CHAPTER 8
Amman is a city of refugees—Palestinians from the west, Iraqis from the east. It is a melting pot of cultures. For some it is a new home, for others simply a staging post on the way to somewhere more hospitable. For me it was ideal: I could blend into the scenery and, without the constant fear of the Republican Guard around every corner, perhaps even allow myself a little breathing space. But I couldn’t become complacent. My passport was fake, as were the stamps on it that allowed me access to Jordan. Even if they fooled people, I was allowed to be in the country for only six months, after which time, if anybody scrutinized them I risked deportation back to Iraq and all the horrors that awaited me there. I needed to start work immediately on gaining passage to the West, to a place where I could claim political asylum from oppression. To England.
I was a stranger in a strange country. I had no friends, little money, and no idea where to go to get the help and information I needed. I had overheard some of the Iraqis on the bus saying that when they arrived in Amman they would head immediately for an area called Hashemite Square, and the hotel desk clerk confirmed with something of a sneer that this was where the Iraqis in Jordan tended to congregate. His manner suggested that he had opinions of his own about such people, but he kept them to himself and I followed his directions to find this place.
Hashemite Square seemed a lively, built-up area. Along the side of the main road was a vibrant collection of shops, behind which rose a hillside covered with a crowded jumble of white houses and tenement blocks. On the other side was a verdant parkland with trees and lakes. A stark white, modern clock tower stood in the middle, and at its base groups of young men sat talking animatedly. The whole area was full of people milling around, and the air was thick with the distinctive Iraqi dialect of Arabic. Nobody paid me any attention whatsoever—to them I was just another face, and I found that blanket of anonymity a comfortable one. I realized how thirsty I was, so I took a seat in a nearby fast-food joint and ordered a milkshake—cold and sweet, just what my body was craving. After my first few thirsty gulps, I slowed down and pulled out a piece of paper from my pocket. Crumpled and dirty, it was the scrap on which Saad had written the name and phone number of his friend Wissam. I remembered Saad’s words: when I arrived, I was to hunt up Wissam.
I felt uncomfortable making the call. I had no idea who this man was, and I didn’t even know what I was going to ask him. Surely my call would seem suspicious—the chances were good that he would want nothing to do with this unknown Iraqi boy with nowhere to stay and hardly any money, never mind who his uncle was. I didn’t know what kind of favor Saad had afforded this man to make him so sure he would help me, but I did know that some favors were soon forgotten and reluctantly repaid.
Still, experience had taught me that I could trust Saad’s judgment in these matters, and besides, I didn’t have any other choice. That crumpled-up piece of paper was the only collateral I had. I slurped the remainder of my milkshake and went to find a telephone.
I dialed the number. The phone rang several times. I was on the verge of hanging up when someone finally answered. “Hello?” The voice at the other end growled its greeting rather unenthusiastically.
“Good afternoon,” I replied as politely as possible. “My name is Sarmed Alsamari. I’m the nephew of Saad Al-Khatab from Baghdad.”
The sound of his voice was like the sun coming out. “Saad Al-Khatab!” he exclaimed. “Of course! How is he?”
“He’s well, and he sends his regards.”
“Saad is a good man. What can I do for you, Sarmed?” His voice was booming and jolly.
I lowered my voice slightly, though for what reason I can’t say—probably out of habit. “I’ve just arrived in Jordan from Iraq. I don’t know anybody here, so Saad suggested I call you…” My voice trailed off.
“Of course.” His voice became more sober. “Where are you now?”
“In Hashemite Square.”
“And where are you staying?”
“In a hotel on the outskirts.”
I heard him sucking on his teeth in thought. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you where I live.” He recited an address in an unfamiliar-sounding area, before explaining which bus I would need to take to get there. “It’s a little way outside of Amman,” he told me. “Let’s meet tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
I thanked him profusely and put the phone down feeling more confident than I had in days.
Before I could walk away, there was one more phone call I had to make. I lifted the receiver, dialed the operator, and for half an hour waded through the bureaucratic red tape that was necessary to make a call to Baghdad. Eventually, a familiar voice answered. As I spoke, I could hear my own voice cracking. “Uncle Saad,” I said quietly. “It’s me.”
Saad was silent for a moment, as though he did not dare hear the answer to the question he had to ask. “Where are you?”
“In Amman,” I told him, unable to withhold a grin even though I knew he couldn’t see it.
Saad let out an explosive breath. “Thanks be to Allah,” he whispered. “Did you have any trouble?”
“A little,” I told him, not wanting to worry his mind with the realities of what had happened since I last saw him. “I am meeting with your friend tomorrow.”
“Excellent,” Saad replied. “He is a good man. I’m sure he will help you.” I couldn’t help feeling that he did not sound entirely confident about that. “I’ll tell your mother that you are well. In the meantime, keep your head down and don’t get into trouble. And Sarmed.”
“Yes, Uncle Saad.”
