CHAPTER 15
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, they 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.
Saad was unable to use the William Hill money to bribe corrupt officials to release my family, but he was able to buy their way in to the course. And so, after suffering the inhuman indignities of that place for longer than anyone deserved, they were set free. But as ever, we did not know how long it would be before someone came for them once more. Their situation hadn’t changed: someone still had to try to get them out of the country.
My finances were at rock bottom. So were Rachel’s. Aside from what I had sent to Saad, I still had a tiny amount of the William Hill money, but not nearly enough to pay smugglers to get all three of them over to the UK, and I knew now that I couldn’t risk trying to arrange things myself. This had to be done by the professionals, as and when I managed to earn the money. My mother, brother, and sister would have to come out one by one. With what was left of the money, and by scrimping and saving, I managed to put together enough for the first attempt, and in April 2001, about three months after my return from Germany, it was decided that my sister would leave first.
While the secret and illicit arrangements were being made, I could concentrate on nothing else. The sense of apprehension I felt could not have been more intense had I been the one who was making the escape attempt, but I had to try to keep things as normal as possible; otherwise I would have gone mad. I still had my Saturday job at a big department store in Leeds—I needed the money now more than ever, after all—and one Saturday I was going about my business in the store when, across the floor, I saw a face I recognized. It was my former boss from William Hill. He was gazing around the department as though looking for something, or someone, so I put my head down and tried to remain inconspicuous in an attempt to shake off the cloak of paranoia that had suddenly descended on me. Before long, however, I heard a voice behind me that made me start.
“Lewis!”
I slowly turned to confront him, fully prepared for what I thought was about to happen. But when I looked at him, I was surprised. There was a big, friendly smile on his face—he seemed genuinely happy to see me. “When you left,” he boomed, “we had to employ an army of number-crunchers to do your work for you!” I smiled awkwardly. We chatted for a few minutes and then he left, clearly unaware of what I had been up to. For myself, I felt a surge of relief: it looked as if I had some more time.
Saad made arrangements for the first leg of my sister’s escape from Baghdad. He found another Kurdish smuggler and arranged a price for delivery out of Iraq. Marwa took the same route as last time, through northern Iraq and into Kurdistan and then Turkey. From there, I arranged with somebody in the UK for her to travel in the back of a truck to Dover, where she crossed over using an Austrian refugee’s travel document, probably sold to smugglers by the original owner. It was a slow business—probably more painfully slow for those of us waiting to hear good news than it was for her, distracted as she was by her nerves and her fear. To be deported back to Iraq once was bad enough; she couldn’t risk things going wrong again.
She succeeded. The thrill of excitement I felt when I took the call to say she needed me to receive her at UK immigration was more wonderful than I can express. I rushed down there and took her in my arms, holding her for what seemed like hours in an embrace that I didn’t want to end. The last time I had seen her had been in the airport in Kuala Lumpur. Then she had the haunted expression of a person who had had all the fight sucked out of her, who was resigned to the fact that she was going to meet an unknown and unwanted fate. Now that she had claimed asylum, however, all that fell from her. I remember thinking what a remarkable effect freedom has on people.
More to the point, we had now established that the route my sister had taken actually worked. All that remained was to raise the money to pay smugglers to get my brother and mother out, because their joy at knowing that my sister was safe was tempered by the constant fear of a knock at the door. But we were nearly there. I could almost taste the success, and in my mind I constantly replayed our imagined, joyous reunion on British soil.
Safe.
It was so close.
Not long after my sister arrived, I was out walking and I bumped into another familiar face: the recruitment consultant who had found me the job at William Hill. Something about the way he looked at me as he approached made me feel uncomfortable, but it would have been rude to turn away when I had so obviously noticed him. Besides, it was probably just my paranoia talking.
“Lewis,” he nodded knowingly at me, “how are you doing?”
“Okay,” I replied, not wanting to have to explain all my troubles in the street.
“So tell me, what have you been up to?”
I shrugged. “The usual.” Something told me that I wanted this conversation to finish as quickly as possible.
“You know, it’s a real coincidence,” he continued persistently. “Someone came to the office yesterday asking about you.”
I fell silent.
“He said he was an investigator.”
I smiled nervously. “Don’t be silly.” I tried to laugh it off. “What would an investigator want with me? It’s not like I get up to much worth investigating.”
“Maybe not,” he said thoughtfully. “But be careful, Lewis,” he warned before going on his way. “He looked like he meant business.”
