CHAPTER 6
I did not look back as we drove away, and Saad was discreet enough not to speak to me until long after my home had disappeared into the distance.
The road out of Baghdad was long and busy. It was early, but the sun was already hot, and I was glad Saad’s green Toyota had air conditioning. He didn’t use it all the time, as it would be expensive to replace; but this was a special occasion, and the fact that he had it would give him more authority if we were stopped by any checkpoint guards. As we struggled down the congested streets, flustered pedestrians looked hopefully at Saad. In Baghdad there were lots of official taxis, but never enough to satisfy demand at the busy times of day. Today I saw only the occasional familiar sight of the white and orange taxis, the battered TEX’E signs on their roofs—as if the gaudy coloring were not enough to make it clear that they were for hire. Some of them were decorated with garlands and religious symbols in the same fashion as the taxi that had brought me up from the south. Others had a photograph of Saddam fastened to the dashboard—either an expression of the drivers’ Ba’athist sympathies or the result of a threatening word from a passenger who had happened to be part of the security services. “I see you have a picture of Muhammad. What about our leader, may God protect him and bless him? Why do you not have a picture of him?” More often than not the terrified taxi driver would waive that particular fare.
When cabs were scarce, anyone with a car would suddenly switch professions and become a taxi driver for an hour. Saad’s air-conditioned Toyota was popular, and he could always be sure of a good fare if times were lean. He would pull up to a crowd of people waiting for transport and see who was going in the direction he was headed. A moment of intense negotiation would follow. Money would be discussed, certainly, but the potential customer would also want to be sure that this opportunist chauffeur had the right intentions and was not some bandit with a false smile, fully prepared to murder him in the backseat for the price of the few dinars in his pocket. This was an alarmingly common occurrence. While the penalty for deserting from the army could be horrifically severe, the punishment for murder—if you could show that it was done in self-defense (easily enough achieved with a few bogus witnesses)—was six months’ imprisonment.
But there would be no fares today, nobody to hinder us in our objective. Our journey would take us first around the outskirts of Fallujah, and the road that would lead us there was good and full of traffic. It was unlikely that we would encounter any difficulties on that early stretch. Once past Fallujah, however, things would become more problematic. It was about four hundred kilometers from there to the village where we were heading. Although the highway that continued west to the Jordanian border crossing was relatively new, in places where heavy military vehicles had made their mark on the road, it was in poor repair and the going would be slow. We did not expect to get to our destination until the following day.
The state of the highway, however, was the farthest thing from my mind. I could think of nothing but how we were going to talk our way through the internal checkpoints. I asked Saad how many there would be. “Three, perhaps four,” he shrugged.
I kept quiet. I did not want Saad to know how scared I was about approaching them, but I think he sensed my fear in any case. “Don’t worry about it,” he told me calmly. “If they stop us, leave everything to me.”
I was dressed neatly in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and together we looked perfectly respectable. “We want to give them the impression that you are my son.” He gestured at the jacket of his military uniform, which was neatly folded in the backseat. “When they see that, it will instill some kind of respect into them,” he told me. “If they assume that you are my son, that respect will rub off on you. Let me do the talking.”
We passed the busy town of Ar-Ramaadi and a few miles later approached a fork in the road. The right-hand fork would take us up to Al-Haglanya and then on to the Euphrates River, but our path did not lie that way. Instead we continued straight on, into the desert region of Al-Anbar. From time to time, to our left and right, the roads branched off toward poor desert towns—replicas of any number of the faceless communities I had seen near Mosul or Basra. Houses were built using huge lumps of concrete covered over with mud; cows roamed the streets. Kids played in the dirt tracks with sticks, and colorful market stalls belied the poverty of these places. Inhabitants eked out a living selling homemade drinks on the streets, but only those with the strongest immune systems would be wise to risk them.
It did not take long for us to approach a checkpoint. My uncle slowed down, and a look of intense concentration passed his face. “Give me my jacket, Sarmed,” he said. I reached into the back and handed him the jacket, and he wriggled his way into it, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. “Good,” he said. “Now, open the glove compartment.”
I did so. Stashed inside was a 9mm Beretta handgun. This was not an ordinary Beretta. For a start it was an Iraqi-made tarek, and it had been given to the officers of the Iran-Iraq war who had been awarded bravery medals as a “gift” from Saddam. It bore a small insignia on the handle that identified it as being a special-issue weapon; the owners of such items were afforded special respect by other members of the military. Saad took the gun from me and placed it prominently on the dashboard where it could be easily seen.
As we approached the checkpoint, I saw the usual hubbub of activity. Buses were parked by the roadside, as were white and orange taxis—more modern than the one in which I had journeyed the previous day. Their occupants were hanging around outside, talking, drinking, cooling down, and generally just taking a break from their journeys. The checkpoint itself was little more than a bunker on the side of the road, there to protect the guards from the sun. The Red Berets gripped their AK-47s firmly, and their light-armored vehicles stood nearby as they looked through the papers of those drivers they had decided to stop.
