Escape from Saddam

by Lewis Alsamari

  Neither Rachel nor my brother mentioned it, but we were all aware that the long-term consequences for us all could be very severe indeed. And I felt responsible for everything. I had no idea at this stage what would happen to my family, but I suddenly felt a renewed sense of fraternal responsibility for my younger brother. I remembered how I felt when, not much older than he, I was cast into that Iraqi jail on the road north from Basra; I remembered how I felt when I heard that my mother had been imprisoned in Al-Haakimiya. He would be having the same feelings now, albeit with his brother by his side, and I suddenly felt the urge to give him some words of advice for the difficult times ahead.

  “Ahmed,” I said, “I need to tell you something.”

  “What is it, Sarmed?”

  I searched for the words. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you need to be strong, for your mother and your sister. Remember, this life is a test of your strength. There will be people you encounter who will try to beat it out of you, but you must never let them. You can’t fold and give up. So we’re in prison. So what? It’s just going to make you stronger. At least we aren’t dying. Hold your head up high, puff out your chest, be strong, and don’t let anyone treat you badly.”

  He looked straight into my eyes. “I know what you’re saying, Sarmed,” he replied. “And I’ll try. I really will.”

  As the time ground slowly on, we became aware of how the place worked. We couldn’t bring ourselves to eat the food, but thankfully in my back pocket I had a little money, which I would dole out to one of the less ferocious guards outside the cell. He would go and buy food at McDonald’s in the airport—skimming a little money off the top for himself, of course—and deliver the food back to us. I had to buy enough to hand around something to everybody in the Iraqi Embassy, but it felt good occasionally to have some hot food in our stomachs.

  Time passed. Other prisoners arrived; a few left. After about three days, an Oriental-looking man, reasonably well dressed, arrived in the cell. Something about his demeanor suggested to me that he was a bit different from the ragtag collection of unfortunates whom he had joined, so more to pass the time than anything else I went up to talk to him.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him after we had made our introductions.

  “I don’t know,” he said, his face a picture of innocence. “I’m an American citizen and my girlfriend is American. I don’t understand why we’ve been stopped.” Even then I don’t think I believed him, and I was right—sometime later he let his cover story drop and admitted that, even though he really was an American citizen, he had been trying to smuggle this girl to New Zealand. More important, however, he had managed to sneak his mobile phone into the cell so that he could phone the U.S. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur and alert American officials to his presence. But he didn’t know the number and had no way of finding out.

  I grabbed my opportunity. “I can help you,” I told him. “Let me borrow your phone, and I can call people in England to find the number of the UK High Commission for me and the U.S. Consulate for you.”

  By now we had attracted the attention of certain others in the cell, and I became aware of them eyeing the American’s phone. No doubt everyone would be wanting to use it, and as he handed it over, I noticed that the battery life was limited. We couldn’t let any of the others get their hands on it and use up the precious time that was left. I just had to hope that nobody would be so desperate as to try to wrestle the thing away from me.

  I used the phone to find the numbers I needed, and then called the High Commission. I explained to the woman who answered what our situation was, and she promised to see what she could do. “But I doubt we’ll be able to do anything for the Iraqis in your group,” she told me. “They’re out of our jurisdiction.”

  I had known it was unlikely that they would be able to help my family, but hearing the words spoken so firmly made my heart sink. Still, if I could at least get myself out, perhaps I could do something for them. I was useless just stuck in there.

  We waited some more.

  Eventually, after we had been four days in that stinking cell, I heard my name being shouted: there was a call for me outside the cell. I was allowed out, with the eyes of all the other prisoners boring into me, and taken to a telephone. Someone from the British High Commission was waiting to speak to me.

  “We can’t guarantee to influence what the Malaysians are doing,” I was told. “We can only try.”

  “But what about my family?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing we can do for any of them,” the British official stated with what sounded to me like a note of boredom in his voice. “They will have to stay here and wait for the Iraqi representative to come.”

  “There must be something else we can do,” I pleaded.

  I knew from my conversations with the Iraqis in the cell that the representative came only once a month. And when he did arrive, all he would do was take names and reprimand the inmates. “Why did you do this?” he would demand of them. “Don’t you realize what a reputation you are creating for Iraqis in this country? They’re not impressed back home with what you’re doing…” And then he would disappear; what would happen to my family was anyone’s guess.

  When the call finished, I put my head in my hands and tried to fight off the feeling of furious frustration that was surging through me. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the task-force officer who had led me from the cell: he had been standing close by while I had the conversation and clearly understood what was going on. I prepared myself to be told to get back into the cell, but I was surprised when he spoke. “Your family,” he asked me softly in faltering English, “did they have any documents other than the passports they were stopped with?”

  I looked around nervously, unsure whether this was a trap; but I was in a corner and had no option other than to tell the truth.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “They had Iraqi passports.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I shoved them down the toilet,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Listen to me. You have to get those passports back; otherwise your family will rot in a Kuala Lumpur prison. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen before.”