I ran all the way back home. I had expected this, of course, but that didn’t stop it coming as a shock to learn that someone was on my trail. I couldn’t be put away now, not with my family still stuck in Baghdad. In a state of paranoia I shut myself in a room and reformatted the hard drive of my laptop computer. I don’t know what I thought anyone would find there, but it comforted me somewhat to feel as if I was doing something to cover my tracks.
And then everything went quiet. Ostensibly Rachel and I went about our daily lives, but I felt as though a sword was hanging over me by a thread. As often as I could I tried to speak to Saad and, in our roundabout, coded way, give him the message that I so desperately had to impart: time is slipping away. We have to get them out, and soon.
One Saturday two or three months later I received a phone call while on duty at the store. It was security.
“Lewis,” one of the security guards greeted me amicably, “could you pop down to see us for a minute?”
“Sure,” I replied. I assumed I had forgotten to remove a security tag from an item of clothing and someone had complained—it was easily done—so I sauntered down to the security offices. The door was opened by a large female security officer of whom I had always been rather wary but who on this occasion seemed to be almost oversolicitous.
“Come in, Lewis.” She smiled at me.
I walked in to find two men in suits. One of them was fairly nondescript; the other was enormous—six foot three with broad shoulders and a thick black and white goatee. Each man stood in one corner of the room. The big man looked at me.
“Are you Lewis Alsamari?” he asked without formality.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Please take a seat.” He gestured at a chair in front of him, and I sat down.
“Did you work at a company called William Hill, Lewis?”
As soon as he asked the question, I knew that all the horrible suspicions that had been flitting through my brain in the last thirty seconds were about to be confirmed.
“Yes,” I replied.
He nodded calmly. “Lewis Alsamari,” he recited. “I’m arresting you on charges of conspiracy to defraud. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
Nobody spoke. I did my best not to let the emotion show on my face as I tried to think clearly. What should I do? Admit everything? That had always been my plan when I had assumed that my family would all be safely in the UK. But I didn’t know what they would do to me if I confessed now, and I had to make sure I was around to help my family in what I hoped would be their final attempt to leave. So should I deny everything? Or should I keep my own counsel and not say anything for the moment?
I chose the latter course of action.
The large man broke the silence. “We’re going to take you away now, Lewis,” he said firmly but not unkindly. I was led to my locker, which I opened; my wallet and keys were removed and placed into an evidence bag.
“Now then, Lewis,” I was told, “we have a choice. I can handcuff you now and lead you out of the store. I don’t want to do that, so I’m going to trust you not to run away. But the two of us will be walking very close to you on either side, so no funny business. Understood?”
I nodded, strangely humbled by the faith they had in me. If and when the authorities came knocking for my mother and brother, I knew they would not be afforded the same respect. “Thank you,” I said.
Flanked by the two men, I was escorted to the staff entrance of the store, then out into the adjacent shopping arcade. I can’t say there were no thoughts of escape in my mind, but I knew how foolish it would be to abuse the trust that had been put in me, so I came quietly. We walked out into the street and toward their car. I was placed in the back while the two Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers sat in the front.
“Where’s your car, Lewis?” I was asked.
I didn’t answer for a moment; instead I bowed my head sheepishly. “It’s over there.” I pointed to a big building on the other side of the road.
The two men looked at each other. “What do you mean, it’s over there? That’s the police station.”
I nodded. I had cheekily been parking there in order to save money. The reasons were too complicated to explain there and then, and I didn’t blame them for sharing a look that indicated their incredulity at my chutzpah. If only they knew the truth, I thought to myself. If only they knew that getting into trouble for parking my car in a West Yorkshire police lot was the least of my worries! They searched my car—a Nissan Sunny worth about £200—thoroughly, then took me to a smaller police station for processing. Not for the first time in my life, I was placed in a cell. To my astonishment, as I was escorted in, the duty officer said, “I’m sorry about the conditions.” For a moment I thought it was a sick joke, but one look on his face showed me that he meant it. And if he thought I would find the conditions unpleasant, he could not have been more wrong. There was a bed with a mattress, a steel water fountain, and a moderately clean toilet. Compared to some of the cells in which my family and I had found ourselves, this was positively luxurious.
While I was in the cell, Rachel heard a knock on the door of our house. She was having coffee with a friend and excused herself to go and open the door. It was CID. The officers explained what was going on and asked to search the house. Rachel had no option: she let them in. The officers collected all my documents and my laptop computer and took them away.
Four or five hours later I was removed from the cell and taken to an interview room.