I saw all this from a distance. My uncle continued to slow down and as he did so I felt my heart in my chest. I did my best to look straight ahead and appear calm. But as I strained my face into a look of somber innocence, I could not help but feel that to the trained eyes of the Red Berets I showed all the signs of a guilty man. For a split second I thought I caught the eye of one of them. He had noticed me. Surely the look of fear on my face would arouse his suspicions. I breathed deeply.
“Let-khaaf, Sarmed,” said my uncle. “Don’t be afraid.” He kept looking straight ahead as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but I could not take my eye off the guard. As we passed him, I foolishly turned my head, and our eyes locked; I saw him begin to raise his arm before I quickly jerked my head away. My uncle kept the car moving slowly forward, ignoring the guard’s attention and, suddenly, the checkpoint was behind us. I looked in the rearview mirror, fully expecting to see one of the light-armored vehicles pull away. I wanted to tell Saad to drive more quickly, but I knew that would just arouse suspicion; and gradually the checkpoint faded behind us, without any guards appearing to follow. We had passed our first obstacle, it seemed, without incident.
As we drove farther from Baghdad, the traffic became less and less heavy. From my point of view, this was not good. The fewer vehicles there were along the road, the more chance we had of being stopped at the next checkpoint. Although the Red Berets would be more likely to stop buses or taxis, they would still pull over a substantial number of ordinary vehicles, and that could mean us. Perhaps I should have felt more relaxed having made it through the first checkpoint safely; in fact I just grew more terrified.
Later that afternoon we approached a second checkpoint. It was less busy than the first, but our luck held and we were waved past with no questions asked.
We stopped for the night in one of the small, run-down complexes that lined the road at irregular intervals. Part restaurant, part garage, part mosque, these places catered to the most basic needs of the travelers along the road. We ate a meal in the restaurant, which was the least filthy part of the whole complex, and then made our way to the car to spend the night. I tried to sleep, but without much success.
We left early the next morning. Gradually the traffic, which had been sparse, became more heavy. It did not take long to see why this was happening: there was a checkpoint up ahead, and to my horror they were stopping every car that passed. Terrible scenarios flitted through my brain. Did they know Saad and I were on the road headed west? Had the military police been to my mother’s house and extracted some sort of confession from my family? Why would they be stopping every car that passed if not to look for us? Whether such thoughts were going through Saad’s mind, I cannot say. He simply put his military jacket on once more and made sure his Beretta was in full view. We were silent as we sat in the line of cars awaiting our turn, but the time we spent in that queue gave my mind the opportunity to imagine increasingly awful explanations for this delay.
Eventually, two Red Berets walked up to the car in front of us. They stood there for some minutes asking questions of the driver, before asking him to pull his car over to the side of the road. As he did so, one of the guards followed him; the other unsmilingly waved us forward. He appeared at the driver’s door and gestured at Saad to wind down the window. He took one look at his military uniform and saluted him, but there were no pleasantries. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“We are going to see family in Rutbah.” My uncle smiled at him.
“Is this your son?”
Saad nodded.
“Your papers,” the Red Beret said to me.
Nervously I handed him the fake military pass. He studied it carefully. The seconds ticked by. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the driver of the other car being frisked and then taken into the guards’ hut. There was an anxious silence; even Saad could not think of anything to say. The Red Beret looked at me, looked back at my papers, and then handed them back.
“Do you always keep your Beretta on the dashboard, sir?” he asked my uncle.
Saad flashed him a grin. “Why?” he said. “Are you looking to buy one?”
That was all that was needed. The Red Beret smiled for the first time at my uncle’s joke. “You can go, sir,” he told us. Saad inclined his head politely, they saluted each other; and we were waved on. As we passed the checkpoint, I let out an explosion of breath, and Saad and I laughed with relief. We were through.
We arrived at a small Bedouin village at around seven o’clock that evening. There were perhaps twenty houses made of mud and brick. We knew that the tribesman we were looking for lived in this area, but we had no means of finding him. There was nothing for it but to go knocking on doors.
“Do you know Abu Mustapha?”
At first we were met with blank faces—either they did not know this man, or they did not want to let on to somebody in military uniform that they did. But eventually we found somebody who was willing to help. He pointed to a small road leading away from the settlement. “Take that road,” he told us. “It will lead you to another village. He is well known there. Ask anybody and they will point you to his house.”
We returned to the car and followed the road he had indicated. As we drove, the silence of the desert gradually impressed itself upon us, and we grew quiet ourselves. Sure enough, after about half an hour, we came to another village. A group of children were playing in the street, so we stopped and asked them the same question: “Do you know Abu Mustapha?” With typical childish exuberance they shouted that they did and pointed us in the direction of what seemed to me to be a more modern house than the others. As we made our way toward it, a few children who, barefoot and filthy, had been playing their games in the driveway at the front of the house came out toward us.
“What do you want?” they shouted. “Who are you?”
Saad limped up to them. “Is your father at home?” he asked.
The children scurried indoors, calling for their mother, who soon appeared at the door. “Who are you?” she repeated, suspiciously.
“My name is Saad Al-Khatab,” my uncle replied politely, “and this is my nephew Sarmed.”
“What do you want?”
“We are here to see Abu Mustapha.”
