret approaching the bus. It wasn’t one of my two guards, but I most certainly didn’t want him to start asking me questions. I pulled the huge robe tighter around me, even partially covering my face, and tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. It took only a brief glance, however, for the Red Beret to see how suspicious I was looking. The second he noticed me, he jumped off the bus and called to his colleagues, my guards who had clearly enlisted his help in looking for me. Within seconds one of them was on the bus, striding down the aisle with a grim look.

  He grabbed me roughly by the front of my robes and shoved me toward the door. The passengers on the bus were shocked into silence by his vehemence. He kicked me hard from behind as I approached the door, and I fell heavily onto the dusty ground, where he continued to kick me in the stomach until I had to beg him to stop.

  “Get up!” he shouted. I scrambled to my feet. “Where did you get the robes?” he asked abruptly. I pointed to the side door. “Take them off!” I rolled the robes into a bundle and handed them to him as he pushed me toward the truck. Once I was there, the second Red Beret threw me inside. He climbed in himself, locked the back door, and sat there, his finger resting on the trigger of his Kalashnikov while his colleague returned to replace the robes.

  The truck continued its slow, uncomfortable journey south. The nearer we came to my unit, the more sick I felt at what awaited me. My fate would depend on the whim of the officer in charge, and although he had treated me well in the past, I had no reason to believe he would look at all kindly on my attempts to abscond. All the horror stories I had heard about soldiers in my position rang in my ears, and even though the heat of the day was strong, I felt myself occasionally shiver as a cold sweat broke out across my body. I knew that as soon as I got to the camp I would be hauled up in front of Taha and told to explain myself, so I desperately tried to construct some sort of excuse for my actions. My head was muddled, though, and I found myself unable to think straight.

  The journey seemed to pass more quickly than usual, and when we stopped outside the base, an arif was called. “He tried to desert,” one of the Red Berets told him as he threw me down off the truck.

  The arif said nothing; he just pointed toward the door of Taha’s office. The Red Beret led me there and knocked respectfully. When we were called in, he explained in a dead voice what had happened. “Leave us,” Taha said when he had finished his explanation.

  Taha must have seen the fear in my face, and he did nothing to ease it. The look he gave me was cold, and for a while he didn’t speak. “You understand how serious this is, I take it?” He uttered the words without emotion.

  “Yes, sir,” I mumbled.

  He sat there playing with his pencil. Suddenly he let out a deep sigh. “I don’t understand. Why are you so reluctant to take advantage of your promotion?”

  “I just wanted to see my family,” I lied, before explaining the events of the past week. “I wasn’t trying to desert. I just wanted to see my mother while I still had a couple days of leave left.” It was an unconvincing story, I knew, but it might be enough to spare me from the full force of the army’s brutality.

  It was impossible to read from Taha’s face what he thought. I assumed he was weighing up the fact that I had been unfairly treated with the fact that I had tried to desert. I closed my eyes and let up a silent prayer to Allah that he would believe me.

  “Okay,” Taha said after a while. “As you’ve already been imprisoned, I’ll do you a deal. The very least you should receive for this is three months in solitary. I’ll give you three days, and all leave is canceled until you are transferred to Al-Mansour. But any more games like this, and you’ll be up before a military tribunal. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Good. Now get out of my sight.”

  CHAPTER 4

  A SHOT IN THE DARK

  Solitary confinement does strange things to your head. I was in the small, bare cell for only three days, and compared to my previous accommodation it was positively luxurious, but after the events of the past week each day seemed like a lifetime. I went through periods of genuine rage: rage against the corrupt Red Beret who had thwarted my plans; rage against the arifs on guard outside who pelted my door with stones to keep themselv
es occupied; rage against anything and everything. I hurled my shoes at the wall, and if I heard laughter from the base in the evenings as my fellow soldiers started winding down, I literally yelled with frustration. As the evening wore on, a few less charitable soldiers used the door of my cell for target practice with their slingshots and stones.

  Other times were spent more introspectively. I examined the graffiti that previous incumbents of the cell had carefully carved into the wall using their belt buckles, and as I did so, my mind became focused, obsessed even, on deciding what the best way was to deal with my situation. I was desperate to call Saad and let him know what had happened; but more important, having got away lightly with one escape attempt, I was emboldened to try another. I had to get away before I was enlisted at Al-Mansour. As I was denied all leave until that point, I would have to be more robust in my plans and make my escape directly from the unit. I also knew I did not have the leisure to consider things at length. The arifs would know what Taha had instructed, and I would be under more careful observation. They would not expect, though, that I would make any attempt to break out the night I came out of solitary, especially considering what I had just been through. I decided to use that to my advantage.