  “How can I?” I asked desperately.

  “Leave it to me,” the guard said. “I’ll have to take you back to the cell now, but I’ll try to call you out later.”

  He led me back to the cell, where I continued my wait—even more scared this time, and more frustrated at the thought that in getting rid of my family’s Iraqi passports I may have ruined any chance they had of getting out of this place. In any case, the likelihood of the passports still being there was vanishingly small. What was more, my opinion of the Malaysians was at rock bottom, and I didn’t expect this guard to be true to his word.

  He proved me wrong. A few hours later he let me out again and led me to the toilets down which I had stuffed the passports. When we arrived there, I stepped into the first cubicle and gave thanks first that I had caused the toilets to overflow and so remain unused, and second that nobody had seen fit to fix them for four days. Without hesitation I plunged my arm into the water and felt inside the U-bend. Something was there. Persistently I teased it out and with something between astonishment and relief pulled out a document. It was saturated, of course, and smeared; but the photograph was intact and it was clear what it was: my mother’s Iraqi passport. Quickly I retrieved the others, which were in the same condition. I shook what water I could from them, then dried them off underneath the electric hand-dryer on the wall. The task-force officer took the passports from me and placed them in little plastic bags as evidence.

  Then I was led back to the cell.

  With mixed feelings I sat down again next to my brother. In handing the passports over to the Malaysian guard, I knew what would happen: my family would be deported. My gamble was this: as there was no direct flight back to Iraq, and as they had entered Malaysia from Jordan, I hoped that the Malaysians would depor
t them back to Amman. At least then they would be on Middle Eastern soil, where they could speak the language and hopefully persuade—or bribe—the Jordanians to let them stay. The alternative was, as the Malaysian guard had made so plain, rotting here in a putrid jail. I couldn’t let that happen.

  Before long, Rachel and I were released. We were informed that no charges were to be brought against us and that we were free to go back to London.

  “I’m staying,” I told our captors defiantly. What else could I say? My family was still here, and I couldn’t desert them. We took a room at the airport hotel, where we cleaned ourselves up; but every time the water splashed on my skin or my eyes glanced at the soft, fresh bedding, great anger welled up in me. How could I be here while my family was in those squalid, cramped, and stinking conditions? They were people too—surely it was time they were treated as such. I visited them four or five times a day, bringing with me the hotel food that I didn’t have the stomach to eat and begging the guards to give it to them.

  After a couple of days, I was told they were to be interviewed. I was allowed to act as their interpreter but was forbidden from having any other kind of conversation with them. One by one they were taken in front of Malaysian officials and instructed to make statements. They told the truth: about their imprisonment, about their journey through Kurdistan, Turkey, and Syria, about the fake Spanish passports. And then they were told what would happen to them. They had a choice: either their case would be taken before a Malaysian judge—which would take weeks and would probably result in a further spell of imprisonment, as there was no asylum in Malaysia—or they could pay a fine and be deported back to Jordan. The fine amounted to $750 each. Money they didn’t have.

  I needed to find $2,250. I was stuck in Malaysia, and all I had was a debit card, a credit card, and the ability to withdraw £200 a day. Immediately I got on the phone to my bank in England and begged them to increase my overdraft and my withdrawal limits. Rachel and I cobbled together all the money we could—it took two days—and in the end we just about managed to put our hands on the amount we needed. We took it back to the cells and handed it over to a sneering official. He sat at his table, handed us a receipt for the money, put on a pair of latex gloves, removed the Iraqi passports from their bags, and stamped them. Then, having placed them in a plastic bag, he held them out to us at arm’s length as though they were diseased. His aloof silence spoke with an eloquence that I’m sure he could not have managed with mere words: So it’s come to this for you people, he seemed to say. Your lives have come to this. There was no sympathy, no indication that he knew what my family was running from or what they were being sent back to, and there was no point trying to educate him. I simply took the passports from him and left him to his delusions.

  And so, finally, the time came for my mother, sister, and brother to be deported. Still we weren’t allowed any direct contact with them. All Rachel and I could do was wait behind a glass screen at their gate so that we could see them one last time, even if we weren’t allowed to talk to them. When they arrived, the sight pierced my heart. My mother, brother, and sister were handcuffed like criminals and led by armed officials to their gate. The Western clothes that they had worn for their journey now looked like a cruel, ragged parody. My mother looked even more bedraggled and beaten down than when she had first arrived. As she passed us, she refused to look me in the eye, and I didn’t blame her as she shuffled past. I hung my head, and Rachel put her arm around me. My sister saw us and managed a half smile. “Good-bye, Sarmed,” she mouthed. “Good-bye, my brother.” She followed her mother.