“Are you sure it is him you want? What makes you think he lives here?”
“I am a friend of relatives of his in Baghdad. They described to me the place that he lives. I have a business proposition for him.”
Reluctantly, the wife nodded and went inside. “Wait here,” she said as she disappeared.
We stood outside the house and waited for several minutes before a huge figure appeared at the door. He had a thick white mustache and white hair and was wearing a black robe; he was an impressive sight in the failing light of the desert evening. He stood in the doorway and said nothing, so my uncle repeated the introduction he had already given to his wife: “My name is Saad Al-Khatab, and this is my nephew Sarmed.”
Suddenly a smile lit up the tribesman’s face; it was clear that he understood in that instant why we were there. He clapped his hands and shouted at his children to stop playing and make themselves scarce. Then he called to his wife. “Ya marr’a! Prepare supper!” he shouted. He extended his arms to Saad and me, and he ushered us inside. Our presence did not seem to surprise him. Maybe he had been forewarned of our arrival; maybe people like us arrived on his doorstep out of the blue on a regular basis.
We were led into Abu Mustapha’s guest room. It was a peaceful place: there was no television, and the walls were covered with embroidered religious texts. The seating, of course, was all Bedouin style, with cushions scattered across the floor. We sat down, and tea was brought in to us, along with sherbet—concentrated fruit juice diluted with water. We were thirsty after our long journey, and the drinks refreshed us. The tribesman sat opposite Saad and me, a huge imposing figure shrouded in his flowing robe. I glanced at my uncle and saw on his face a look that I recognized, a calm, almost humble aura he emanated before he was to start engaging in any kind of negotiation. As we sat there, there were frequent moments of silence as my uncle and the tribesman smiled and nodded toward each other. Each knew what the other wanted, but there was a ritual to such meetings, and nothing was spoken of the real reason for our presence just yet. Tradition dictated that we should wait until after we had eaten together—or at the very least finished our first round of drinks—before we even began to discuss business.
Abu Mustapha fingered his sibbha—a string of beads—and continued smiling knowingly at us. Every few minutes he shouted, “Allah bilkhair—Welcome! God is good!”
“Allah bilkhair.” We intoned the traditional reply.
Gradually my uncle engaged the tribesman in small talk. He explained that he was acquainted with his relatives in Baghdad, that he had had business dealings with them before now.
“You are interested in guns?” the tribesman asked out of the blue.
My uncle shrugged. “A little,” he replied.
The tribesman stood up suddenly, left the room, and returned with a berrnaw, a rifle with an extra-long barrel. It was the traditional weapon of the Bedouin of that area and could shoot over hugely long distances—even up to two miles. The tribesman had a look of pride as he handled it, mixed with a glint in his eye that spoke volumes: he was, he was demonstrating, a man who could take care of himself.
We admired his gun for a short while, and then food was brought in. His wife presented a steaming dish of baagillah. It was a favorite of mine, an Iraqi dish of lamb, bread, and beans traditionally served on Fridays after prayers. Saad and I fell upon this feast as hungrily as politeness would allow.
When we finished eating, more tea was brought. This was the sign for us to get down to business. I had expected my uncle to explain the situation in more roundabout terms than he did; after all, we did not know yet that we could fully trust this man sitting opposite us. He was full of smiles, but who knew what those smiles could be hiding?
“My nephew here, Sarmed, has deserted from the army.” I gave Saad a sharp look, but he held his hand up to me and continued. “He needs to leave the country, and he wants to go to Jordan. Your relatives told us this might be something you can help with.”
For a while the tribesman said nothing. He just sat there expressionless. The silence in the room was thick, broken only by the sound of the tribesman fingering his sibbha and the constant whir of the fan above us. We had come all this way, and I had never imagined that this man would say no to our request—but he certainly did not seem to be jumping at the chance. I had an uncomfortable feeling that we were about to have to drive back to Baghdad that night. He looked carefully at me, and then at my uncle. It was impossible to read his eyes. Finally he spoke. “I do not recommend that you go to Jordan.”
In that moment I knew we had a chance of persuading him. He had not turned us down outright, so it was clearly something he was prepared to do. But why not Jordan? And if not Jordan, where? As if in response to my unspoken question, the tribesman intoned “Syria.”
Saad shook his head. “Syria will be too dangerous for him.” He was right. The relationship between Iraq and Syria at that time was bad. For starters, Iraqis were not allowed to work in Syria; in Jordan, there was at least a chance. More worryingly, if I was apprehended in Syria, the likelihood was great that I would be taken for a Ba’ath party spy and imprisoned for I don’t know how long.
Abu Mustapha shook his head. “The stretch of land between here and the border to Jordan is much smaller than the land between here and Syria,” he explained. “There are many border patrols. The government spends a great deal of money on surveillance in that stretch of desert. The Syrian border police are poorly paid, and there are fewer of them. There are land mines in that area too. We think we know where most of them are, but…”
Saad was adamant. “It is a risk we are prepared to take.”