  I was let out of the cell at six o’clock, and I made my way straight to the living quarters, where I had my first shower since leaving for Baghdad ten days ago. I wanted to call Saad and tell him in some roundabout way that he would be seeing me in the next few days, but the waiting line for the telephone was too long. I couldn’t exactly start packing a bag in preparation to leave, so I wandered to the outskirts of the unit. The barbed-wire fence stood between me and the desert, and about a hundred meters away, halfway to the road, was a pile of old, burned-out military vehicles that had been dumped there. In the distance, patches of bamboo rose out of what I knew were small pools of water. I gazed for a while, calculating the distances, and then examined the fence. It had been dug deeply into the ground, but I found one small area where it looked as though a small animal had been burrowing. The barbed wire had slightly curled up from the bottom, leaving a small opening. It was by no means big enough for me to get through, but if I could find something to cut it with, I could make the hole just big enough.

  I did not want to be caught loitering, so I went back to the dormitory. Keeping myself to myself, I rooted around in my locker and found my old leave papers. They were crumpled, and some of the stamps were not as clear as they could have been, but this time they suited my purposes well. I took a black pen and, as carefully as I could manage, doctored one of them so that it appeared to have a current set of dates on it. It would not stand up to close scrutiny, I knew, but I had to trust to hope that it would be glanced at briefly if at all. My plan was to break through the fence, make my way to the road, and flag down a car to give me a lift to the bus station. Once there, I would board a nighttime bus to Baghdad in the hope that the checkpoint guards would be less thorough at that time.

  I needed one more thing. I wandered out along the edge of the parade ground until I came to the unit workshop, where small repairs were done. It was still open, and a few soldiers were working inside. I wandered up to someone I vaguely knew who was sweeping the floor. “You’re working late,” I commented.

  “Fucking arif,” he said with venom—he was clearly on some sort of punishment. I stood by a workbench chatting with him. He kept looking around to check that nobody could see him slacking, and while his head was turned, I surreptitiously grabbed a pair of pliers and slipped them into my pocket. “I heard you got solitary,” he said.

  I gave him a rueful smile.

  “What was the reason?”

  “There has to be a reason?” I feigned surprise. He laughed and started sweeping again as I wandered out.

  And then I waited.

  The dormitory lights were switched off at ten, and I lay there for at least an hour until the usual round of banter died down. Gradually people started to fall asleep, and the quiet babble of the few radios that were still switched on faded away. Every few minutes somebody would get up to go to the lavatory, but by about eleven o’clock it sounded as though most people were deep in slumber. I lay on my back, my eyes pinned open, my breathing steady but deep, as I prepared myself for what was to come.

  Noiselessly I removed my covers and slipped out of bed. I had placed my uniform neatly under the bed, and now I gathered it up in my arms. The jacket contained everything I needed: my papers, what little money I had, and the small pair of pliers; I had also packed a small nylon bag containing an apple and a flashlight. I left my Kalashnikov where it was. Although it would have been comforting to have it with me, I knew it was too cumbersome for what I had in mind. Swiftly I walked out of the dormitory, knowing that anyone who was still awake would assume I was going to the lavatory, and stood silently at the door that faced toward the parade ground.

  All was quiet. A light shone onto the center of the parade ground where the Iraqi flag was raised, but there was no wind so it simply drooped limply at the top of the flagpole. Beyond it I could just make out two guards chatting to each other. I took advantage of the fact that their attention was diverted and walked toward the bare room that was used as a mosque. Every part of my body screamed at me to run, but I knew that if I did so I would only draw attention to myself. I moved swiftly, but even so it seemed to take an age to move those few meters.

  Once inside, I removed my pajamas and put on my uniform; then, clutching my nylon bag, I slipped out again. Keeping close to the walls, and stopping at any corners to check whether I could hear footsteps, I hurried toward the boundary of the camp. When the buildings ended, I got down on all fours and crawled toward the barbed wire. It took me a few moments to find the hole, as I did not dare turn on my flashlight and attract attention to myself in the darkness, but once I reached it I stopped to regain my breath and look around.