“I’m not going to charge you,” the CID officer said. “I’m going to release you on bail. I’ve taken all your stuff, and you need to come and report to the police station on a regular basis so we know you’re still around. But I’m going to interview you now, and you have the right to a lawyer. Do you want one?”
“Yes,” I nodded.
A lawyer arrived, and I was placed in his hands. He was pleasant and friendly, and I wanted to trust him, to feel comfortable with his advice, but I found it difficult. After everything I had been through, the truth was that I trusted nobody except Rachel. I certainly didn’t trust any persons in authority, no matter whether they were Iraqi, Malaysian, or English. All sorts of possibilities ran through my head: that this man might be working with the police, that they might be trying to get me to incriminate myself. I didn’t realize that that wasn’t the way things are done in England. All the trust I might have afforded the lawyer had been sucked out of me, but I did my best to pay attention when he explained that I had the right to remain silent or to say “No comment” to any question but warned that doing so could affect me in the future.
When the interview started, I faced a barrage of questions. I admitted nothing.
I knew I wouldn’t fool anyone, but the more I thought about it the more I realized I had to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible. I would be no use to my family in jail. When the interview finished, the CID officer said, “Right, Lewis, I’m going to be investigating this further. I’ll be in touch through your lawyers.”
And I was allowed to go free. For the time being.
Suddenly, the pressure had doubled. I wasn’t afraid of going to prison, but I was terrified of doing so before I could complete the job of getting my family out of Iraq. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I found myself in court; and when that happened, I would not be able to keep up the pretense of my denial anymore. But I simply didn’t have the money to pay anybody to smuggle my mother and brother all the way to the UK. There was no way I could risk them being in Baghdad while I was in jail, however. So in conjunction with Saad, I arranged for them to flee.
They departed under cover of night, leaving the little house in Al-Mansour that had been their home for so long. They traveled north to Mosul and remained there for a while, not exactly safe, but unknown to the authorities in that town and farther removed at least from the risk of being dragged back into Abu Ghraib. I sent them what money I could to subsist. And while the case against me was being established in England, Saad and I carried on, working hard to arrange for them to be sent farther north, into Kurdistan and eventually Turkey. The situation was far from ideal—I wouldn’t be able to rest easy until they were by my side—but it was a start.
Finally the day came, as I knew it must, on which I was charged. A trial date was set. My lawyer told me I had two options: to plead not guilty and deny all the charges or to plead guilty and claim mitigating circumstances. I asked what the worst punishment I could expect to receive was if I pleaded guilty. Two years in prison, I was told, and a deportation order. The prison sentence I could endure; the deportation could spell death to me, but it was a risk I was going to have to run: I had never intended to deny what I had done, and denial would have been pointless in any case. The evidence was all there. I had to hope that I would receive more lenient treatment from my judge than my family had received from theirs in Iraq.
I gathered together as much evidence as I could—receipts from the fine I had to pay in Malaysia and the like—to show where the William Hill money had gone. I wanted to show that I had not squandered the £37,000 on revelry but rather had used it to save the people I loved from torture and worse. I made a statement and so did my sister. I dug out records of telephone calls to Iraq and to shady people-smugglers. I even made a plea to William Hill that I would repay the money—I didn’t know how I would be able to, but perhaps I would find a way. I amassed all the mitigating evidence I could put my hands on, but in the end I knew it would come down to the sympathy of one man: the judge who was trying my case. He would decide my fate, and as my family was still relying on me, he would also decide the fate of those two faceless refugees so many miles away.
When my trial date was set, it seemed a long way off, but it arrived with inexorable speed. The lawyers for the prosecution and the representative from William Hill avoided my eye as, three years after my return from Malaysia, I took my place in the dock and waited for these men to argue the rights and wrongs of what I had done. When the lawyers for the prosecution made their case, I felt like screaming at them. “What would you have done?” I wanted to ask them. “Picture your own mother being beaten for no crime greater than trying to live her life quietly. What would youhave done?” But I kept quiet and hoped that my story would speak for itself.
The judge was inscrutable as he listened to the case. I spent my time examining his face, looking for any sign of shock or sympathy, but I could see none. He simply listened, impassively, directing the court and asking the occasional question but otherwise showing no emotion whatsoever. Silently I begged him to give me some sign, some indication of how he was going to deal with me, but he was aloof and professional. I would have to wait until the verdict.
When the time came, the court fell silent. “Stand up, Mr. Alsamari,” the judge intoned.