The tribesman looked uncomfortable. Maybe he was more familiar with the crossing into Syria, I don’t know. He let out a heavy sigh. “If you choose that route, we will have to make the journey at night. And I cannot guarantee you safe passage. There are wild animals in the desert.” He looked straight at me. “They do not much care what they eat.”
I shuddered, but Saad stood his ground. “If he is captured in Syria, the treatment he will receive will be just as bad as any he can expect in Iraq. Jordan is more civilized, and from there he has a much greater chance of finding his way to the West.”
Again there was a silence. Finally Abu Mustapha closed his eyes and slowly nodded his reluctant acquiescence.
He shouted for one of his children to come. Almost immediately one of his sons entered the room. “Go and find your uncle,” his father told him almost dismissively. The boy said nothing and left the room swiftly. The three of us remained seated; barely a word was spoken between us.
From the corner of my eye I looked at Saad. He seemed as calm as ever, his expressionless face indicating none of the rising panic the tribesman’s reluctance to take the route to Jordan had instilled in me. The Bedouin knew this stretch of land better than anyone—certainly better than Saad or I. They had crossed these borders all their lives, and their ancestors before them had done so for hundreds of years. They knew where the dangers lay. If they were worried about our plan, should we not also be? I tried to push such worries from my mind. I had trusted my uncle this far; he had not let me down. And as I looked at the imposing figure of the tribesman before me, I could tell that he was a person who would be able to look after himself—and me. That, at least, was some small comfort.
After about half an hour, the door opened again and another burly tribesman walked in.
“This is my brother,” our host introduced him. We shook hands in greeting as more tea was brought. “My young guest,” he gestured toward me, “is of a mind to travel to Jordan.”
Immediately his brother shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “Too dangerous. We can’t take you all the way into Jordanian territory, but we can take you into Syria.”
It felt like we were back at square one. His look was stern, and he did not appear to be open to negotiation. I think my uncle must have seen that in him; without delay he played his trump card.
“My nephew is not going to Syria. It is Jordan or nothing. If you are unwilling to take that route, we must leave now. It is a long way back to Baghdad.” He sat back without taking his eyes off the Bedouin, and sipped his tea.
The two men looked at each other, aware that their lucrative business arrangement might be disappearing before their eyes. Eventually the brother nodded in agreement. “We have details to discuss,” he told Saad.
My uncle nodded. “Wait here, Sarmed,” he told me as the three of them stood up and went outside. I heard the murmur of hushed negotiations through the door, and I knew that they were discussing what Saad would pay them to undertake this illicit venture, along with payment terms and guarantees. My uncle would then have to persuade them that I would not be a liability to them in the desert—that I knew how to take care of myself. When they returned, there were smiles all around: a deal had been struck.
“The arrangements have been made,” Saad told me simply, his voice altered now from one of concern to one of confidence. “You will stay here tonight, and you will make the journey after sundown tomorrow.”
“What about you?”
“I must leave,” he told me quietly.
“Now?” I asked him. The moment seemed to have come upon us very quickly.
“There is no reason for me to stay, and I have business to attend to in Baghdad.” He smiled at me. “Don’t worry, Sarmed. You are in good hands. Everything will be fine.” He turned to the tribesman and his brother. “You have my thanks, and the thanks of my family. Inshallah, as soon as we hear that he has made it across the border, I will give the remainder of the money to your relations in Baghdad.” With that he left the room.
I followed my uncle to the car in silence. To say good-bye to this man who had risked so much for me was almost more than I could bear. Neither of us had spoken of the one thing that was foremost in our minds throughout this eventful journey: we might never see each other again. And now, standing by the car in a strange village somewhere in the Iraqi desert, the time had come to say our farewells. As I removed my things from the trunk of the car, Saad fished a piece of paper out of his pocket, on which he had scribbled a name and an address.
“When you arrive in Amman, find this person. His name is Wissam, and he is a friend of mine from many years ago. He will help you in any way he can.” My uncle put his hands on my shoulders. “Be strong,” he continued, “and trust no one. You have to have your guard up all the time.”
He went to the car and came back with something wrapped in material. “I want you to have this. Handle it with care.”
I gingerly unwrapped the package. Inside I felt cold steel. It was a black Beretta handgun—not the special-issue Beretta that he had positioned on the dashboard but another weapon from his collection. “You might need it to protect yourself after the Bedouin leave you,” he explained. “You know how to use it, of course.”
I said nothing while Saad hugged me tightly, holding me close to him and breathing deeply, smelling me as if trying to absorb something to remember me by. “Good-bye, habibi Sarmed,” he whispered, “and may Allah be with you. You are my son, and you always will be. I will miss you very much.” For the first time ever, I heard his voice wavering and I saw his eyes filling up. I did not trust myself to say anything; nor could I think of anything to say.
How long we stood locked in that embrace, unwilling to leave each other, I couldn’t say; but eventually, and reluctantly, Saad climbed into the car and started the engine. He wound down the window and looked me straight in the eye. “Be careful,” he told me solemnly. “And remember, the genuine man never forgets his family. We are sending you to freedom so that one day you may rescue them from this place.” Then he slowly pulled away.