  At one corner of the perimeter fence stood an observation post. Searchlights shone down from them, but for now they were all directed inside the camp, and although I couldn’t make them out from that distance, I knew that the observation post was occupied by heavily armed guards. Beyond the fence, the desert was still. I stared out to allow my eyes to become accustomed to the dark and could just make out the pile of burned-out vehicles that I had decided to head for. I took the pliers from my pocket and went to work on the barbed wire. It took a good fifteen minutes of effort to make the hole big enough to squeeze through. In places I managed to break the wire; elsewhere I simply rolled it up as far as I could force it, doing my best to ignore my bloodied hands and all the while checking behind me to be sure no guards were anywhere near. My luck held, and I slowly managed to wriggle my way through to the other side.

  Once I was out of the unit, I saw no reason not to hurry. I crawled under the barbed wire—as they had taught me—heading as fast as I could in the direction of the vehicles, twisting my head occasionally to keep one eye on the observation post and its searchlight, knowing that if it were to fall on me, I would be lit up like a firework—and shot down just as noisily. But its beam stayed safely inside the camp, and I continued crawling.

  Suddenly I heard a gunshot crack loudly into the air. I froze, not daring to move an inch. It was followed by another one, which seemed to ring through me, and then silence. I remained still as I allowed myself time to regain my composure, and I told myself over and over again that what I had heard was nothing out of the ordinary. Guards fired random shots into the air every night: it quieted the stray dogs that fought each other in the area surrounding the unit, it maintained the threatening military presence, and it gave them something to do. We just learned to sleep through it.

  I started crawling once more, doing my best to keep quiet so as not to attract the attention of the wild dogs. The distance to the burned-out vehicles was deceiving in the darkness, and it took longer than I expected to get close. When I reached them, I would stop for a few minutes to gather my thoughts before moving on to the road. I was only
a few meters away when guns started firing yet again. This time the sounds were different: not the familiar sound of single shots being fired into the air but the steady repetitive thud of a machine gun. I looked back: the searchlight on the observation post was moving frenetically, illuminating not only the inside of the compound but also the surrounding desert. I started to crawl more quickly toward the vehicles; then suddenly I heard the high-pitched whiz of bullets speeding past my ear. Some of them became lost in the desert; others hit the metal chassis with a sickening clank, and I could see the occasional spark caused by the impact. I raised myself up onto my knees and started to head around to the other side of the military vehicles, where I would be protected from the shower of ammunition.

  All of a sudden, I felt my right leg collapse beneath me, and a sudden, pounding pain coursed through it. I let out a shout before putting both hands over my mouth to silence myself. I felt my pulse pumping in my leg as my face creased with the pain.

  “You’ve been shot!” I stated the obvious fact to myself in disbelief under my breath as I fumbled for the wound with one hand, my other hand still covering my mouth as I bit deeply into the fleshy part of my palm. The inner thigh of my trousers was wet with blood. I felt around the other side to see if there was an exit wound. There didn’t appear to be, which meant the bullet was still lodged somewhere deep inside my leg. My every instinct was to shout out, but I knew that to do so would be suicide, so I bit harder on my palm as I forced myself to battle with the pain and lunged to safety on the far side of the vehicles.

  I sat on the ground, trembling as I waited for the firing to stop. I did not think I had been seen—the searchlight had not illuminated me—but it seemed they had probably discovered my absence earlier than I would have thought possible. Perhaps they were firing randomly into the darkness of the desert, knowing that was my most likely means of escape. Or maybe they were using their binoculars to survey the desert landscape more carefully. Generally they used them to pass the time spotting wild dogs at which they could take potshots, but tonight they appeared to know they had a more interesting target. In either case, I had no option but to make it to the road as quickly as I could and desperately try to flag someone down. I had no idea whether the guards from the base were out looking for me on the road, so I had to trust once more to the luck that had not served me well so far. By now my leg had gone numb, but it was still bleeding heavily and making me feel dizzy and lightheaded. I knew I had to stem the bleeding, so I took my beret and stuffed it down my trousers, covering the wound with it. I then removed my belt and, panting heavily, tied it tightly around my leg, hoping that the pressure would ease the flow of blood until I could get proper medical attention. When that would be, I had no idea.