Escape from Saddam

by Lewis Alsamari

  I could not linger long. The pile of scrap cars was an obvious place to hide, so I knew I had to move away as quickly as possible. I went back down on all fours, and as my leg hit the ground it felt as though it had been stabbed with a needle-sharp dagger before going numb again. Then I crawled for my life, through the dirt and the dust toward the road. How I made it there I don’t know. The final few meters were the worst, as I had to climb up a bank of rubble, boulders, and old, discarded bits of car engines; it took all of my rapidly sapping strength to pull myself up. When I finally reached the side of the road, I collapsed into an exhausted heap.

  By now my leg had started to throb again; when I checked the beret I felt that it was saturated with warm, sticky blood. I was on a main highway, so cars were passing with some frequency. I couldn’t risk being spotted by one of the military vehicles that I was sure would have been dispatched to find me, so I crouched down and huddled myself up with my head bowed in the hope that an incurious passerby would mistake me for a rock or not notice me at all. All the while I kept looking for a taxi.

  It took fifteen minutes for one to approach, the slowest fifteen minutes of my life. When I did eventually see the familiar white light, I pushed myself painfully to my feet and furiously waved my arms. As the car slowed down, I saw that the interior of the taxi was highly decorated, as was the custom of the south: a picture of Hussein, the disciple of Muhammad, was surrounded by little fairy lights and multicolored garlands. The car came to a stop, and the driver wound down his window. He was an old man, his face deeply lined and weathered, and he wore a traditional white headdress. “I need to get to the bus station,” I told him from behind clenched teeth. “As quick as you can.”

  The cab driver looked my uniform up and down. “What are you doing sitting on the side of the road?” he asked suspiciously.

  I had not even considered what I would tell him, so I said the first thing that came into my head. “I was cleaning my gun in the barracks and I shot myself,” I lied.

  “Why aren’t they taking you to the hospital?”

  “No vehicles,” I gasped. It was not as unlikely as it sounded—it wasn’t a life-or-death situation, and that’s how badly ordinary soldiers were treated. The cab driver seemed to accept my story. “Please, take me to the bus station.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “Get in the back.”

  “I need to lie on my leg to stop the bleeding,” I told him.

  “No!” he shouted. “The blood will get everywhere. Wait there.” He got out of the car and retrieved a blanket from the trunk. Silently I urged him on, terrified that the sight of a car stopping for any period of time by the side of the road would attract unwanted attention. He laid the blanket over the backseat before allowing me to climb inside. He drove off to the sound of my heavy, shaking breathing in the back. “Why don’t I just take you straight to the hospital,” he offered. “It’s okay—I won’t charge you.”

  How could I tell him that the hospital was the last place I wanted to be? Hospitals meant impossible questions and awkward answers—he might as well drive me straight back to my unit. “No, please,” I said weakly, “no hospitals. The bus station is fine.” I don’t know quite what I was thinking—there was no way I would be allowed onto any bus in this state. But amid the pain and the confusion, I remember thinking to myself that Allah had sent me this taxi just when I needed it the most, and that he was protecting me and would continue to do so.

  The taxi driver drove on in silence for a few moments. “Ibnee,” he said suddenly, “son, you need to get that wound looked at. I don’t know why you won’t go to the hospital, but you must have your reasons. But at least let me take you to a doctor I know in the next village. He is discreet, and he’ll look at the bullet for you.”

  By now, I was sick with the pain, and deep down I knew that the wound needed urgent attention. I did not know for sure if I could trust this man, but I didn’t really have much choice. “Okay,” I whispered. “Take me to the doctor.”

  The village was a good half hour away, but once we got there it did not take the driver long to find the house he was looking for. All the while I remained lying down in the back of the car, steeling myself against any bumps in the road that would aggravate the pain of my injury. When the car came to a halt, the driver spoke again. “Wait there,” he told me. “I’ll go in and get him.”

  I lay in the backseat for ten minutes becoming increasingly nervous. What was taking him so long? Were they making phone calls? Where they alerting the authorities? By now, though, I had put my trust in the driver, and there was little I could do in this strange place. Eventually, to my relief, he came back with another man. The stranger peered into the car, but because of the darkness I did not get a good look at his face. He opened the door before quietly and efficiently removing the belt I had strapped around my leg and then my trousers. I shouted out in pain as he pulled the beret away from the wound and briefly examined it.

  “You didn’t shoot yourself” were his first words to me. “You’ve been shot.”

  “No,” I insisted, “I was cleaning my gun…”

  “My friend,” the doctor interrupted, “if you had shot yourself at that sort of range with an AK-47, I would not be removing the bullet. I would be removing your leg. There’s not even an exit wound. This bullet rebounded off something before it hit you—that’s probably what saved your life.”

  I remained silent, too scared to admit that he was right as I remembered the sight of the bullets sparking against the metal of the burned-out military vehicles.