I stood on that weathered track in the near-darkness, my eyes full of tears and a small bag by my feet containing everything that I now possessed in the whole world, and I watched my uncle’s car as it became a cloud of dust settling in the distance. Then I turned back to look at the Bedouin house where I was a stranger.
I had never felt so alone.
I made my way back to the guest room. Abu Mustapha and his brother were still there, and I tried, half-heartedly, to make conversation. But it was clear to them how upset I was at having said good-bye to my uncle, and that now was not the time for polite chitchat, so they made their excuses and left me alone. I was grateful to them for that: I needed time to compose myself.
I knelt in front of a picture of Mecca that adorned the wall, and prayed. I prayed that my uncle would make it back to Baghdad safely; I prayed for my family; and I prayed that the next thirty-six hours would not be filled with the dangers that haunted me. I opened my bag and looked through my things. The trinkets I had brought with me seemed out of place in such a remote location so far from home, but it was a comfort to have them with me as a reminder of the place I had left behind. I took a pen and a piece of paper and started trying to write a letter to Saad, but somehow I could not find the words to express what I wanted to say, and the letter was abandoned almost before it was begun.
Behind me I heard the door open, and Abu Mustapha entered with his wife. She lay a mattress on the floor for me to rest. “It would be best if you tried to sleep,” the tribesman told me. “We wake early, and there is much to do tomorrow in preparation.”
I nodded and thanked his wife for her kindness. Alone again, I redressed my wound with some clean bandages I had taken from home, wincing as I removed the doctor’s professionally inserted swab and replaced it with the limited skill my military training had afforded me. It still hurt beyond belief, but I had other worries to occupy my mind now: as I lay on the mattress and closed my eyes, I knew that when sleep came—if it came—it would be fitful and disturbed.
Sure enough, I awoke early the next morning. The tribesman entrusted me to the care of his nephew—the son of his brother who had been with us the previous evening. It was explained to me that the three of them would be accompanying me that night, and I was to spend the day learning as much about them as I could. If we were stopped by border patrols, it was essential that I was believed to be one of them.
The Bedouin are nomads of the desert. Divided into tribes, each tribe historically led by a sheikh, traditionally they herded and traded livestock—sheep and goats—moving across the desert according to the seasons. The restraints of international boundaries meant nothing to them. They had—and still have—a disregard bordering on contempt for anything or anyone that attempts to influence their centuries-old traditions, and especially governments that try to impose nationalities that mean nothing to the Bedouin. Their concern is not with the outside world. They are traders, wandering across the desert from village to village to buy and sell their livestock, crossing borders at will, often traveling at night to avoid the scorching heat of the desert sun. They are, as they have been for hundreds of years, an accepted feature of the Middle East landscape, and nobody—not even Saddam—would contemplate removing from these desert wanderers the right to travel where and when they please. The Al-Shamarry tribe especially had a number of villages dotted around the desert between Iraq and Syria, although there were fewer across the Jordanian border.
This did not mean, however, that the Bedouin were above suspicion. The authorities were not so naive that they did not realize that certain Bedouin tribesmen took advantage of their nomadic status to earn themselves extra money. The border guards in this region allowed the Bedouin to wander at will but nevertheless kept close tabs on them. There was no guarantee that we would not be stopped and questioned as to our movements, and if this happened, it was essential that I look and act like a member of their tribe.
Abu Mustapha’s nephew was a little younger than I—perhaps sixteen—but the ravages of life in the desert had not been kind to his features, which were weathered beyond his years. We sat together in a communal courtyard around which the village’s houses were built. In the middle of the courtyard, the burned-out shell of an old car lay in a pool of mud and water, and thin-looking sheep and goats wandered around at will. The nephew quizzed me about myself and my life in Baghdad and Mosul, and I did my best to answer his questions patiently, aware that the world I was trying to escape may well have seemed strange to him, just as his world did to me. But my mind was focused on the path that lay ahead, not that which lay behind, and I was eager to talk to him about our evening’s work. “What will I have to wear tonight?” I asked him.
“Come with me,” he said. We went inside and he found me a dark, embroidered dishdash. He also gave me another, heavier robe. “This is to protect you from the cold,” he explained. “In the desert, the temperature drops at night. You will freeze if you are not properly dressed.”
I put the garments on. They had a heavy, musty smell to them, but they fit well enough. He then handed me a long stick. “This is what we use to herd our sheep,” he explained. “It’s not difficult. If you tap them on the right, they will turn left; if you tap them on the left, they will turn right. Come with me, we can practice.”
We returned to the courtyard, and he identified the sheep that belonged to his family. Families marked their animals on a particular part of their bodies, either with henna or with some other dye, so that they could distinguish which beasts belonged to whom. Together we practiced herding the sheep that we would be taking with us that night, while the nephew explained to me that if I was spoken to I would have to try to speak in his dialect. This would be difficult for me—the difference in the accent was extreme, and I did not believe I would be able to fool anyone. I did my best to practice with the nephew, but I could tell by the look on his face that I was at best unconvincing. I would have to hope no border guards spoke to me.