I did as I was told. And then he started his summing-up. He recited the charges in such a way as to make them sound premeditated in the extreme: “You stole or adapted to your own use the sums of, in total, £37,000 from your employers by effectively falsifying records by access to what was thought to be a secure system on the computer. You pleaded guilty, but on a basis which is wholly exceptional, and which is set out at length by your learned counsel in mitigation, and I need not repeat it.”
I bowed my head as I listened. He did not sound remotely impressed.
“I have no doubt whatsoever,” the judge continued solemnly, “that it is a true story by virtue of the documents I have seen, and obviously from my own general knowledge.”
There was a pause before he continued. I glanced around the courtroom to see that everyone was looking at him with a rapt expression, hanging on every word he said.
“This offense for you is a tragedy. You have lost your good character, and you are an intelligent and hardworking individual who, apart from this incident, has an exemplary character.”
I held my breath.
“It is clearly an offense, involving, as it does, breach of trust, the danger that others would be blamed for what you had done, working in the same department, that justifies a custodial sentence. I am asked to draw back from that and pass upon you a community sentence because, aside from anything else, a custodial sentence, whether suspended or actual, will affect your citizenship application, and in one sense rightly so. I have listened very carefully to the mitigation on the basis of your plea, and given you credit for that plea, and I have read the many documents which have been referred to in court both from your family and from others. This is, in my experience, a unique mitigation. And I say this: that I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to have your family living within a regime which has no contemplation of human rights…and where the only way that you have to help the rest of your family escape is to bribe corrupt officials with money which you do not have. The knowledge that you had at that time, together with the depression you were suffering from—as I say, I cannot begin to imagine what that is like, and the dilemma that faces you.”
As I heard his words, I slowly began to realize that this man was on my side. For the first time ever, it seemed, a person in a position of real authority understood what we had been through and thought of us as human beings. I wanted to smile, but the smile would not come, pushed away instead by the tears that I felt welling up in my eyes. Tears of relief, and of sorrow too for my mother, who was not there to hear what was being said. Suddenly I became aware of the fact that many of the eyes in the courtroom were now on me, but it didn’t matter. And it didn’t stop me weeping.
The judge then announced what was to be done with me: “In the circumstances, the sentence that I propose to pass is the maximum one that I can impose on a suspended basis. It is two years, and it will last for two years. I could, as part of my duties today, make a recommendation for deportation. I do not do so, for obvious reasons. I know my sentence will affect your citizenship application and, as I have said already, it is right that it should. I cannot, in view of the serious nature of this matter, mitigate my judgment any further, but, as I have indicated, I do believe that the interests of justice demand in these particular and unique circumstances that the sentence I impose be suspended.
“Understand this: that if you commit any offense punishable by imprisonment within the next two years this sentence can, in whole or in part, be activated and you will then serve it. Do you understand that?”
Through my tears I replied simply: “Yes.”
The judge went on to say that he did not propose to make an order for me to repay the money to William Hill. That matter was for them to pursue in the civil courts. They never did.
I stepped down from the dock, tears still in my eyes. I wasn’t pleased with what I had done—all I had ever wanted to do was work hard and make a life for myself and my family by honest means. That opportunity had been taken from me, and I had fully expected to pay the price for it.
As it was, I felt humbled by the leniency that had been shown to me. Leniency that my past had shaped me not to expect.
In the months that followed my trial, the judge’s warning rang in my ears: “If you commit any offense punishable by imprisonment within the next two years this sentence can, in whole or in part, be activated and you will then serve it.” I had no doubt that he meant what he said, and I knew I had to walk the line carefully if my mother and my brother were to benefit from my help. The need for caution didn’t dampen my enthusiasm to be reunited with them, however; if anything, it strengthened it.
It took a long time to spirit my mother and brother out of Turkey; and in the months and years that followed the trial, they moved about constantly, always attempting to keep one step ahead of any suspicious officials who might try to pay unwanted attention to their bogus Iraqi documents. I knew that, having left Iraq, they were free from torture and brutality, but they couldn’t rest easy until they could claim asylum in a place of safety, for the threat of deportation was always hanging over them. To my exasperation, the route that my sister had taken became closed to me when the smuggler who had arranged it disappeared—I don’t know where—and so once more it was left to me to find a new way to enable my mother and brother to finish the final leg of their journey.
My newfound trust in the British system inspired me to pursue their claim for asylum through the proper channels. I started liaising with members of Parliament (MPs), telling them our story and seeing if they could persuade the Home Office to grant us the right to family reunion; but despite the fact that the MPs had the ability to exercise their discretion to do so, they refused. As the months of red tape turned to years, I became increasingly frustrated as gradually it became more obvious that my mother and brother would never make it to England if they didn’t arrive at the border and claim asylum for themselves.