  “I don’t know who you are or where you’ve come from,” he continued, “although I have my suspicions, but your very presence here puts me and my family in danger. I’ll remove the bullet for you, but I’ll do it here, not in the house. You don’t ask my name or anything about me. When I’ve finished, I never want to see you again. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Wait there, then,” the doctor told me. “I’ll need some implements.”

  He returned with a small bag, a flashlight, and a steel bowl of orange liquid. The taxi driver held the light in place over the wound while the doctor rubbed his hands with the liquid, which he then smeared over the bullet hole. It stung horribly as he applied it, and I tensed my leg. The doctor removed something from the bag. “This will hurt,” he told me. The object in his hand was a large pair of metal calipers with flat feet pointing outward. “Ready?” he asked. I nodded, and swiftly he plunged the feet of the calipers straight into my leg, then pulled them apart so that the wound was held wide open. The pain was indescribable—ten times more intense than the actual feeling of being shot—and I shouted out.

  “Be quiet!” the doctor barked urgently as he poured more of the orange ointment straight into my leg. It burned almost as if he had poured boiling water. “This will help stop any infection,” he informed me. Once more I shoved my palm into my mouth and bit hard.

  Leaving the calipers in the wound, the doctor rooted around once more in his bag. He pulled out a thick swab, which he soaked with the contents of a bottle of clear liquid. “Hold this to your face and breathe it in,” he told me. “It will help the pain.”

  I breathed deeply. The smell was sweet and pungent and made me feel slightly queasy.

  “The bullet went in at an angle,” the doctor told me. “You’re lucky it didn’t hit the bone, but it has lodged itself several inches into the leg. It may take some time to remove. Are you okay?”

  I nodded quickly and breathed a little deeper. The doctor brought out a pair of long, pointed forceps. I felt him tentatively insert the tips of the forceps into the wound. As the cold metal touched my bleeding flesh, I felt my whole body shivering and shrieking with pain. The bottom half of my leg went numb once more, and my head started spinning.

  It took nine or ten minutes to pull out the bullet. All I remember was the light of the flashlight and the constant, muttering prayers of the taxi driver: “La hawlah wallaa kuwatta illa billah. There
is no greater help than that of Allah.” I did not even see the bullet when it came out. The doctor flicked it onto the road almost contemptuously before stuffing a clean swab inside the wound, soaked with yet more of the agonizing orange ointment. He slowly removed the calipers and, taking a needle, slowly but carefully made a few small stitches in my leg. Then he dressed the wound with a clean bandage, ignoring my short, heavy whimpers with the professionalism of a man who had clearly done this sort of work many times. When he finished, he quietly packed up his tools and walked back inside, muttering a brief farewell to the taxi driver.

  The driver closed the back door before sitting in the front. He said nothing for a moment, as though deciding what to do next. “I don’t want to know the details,” he said, “but tell me where you need to get to.”

  “Baghdad,” I told him. There was no point keeping anything secret from this man now.

  He nodded. “You can’t make the journey in this state. You need rest. Come to my house—you can sleep the night in the guest room.”

  “What about tomorrow?” I asked. “Can you take me to Baghdad?”

  He closed his eyes as though I had asked him the one question he wished I would not ask.

  “I’ll pay you double,” I pleaded.

  The taxi driver looked straight out of the window. I knew I was asking a great deal, but it did not seem to me that I had very much choice.

  “Very well,” he said finally. “I will take you to Baghdad.”

  CHAPTER 5

  BAGHDAD

  Baghdad: the center of Saddam’s power. The one place in the world I was trying to escape was the one place in the world I had to get to. It wouldn’t take long for the military to come looking for me, and the only people I could trust to help me now were my family.

  We had passed several checkpoints on the way, where the taxi driver had shown my altered leave papers. One look at me laid out in the back of the car, white-faced and sweating and covered in blankets, combined with the fact that a taxi from the south up to Baghdad was seriously expensive, made the checkpoint guards believe that I was very ill, and we were waved through without problems.

  The heat of the sun was becoming intolerable, and the bullet wound in my right leg—bandaged under the white dishdash the taxi driver had given me to wear—throbbed as a result of the bumpy roads and the taxi’s poor suspension. As we drove through the suburbs of the capital, I tried to distract myself by watching the ordinary Iraqis going about their daily business. Gradually we muddled our way through the traffic-filled streets as we headed toward the central region of Al-Mansour—my home. I gazed out of the window, staring blankly at the familiar sights, lost in my own thoughts. My mother had expected me home on leave a week ago. She would be worried—angry, probably—having no idea of the trauma I had undergone. She would find out soon enough, though, when the military police came knocking on her door asking where I was. I had a couple of days’ grace—it would take time for the inefficient Iraqi communications network to get word to the capital that I had deserted—but when they came, I knew I had to be far away.

  The taxi driver—he had not told me his name, and I knew better than to ask so I just called him Hajji, a term of respect to an older person—pulled up outside my grandparents’ house, and for a moment we said nothing as I looked straight ahead preparing myself for the explanations to come. To wake me from my reverie, he coughed and, with a gesture of apology, I fished out the money I had promised him—double fare, and the last few notes I possessed. Once he had the money safely stowed away, he turned to look at me. Although we had not spoken of it, he knew that my actions were those of a man with something to hide. “Allah wiyaak. Bilsalameh,” he muttered quietly. “God be with you. Safe journey.”