The day passed slowly. As the sun was setting, I sat in the guest room waiting for my guides to tell me it was time to leave. When Abu Mustapha arrived with his brother and nephew, I saw that they were wearing headdresses tied tightly around their heads and their chins, and they had strapped bullet belts in the shape of an 
around their bodies. Both of the older men were carrying their evil-looking berrnaw. I looked at them inquiringly. “In case of wild animals,” Abu Mustapha said by way of explanation. “Come, we need to get moving.”
I put on my Bedouin garb, grabbed my bag, and followed them outside. My belongings were strapped to one of the sheep, and the place was full of activity. Primitive bells around the necks of the cattle clinked as they wandered freely, children ran around, and the wife was cooking bread in the courtyard. It was a heady, homey smell, and under other circumstances it would have made me hungry; but even though the journey ahead was long, my stomach was churning from apprehension and I had no thought for food. We left the bustle behind us and set off into the silence of the desert night, four Bedouin tribesmen and seven sheep, a common sight in the deserts of Jordan and Iraq and one that I hoped would pass unnoticed.
As soon as we were clear of the village, the tribesman spoke to me. “In that direction,” he pointed away from him, “if you walk for twenty miles, you will hit the Syrian border. But the border with Jordan lies this way.” He pointed straight ahead. “We are heading for an area where there are fewer Iraqi patrols,” he told me. “I hope we do not encounter any, but if we do, you must leave it to me to do the talking. Busy yourself with the sheep, and do not attract attention to yourself.”
“What if they ask who I am?”
“We will simply tell them that you are our relative and you are coming with us to sell some sheep.”
It didn’t seem very convincing to me, but I could do nothing now but trust my guides. I nodded and looked ahead. Even in the twilight I could see the desert stretching out before us, and I wondered how on earth these people would be able to navigate their way through such a featureless expanse of land. Behind us, the lights of the village twinkled in the distance; ahead was a barren, hilly landscape. Small bushes dotted the desert sands, spiky cacti of various sizes, some small and unassuming, others huge and gnarled. “We will take you across the border and point you in the direction of the road that will take you to Amman,” the tribesman continued.
“Can’t you take me to the road itself?” I asked him. I didn’t relish the idea of being left alone in the desert.
He shook his head. “It would be too dangerous. The Jordanian border guards know that we would never travel along that road—we need to make them believe we are traveling between villages, and the road is completely out of the way. If they catch us heading toward it, they will be sure to start asking questions that we do not want to answer, and they will check us out thoroughly. It won’t take them long to find you.”
As the light failed, it became impossible to see what lay in front of us, but the Bedouin seemed in no way unsure of their route. Soon it was very, very dark. It was not the darkness that I was used to in the city, or even in the desert surrounding my unit; here we had only the light of the moon. We could still just see the village behind us, and somewhere, far away, the distant lights of another settlement. The tribesmen used these landmarks as points of reference and occasionally consulted a compass by the light of a match, but their most important navigational tool was their own knowledge of the desert.
It quickly grew cold—I was glad of my heavy overgarment—and I became aware of the engulfing silence, the stillness of the desert. The Bedouin talked in low voices ahead of me, and occasionally the sheep bleated; apart from that, other than the sound of our own footsteps, there was no noise.
Suddenly the silence was broken. In the distance I heard an unfamiliar sound, somewhere between a bark and a high-pitched whine. It shocked me, and I stopped walking for a moment. “What is that?” I asked nervously. “What was that howling?”
Slowly Abu Mustapha turned around to look at me. He was smoking a cigarette, and the light from the tip vaguely illuminated his face, giving him a sinister aspect. “They are wolves,” he said quietly and in an almost singsong voice.
“If they catch you,” added the nephew as if sensing my tension, “they will rip you into little bits!” He grinned at me.
I gave him a flat look. For some reason he was clearly enjoying my discomfort, but I did not let him relish it for too long. I turned away and continued walking; but though I tried to seem nonchalant, beneath my studied calm was a terrible sense of panic. As we continued our slow march, the noise of the howling grew nearer. Whether the wolves had sensed our presence, I couldn’t tell; but it was not something I felt I wanted to find out. The tribesman clearly had the same thought. He raised his hand, and we came to a stop. Swiftly he raised his rifle toward the direction of the howling and fired a warning shot. It seemed to do the trick and the howling receded, for now, at least.
The later it got, the more edgy I became. The sound of the wolves had worried me, and in the dark I became increasingly aware that there might be any number of other hidden dangers in the desert that night. I was wearing my army boots, which was a relief because I trod on all manner of unknown, unseen objects and textures. My great fear was that I would tread on a slumbering snake. Had I been wearing my army trousers, it would have been less of a worry as they were made from tough material; but under my Bedouin dishdash I was wearing only thin jeans, which were by no means robust enough to withstand a snakebite. Snakes had always been my greatest phobia, and I do not think I would have been able to continue my journey if I had encountered one.
Every so often, the wolves grew closer, and the tribesman fired a shot toward the sound of the animals to ward them away. The sound of the berrnaw was twenty times louder than any handgun, so it encouraged them to stay clear. But I also had reason to be nervous about the gunshots. Each time the tribesman fired, the noise announced our presence to any border guards who happened to be in the vicinity. It seemed unlikely that we were going to avoid being noticed by them for long.