By now I had saved some money, so reluctantly but with a sense of implacable determination, I launched myself back into the sinister yet sadly familiar scene of people-trafficking. I had long conversations with faceless individuals in far-flung corners of Europe; I negotiated routes and prices; I directed every instinct I had into deciding whom I could trust and whom I couldn’t. I had learned a lot about such things, after all.
In the end, I parted with a great deal of money, handed over to a shadowy individual in another country to arrange everything that needed to be arranged. I wasn’t at all sure that I wouldn’t find myself in the same situation I had with the fake Spanish passports in Malaysia, but I couldn’t wait any longer. None of us could wait any longer. Families are meant to be together, and not one of us could rest easily until they were safely with me on British soil.
Finally, after years of trying, we met with success. My mother—frail but determined—and my brother made the fraught, risky journey. The details of how they finally arrived here are another story, one that I cannot expand upon for a number of reasons; but eventually they were able, just as I had done several years previously, to speak the words I have no doubt they had been practicing ever since they left Al-Mansour: “I want to claim political asylum.”
When I heard that they had made it, it was the happiest moment of my life.
Some scenes become etched so firmly in your memory that you know you will never forget them until your dying day. In my head there are a number of such visions: the doctor in the south of Iraq pulling a bullet from my leg; the wild wolves in the Jordanian desert; the sight of my family, bedraggled and hopeless, being deported from the Malaysian holding cell. There were times when I thought these images would never be removed from my mind.
Now, though, I have a new scene to remember, one that somehow puts all those others in their place. It is the memory of seeing my mother on British soil again for the first time. I will never forget it. When she made it over, she went immediately to the house of my sister, who had met and married an Iraqi man and was renting a flat in London, and I went straight there to see her. The difference in her appearance and her demeanor compared with how she looked when I first saw her at the airport in Kuala Lumpur was astonishing. The anxiety had lifted from her face; she would always bear the scars of so many years of oppression—we all would—but there was a softness around her eyes and an easiness to her smile that I did not recognize. I put my arms around her and held her tightly for fifteen minutes. We had so many things to say to each other, but sometimes words aren’t enough. It didn’t matter: our silence said it all. Finally she was here, along with my brother, and the happiness I felt at being reunited with them in the place I now called home was indescribable. Although there was always the nagging fear in the back of my mind that she could still be taken away from me if her asylum application was turned down, everything that I had learned had taught me to enjoy the moments of happiness that you have, because you never know how fleeting they might be.
Of course, now that my mother was here there was a new responsibility upon me—the responsibility of making sure that this woman who had been beaten and humiliated was able to live a life, if not of luxury then at least of relative comfort. But that was a happy responsibility, because more than anything I was looking forward to being a family again, of reclaiming those years when that one simple thing that everyone in the West takes for granted was denied me. I wanted to be able to eat with them at the same table; to talk to them without the need for coded language and subterfuge; to share my happiness with my brother and sister; and to be comforted by my mother when times were bad. The night I knew that my mother and my brother were safely in the UK, I slept soundly and without interruption for the first time in years. A new chapter in my life was about to begin, and I felt almost like a new person. Sarmed had undergone everything that had happened; I needed to make sure that Lewis never forgot he was the beneficiary of that.
Above all, I was looking forward to having my mum live with me. When I told my friends that, they looked at me in amused disbelief. “Are you mad?” they asked. “Why on earth would you want to live with your parents?”
I simply smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “I just want to know what it’s like,” I replied.
But there was more to it than that. Since I had last lived in the bosom of my family, I had been abused and shot, imprisoned and hunted down. I had lived with the knowledge that my mother, brother, and sister were being tortured on my account. I had put my hard-won liberty at risk, as well as that of others. I had compromised my good name in the adopted country that I loved.
Perhaps that makes me mad, or reckless. It’s not for me to judge. But what I know for certain is this: I would do it all again, because if there is one thing that is worth fighting for, it is the liberty of the ones you love.
And because, ever since my uncle Saad had left me alone and frightened that night so many years ago in a small Bedouin village on the Iraqi-Jordanian border, all I had ever really wanted was to have the warmth and security of my family all around me. On that moonlit desert night, he spoke those words that were to shape my actions for so many years: the genuine man never forgets his family.
I hope I have not let him down.
I hope that, in that respect at least, it may be said that I am a genuine man.