  Finally I saw Ahmed. He was walking slowly, and when he saw me, his tired and worried face struggled into a broad smile. Don’t worry about us, it seemed to say. We’ll be okay. And then, just as I had told him to, I saw him hold his head up high and stick his chest out proudly. He nodded at me, I returned the gesture, and he walked on, disappearing from my sight as my mother and sister had just done.

  Walking into whatever the future held for them, without me.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE GENUINE MAN

  My family arrived back in Amman, where the Jordanian officials took one look at the state of their passports and said flatly, “You can’t enter our country on these documents.” No arguments. No bribes. No chances.

  They were loaded, under armed guard, onto a bus and taken to the Iraqi border, where they were dumped. The border police were unimpressed with the condition of these pitiful refugees and their messed-up documents, so they threw them straight into a holding cell to await the next military transport back to Baghdad. There they were placed in a police holding cell to await trial. They were there for several days, undergoing the brutal treatment that they surely expected, before going up in front of a judge.

  The court hearing in Baghdad was a joke, but what happened wasn’t funny. The courthouse looked serious enough from the outside—an imposing building with a set of scales emblazoned on the front next to the Iraqi flag and some of Saddam’s words of wisdom on the subject of justice. But there were no courtrooms or juries inside, nothing to ensure that the proper processes were observed; there was simply a bare office with a judge sitting at a table to mete out whatever justice he saw fit according to his whim. What terror my family was feeling as they waited silently outside to hear their fate, I can only imagine. Perhaps, after spending so much time in prison cells across the world, they were simply looking forward to knowing how they were to be dealt with. You find hidden strength at times like this: that, at least, I had learned.

  My brother was called first. The room was sparse: an old desk, a flag, a fan, a picture of the leader, and a radio playing Arabic music. On the desk was a pile of paperwork, and by the judge’s side was a secretary, scribbling notes as the proceedings progressed. The judge, in his late fifties, sat there in casual clothes, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t look up as my brother walked in. Why would he? This was not a person who had come in front of him; it was just another criminal to be processed.

  “What’s your name?” the judge asked.

  My brother responded quietly.

  The judge was handed his charge sheet. He asked no more questions—just glanced at the sheet of paper in the most cursory manner. “Three years’ prison,” he announced briskly before taking another drag on his cigarette. “If you pay a fine, perhaps I will reduce it.” But my brother had no money, so the negotiations could not proceed. He was taken away.

  The same treatment was then inflicted on my sister and finally on my mother. The sentences they received were identical.

  All three of them were escorted to Abu Ghraib prison.

  Rachel and I returned to England the same day my mother, brother, and sister were deported. It felt good to breathe the damp English air and to be treated like a real person once more. But as we returned to Leeds, I felt crushed by the weight of my failure. My family was back where they started, and I had to shoulder the responsibility. I knew I would have to try again, that I would have to raise money to bribe them out of mistreatment in Abu Ghraib and then pay smugglers to start a second attempt at escape. But money was scarce now, and all avenues seemed closed to me.

  My first instinct was to get in touch with the people who had sold me the bogus passports and try to force them to give me the money back. I tried calling, but the number had been changed, of course. What did I have to lose, though? I knew where they lived, so I boarded a flight to Germany to try to track them down. The last time I had sailed through German immigration without any difficulty; this time it was not so easy. The official who looked at my travel document was more on the ball: “We don’t recognize this document,” he told me. “You can’t enter.”

  I used all the charm I could muster to wheedle my way in. This is a legitimate travel document, I told the German officials. It is recognized everywhere. But they went to check with high-ranking immigration people; they even checked the wording of German immigration legislation. The document wasn’t recognized, th
ey repeated. I couldn’t enter Germany.

  I started to argue with one of the officials. I had been to Germany before, I explained; desperate that I not be forced to leave. I showed documents that proved I had entered the country in the past. The official raised an eyebrow. “So,” he said, “not only are you trying to enter illegally, you have already been here illegally…” He turned to some of his assistants. “Bring him in,” he told them cryptically. “Let him enjoy the hospitality of our lovely motels. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

  Only when they locked me up did I understand what they were talking about.

  I was questioned and searched more thoroughly—and intimately—than I had ever been searched before. I was left in a cell overnight, and in the morning I was handcuffed and escorted to a military vehicle with a flashing light. The van took me to a plane bound for England and I was ushered, on foot and under armed guard, into the plane. Only when I was sitting in my seat were the handcuffs removed, and with the suspicious eyes of all the passengers on me, I was deported. There was no way I was going to get that money back.

  In Baghdad, Saad still had some of the William Hill funds left, and he was determined to use it to get my mother, brother, and sister out of Abu Ghraib. Inside that awful place, there was a religious course where inmates were instructed to memorize huge swaths of the Koran. They were tested and had to speak it out loud, and if successful would be given a full pardon for whatever crime had sent them there, as long as their crimes were not of a horrific or political nature. Unsurprisingly, it was almost impossible for inmates to get themselves into this incredibly popular course.