It had been fully dark for about an hour when we first saw the lights of a patrol vehicle. Rather than head straight for us, it drove around us in a circle and then disappeared from sight. “Perhaps they didn’t see us,” I said to the tribesman.
“No,” he replied. “They saw us. They will be back.”
He was right. We continued through the desert, and sometime later we saw lights coming from a different direction. Whether or not it was the same patrol, I couldn’t tell, but it seemed likely that they had been circling us, either to make us nervous or for some other, more obscure reason. Eventually what looked like a pickup truck approached us straight on, stopping directly in front of us with the headlights beaming straight into our eyes. In the back was a large spotlight, and a guard sat there operating it. I froze momentarily but then remembered what the tribesman had told me: “Busy yourself with the sheep, and do not attract attention to yourself.” I took my staff in my hand and started herding the animals, which had started to wander. The tribesman’s nephew did the same, calling to the animals as he did so; I kept quiet so as not to attract attention to my accent. Abu Mustapha approached the patrol vehicle as I made some pretense of checking the luggage strapped to one of the sheep. “Allah bilkhair! Allah bilkhair!” he called congenially into the night.
Three patrol officers got down from the car. They did not look friendly. “Who are you?” the driver asked roughly.
“My name is Jaffar Mohammed Hassan, known as Abu Mustapha, from the Al-Shamarry tribe,” the tribesman replied smoothly.
“I see,” replied the driver. “One of my brothers-in-law married into your tribe. Where are you going, Abu Mustapha?”
“We are taking these sheep to a village nearby to trade, but we have no truck to transport them, so we travel on foot.”
The driver did not seem to find this odd—it was common enough for the Bedouin to travel in this way. He turned his attention to the rest of us. “And who are these people?”
“This is my brother, and these are his sons who are helping us.”
The driver looked closely at us; I continued to busy myself with the sheep, worried that if I caught his eye he would ask me a question.
“You should come to our house,” the tribesman said suddenly to divert the driver’s attention. “On behalf of my village, you are most welcome!” It did not seem an odd invitation—such gestures of hospitality are central to Bedouin tradition—but the other two border guards seemed particularly unmoved by it. It served its purpose, however, as he turned his attention away from me and back to the tribesman.
“Abu Mustapha, I expect you all to return to your village, and I do not expect any of you to go missing.”
The tribesman smiled. “Of course,” he told the driver. “If only my vehicle hadn’t broken down.” The two other border guards eyed him suspiciously; then they all climbed back into their vehicle. “You are welcome anytime in our village,” he called after them as they screeched away across the sands.
I watched them disappear behind a hill. “Do you think they will come back?” I asked the tribesman.
He shrugged. “Who knows?” he answered me noncommittally. “We had better keep moving. The border is very close.”
We walked for another hour, and gradually in the distance I started to notice moving lights. “What are they?” I asked nervously. I was still terrified that the patrol would return, and any sign of movement compounded those fears.
“That is where you are headed. It is the road into Amman. We must leave you soon.”
Slowly the lights ahead grew imperceptibly closer, and once more the tribesman raised his hand to call us to a halt. “We can’t take you any farther,” he said. “We have bypassed the two main checkpoints on the road. All you need to do is continue in that direction toward the lights and you will be okay.”
I nodded.
“If you hear the wolves, fire some warning shots into the air. It should scare them off.”
“Thank you for your help,” I said. It seemed inadequate, but what else could I say?
“Bilsalamah,” he replied in acknowledgment. “Be safe.” He hugged me perfunctorily before quickly kissing me on each cheek. The others followed suit, before silently turning to retrace their steps. It did not take long for my guides to disappear into the blackness, leaving me with nothing but my bag and my gun.
Never had I felt so vulnerable. As the sound of the bleating sheep disappeared, I stood perfectly still and tried to accustom myself to the solitude and the silence. It took me some minutes to compose myself, but with renewed determination I started to make my way toward the road. Now I was alone, and my senses became more heightened as I strained my eyes and my ears to judge if any unknown danger was close by. Occasionally I looked back and thought that I caught a glimpse of the patrol cars’ headlights; but if I did, they were distant—the patrol officers would not be able to see me from so far away. I could just see the road from where I was, and there were no patrols ahead. I would be very unlucky to meet anybody now, but all seemed reasonably silent around me. Unless I was forced to fire the Beretta, I was determined not to do so.
I soon realized, however, that sounds in the desert could be deceptive. More than once I stopped still because I thought I heard an unfamiliar noise alarmingly close, but I told myself over and over again that it was a faraway sound carried to me by the gentle but fickle night breeze. I kept the pace as fast as my wounded leg would allow, keeping my eyes fixed on the occasional light from the road ahead. I realized that it was not only sounds that could be deceiving, but distances also. Although I had no conception of time, the road did not appear to me to be coming any closer, and the longer I hurried through that dark expanse, the more unnerving my solitude became. As I walked, I could feel the swab around my bullet wound become wet—clearly the stitches had opened slightly from the movement.