  “Shukren, thank you.” I nodded at him and got out of the car, then watched the vehicle disappear into the midday haze. He was clearly eager to put some distance between us, and I didn’t blame him.

  Through the door of my house I could hear the sound of my brother and sister, Ahmed and Marwa, playing in the hallway. They were often to be found there in the heat of the day as it was the coolest part of the house. The sound of their banter instantly comforted me, a reassuring reminder of the fact that no matter how dangerous my life had become, at home everything was as it had always been. I rapped on the door, aware that my arrival was about to change that.

  They opened the door, and their shouts of enthusiasm were like a balm. There was no look of shock on their faces, no concerned questions—just joy at seeing their elder brother again. “Mama, Mama!” they sang as we hugged and kissed. “Sarmed is here! Sarmed has come!” I hugged them once more and then left them in the hallway while I went to find my mother.

  She was sitting alone; the look she gave me was puzzled. She raised a questioning eyebrow but, in accordance with the traditions of the Middle East, she refrained from asking me any questions just yet. It was hot; I had been traveling and was tired. All I wanted to do was have a shower, put on some clean clothes, eat a meal, and gather my thoughts. Questions could wait until later, and my mother sensed and respected that.

  It felt good to wash the dirt and blood off my body, rinse the mud from my hair, and pull on some clean clothes. My mother prepared a hot meal of soup, rice, and bread—humble fare but so welcome that it tasted as fine as a banquet in the presidential palace, and I fell upon it ravenously. She watched me as we ate, but still I avoided telling her what had happened. Despite everything, I was still a teenager with a teenager’s preoccupations; moreover, I wanted to put my troubles out of my mind for a few quiet moments.

  I drank a cup of tea, then sat down in front of the television to relax—not easy given the state of my bullet wound. My leg was throbbing and felt impossibly heavy, and there were shocks of pain running from my thigh all the way up my back. I forget what was being shown—a movie of some kind, I think—but I remember clearly the intermissions. Every half hour the film stopped, and a fat man with a large mustache appeared, singing a song about Saddam, praising him:

  Sir, we are your servants,

  In life you are our prize!

  In moments of worry,

  Your hand gives us joy.

  Whenever we face difficult times,

  By your hand they become easy.

  You are the father of generosity and goodwill,

  With you we have overcome the difficult times.

  We are the joys of your life,

  We are the candles of your victories.

  The song would be cut with pictures of Saddam in his white suit surrounded by children throwing petals at his feet, images of the army marching by the statue of the unknown soldier in Baghdad, tanks forming part of the procession, and servicemen saluting their leader. Fantasies from the warped mind of a tyrant—there was only so much of this I could watch. I switched off the television in disgust and limped off in search of my sister to catch up with local gossip. There was a girl I was interested in—what news of her? Had my friends come asking about me? What were our cousins and the rest of our family up to? The questions were inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it was a relief to me to be able to focus on such trivia at that moment.

  And then I called my uncle.

  “Uncle Saad,” I told him, “I’m at home. I need to see you. Can you come now?”

  Saad knew better than to ask any questions. I suppose he could tell from the tone of my voice that this was not a conversation to be had on the telephone. “I’ll be there as quickly as I can,” he reassured me.

  Saad’s car pulled up outside the house an hour later. With difficulty, he maneuvered himself out of the vehicle. He did not knock immediately on my mother’s door. Instead, he made his way into my grandparents’ house to say hello to them. It would have been unseemly had he not. His parental duties fulfilled, he made his way slowly over to my mother’s house. My mother made tea and offered it to her brother along with a glass of cold water, before telling my brother and sister to go to their grandparen
ts’ house. And then, as we were all sitting around the table, I took a deep breath and broke the news to them.

  As the story of my first, unsuccessful escape attempt unfolded, my mother started huffing and puffing, wringing her hands and displaying the warning signs that I knew heralded an explosive display of maternal rage. I told her that I had injured my leg, having decided to keep quiet about the fact that I had been shot, but it was not enough to stop her shrieks and shouts when I told her the conclusion of my story. “Sarmed!” she shouted. “How could you do this? They could have shot you on the spot.”

  I kept quiet. There did not seem much to say—other than that I knew full well what would happen if they caught up with me.

  My uncle tried to calm my mother down, but she was in no mood to be appeased. It broke my heart to see her in that state because of me, but I could not help but be worried about the danger of her shouting like this. The walls of the house were thin; our neighbors were close and often nosy. A woman who lived in the immediate vicinity had sons who were in the Republican Guard, and I could not risk her hearing the shouts coming from the house and putting two and two together. Saad and I exchanged a glance. “Sarmed,” he said quietly but firmly, “come with me. We’re going for a drive, just the two of us.”