Then, out of the darkness, I heard a sound I could not ignore, a sound that immediately stopped me dead. It was not new to my ears—it was unmistakably the same howling that I had heard with the tribesmen—but it was shockingly close. I stood perfectly still for some moments, aware only of the trembling whisper of my own heavy breath, before hearing another howl that made the blood stop in my veins. It was as loud as the first and no less desperate. But it was not its closeness that filled me with a sickening sense of horror; it was the direction from which it came. The first howl was somewhere to my right, the second to my left.
I have never known fear like it. A cold wave of dread crashed over me; I felt nauseous and all the strength seemed to sap from my body. I know I should have fired my gun in the air, but in that minute some other impulse took over, an impulse that forced any faculty of reason from my head and replaced it with blind panic. Foolishly, I ran.
I could never have outrun them. They were lean, desperate, and hungry; this was their territory. I was limping and terrified. The more noise I made, the more I attracted their attention. I became aware of other animals around me—I don’t know how many, but it was clear they were hunting as a pack and I was their quarry. Blinded by my tears, I stumbled, and their baying became more frenzied. Then, as if by some prearranged signal, the pack fell silent.
About twenty meters ahead there was a bush. In the darkness, I could scarcely make it out, but I could tell there was movement in there. I stood absolutely still. Vaguely I saw silhouettes ahead, prowling toward me. There were three, maybe four of them. I handled my Beretta nervously; despite my fumbling I managed to release the safety catch, but my hand was shaking too much for me to be sure of an accurate shot even if I had known precisely where I was aiming.
Suddenly the moonlight caught in the eyes of one of the animals, and for a moment it was illuminated. I will never forget its appearance: these were not the furry white wolves I had seen in pictures; they were thin, bony almost, and dirty. There was a madness in their eyes that suggested they were riddled with rabies, and they were more vicious than anything I had ever witnessed, or hope I ever will again. The eyes seemed disproportionately small for the animal’s face, but there was something almost human about it; as our glances briefly locked, it snarled and pawed at the sand, baring its teeth and preparing to attack me. I wanted to run, but I knew there was no way I could get away from these fast, hungry beasts; and in any case my legs had frozen to the spot in fear.
Then, as one, they started to run toward me, the momentary silence broken by the wicked sound of their barking and snarling. Almost by reflex, I opened fire.
The magazine of the Beretta contained only fifteen bullets. In quick succession I fired several shots blindly as the wolves ferociously hurled themselves toward me. The first few shots disappeared into the night. Although the noise of the gun stopped the charge of the animals for a moment, they were clearly worked up into a frenzy by the prospect of fresh meat so close; rather than turn and run as I had hoped they might, they scampered around in a circle before continuing their approach. They were close enough for me to smell—a sickening, rotten stench.
Once more I fired, all my skill with a gun dissolved by fear; it was more by luck than judgment that I hit at least one of the animals when they were only meters away from me. I heard them yelp as the bullets seared into their flesh, but I knew I was not safe yet. There was at least one more out there, and suddenly everything had fallen silent once more. I spun around, my arm outstretched and my quivering hand gripping the handle of the gun with all the strength it had, trying to spot whatever wolves remained as I stepped backward away from the bodies of the animals I had hit. How long I continued like that I cannot remember, but gradually I became aware of another sound. I stood listening for some moments before I realized what it was: the noise of one or more wolves biting into the carcasses of their injured—but not yet dead—colleagues.
The animals had been distracted by easier meat, and I had no option but to run. I circled around where I thought the beasts were and headed as fast as I could toward the road. I was shivering from the cold and sweating from fear; the wound in my leg made me limp and slowed me down completely; at one point I stumbled and, thinking in my near-delirious state that I had fallen upon a sleeping snake, I started shouting into the darkness for help. I lay on the ground trembling for about five minutes; then behind me I became aware of the noise of more wolves fighting over the dead animals. I did not know how long it would take them to strip the meat off the bodies, but I wanted to be well away when they did so. That was the impetus I needed: I pulled myself up and continued to hurry—half running, half limping, always glancing behind me, and occasionally firing one of my few remaining bullets in the direction of the wolves—toward the road.
For forty-five minutes I ran, stopping only occasionally to catch my breath and to vomit onto the sand through fear, propelled more by horror of the wolves than by any desire to reach the road. Eventually I arrived. There were very few cars, and I was in no state to tell whether those that passed were military vehicles or not. I collapsed. The wound in my leg hurt more than ever, and I could feel the sticky wetness of the blood beneath my trousers. I was in shock. I was freezing cold. I was unable even to speak. The lights of the cars in the road blurred before my eyes into a sea of movement, and as nervous exhaustion and delirium set in, I became vaguely aware of what looked like a white border-control vehicle stopping a few meters past me. I heard a confusion of voices around me but could not make out any faces. Out of the confusion I heard a man’s voice: “Get him in the car,” he said in an accent I didn’t recognize, “and we’ll take him back to the border crossing.”
“No,” I rasped, not even knowing who I was talking to. “I can’t go back to the border. I need to get to Amman…”
But as I spoke the words, my head fell heavily to the ground and blackness engulfed me as I passed out.