“Don’t forget what I told you.”
His parting words echoed in my mind. The genuine man never forgets his family. We are sending you to freedom so that one day you may rescue them from this place.
“I won’t forget, Uncle Saad,” I told him sincerely. “Hug my mother for me.”
The conversation lasted no more than a minute.
I spent the rest of the day simply enjoying being able to walk around without fear. As evening fell and the heat of the sun dissipated, I noticed more and more crowds of young people appearing in the area. There were all sorts of nationalities there—Jordanians, Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, Saudis—and they congregated in groups, laughing, eating ice cream, having something to drink. Not having eaten since early that morning by the roadside, I approached a stall selling street food. A group of young men about my age were hanging around there, and somehow we fell into conversation. “Where are you from?” one of them asked me.
I looked around nervously. In Iraq, you entered carefully into conversations with strangers on the street, because you never knew who had the ear of the authorities. The idea of spilling my secrets to some person I had just met was anathema to me, but there was something about this guy’s demeanor—a lack of interest that suggested he was making idle conversation rather than pumping me for incriminating information—that made me feel I could trust him. “Baghdad,” I told him. “I arrived today.”
“Staying long?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I want to get to England.”
“To claim asylum?” He sounded as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and I nodded a little warily.
“Have you been to the UN yet?”
“The UN?” The question surprised me. “No. Why would I want to do that?”
The guy smiled at me as if indulging a naive child. “To get yourself on their lists. Sometimes they provide refugees with passage to a safer country. You never know, it might be quicker than whatever else you had in mind.”
Just then one of his friends interrupted. “Be careful, though.”
“What for?”
“There are all sorts of rumors going around that the place is watched.” Without taking his eyes off me, he took a slurp from the glass bottle of Coke he was drinking through a straw.
“Who by?”
“Spies,” he said shortly. “Military police from Iraq or wherever, put there to keep an eye out for people who skipped the country illegally. Not that I’m saying that’s what you did.” He smiled and winked knowingly.
“What about the Jordanians?” I asked, a bit disconcerted by this news. “Is it worth asking them to grant me asylum?” It wasn’t something I had particularly planned to do, but I figured that it was best to know what all my options were.
The guy laughed, a short, ugly bark that betrayed his contempt for the Jordanian system. “Sure, you can try,” he told me. “They’ll put your name on a list and you’ll never hear from them again. At best you’ll be forgotten; at worst you’ll be alerting them to the fact that you’re here illegally. Don’t let yourself feel too welcome in this town, my friend. They only tolerate our presence because of the cheap oil they’re getting from our country—if it wasn’t for that, we’d be out of here faster than you can say ‘Abu Ghraib.’” He laughed again, at his own joke this time, before wandering off with his friends.
It had been a sobering conversation. In my overwhelming desire to get to Jordan, it had not really crossed my mind that such tensions would be something I would encounter, but now that it had been spelled out to me it made perfect sense. And as if to confirm my newfound discovery, as I was wearily making my way back to my hotel an incident occurred that underlined how careful I needed to be. I had just left Hashemite Square and was looking around, drinking in the sights and sounds of the quarter where I would clearly be spending a fair amount of my time, when I passed a group of young men and women not much older than myself. Suddenly one of them called out to me, and it was clear from his accent that he was Jordanian. “Alaa waaish bidahik,” he shouted. “What are you looking at?”
I stopped, suddenly frozen by the aggressive sound in his voice, and didn’t answer.
I shook my head. “I’m not,” I mumbled.
“What is it? Do you want to fight me?” He was walking toward me now, his gait lurching in a way that suggested he had been drinking. I took a step backward, but he continued to bear down on me. He pushed me heavily against my chest and I stumbled.
“Look, my friend,” I started to say. “I’m not looking for trouble…” But as I spoke I saw the sight of a uniform at the other end of the street. Immediately my fear of the confrontation was supplanted by my inbuilt horror of uniforms. Every instinct in my body shrieked at me to get away, to avoid being asked questions I didn’t want to answer by a figure of authority.
I walked briskly away with the words “Fucking Iraqis!” ringing in my ears.
First thing the following morning, having showered at the hotel so that my body at least was a little cleaner, I made my way to UN headquarters. I had not forgotten the warning I had heard the previous night, but I had decided to take a calculated risk. If these talked-about Iraqi spies were real, how would they spot me from among the tens of thousands of other Iraqis in Amman at the time? My passport was good enough to pass a cursory examination, and after all this was the UN. If I didn’t feel safe there, where would I?
The headquarters was housed in a quiet residential area of Amman, surrounded by pretty gardens and tall metal railings. A number of people were milling around outside, but as I approached the gate with as great an air of confidence as I could muster, I avoided meeting anybody’s eye because I didn’t want to betray my nervousness. I have legitimate business, I kept telling myself over and over again. I have a right to be here.
Nobody approached me as I walked in. The scene inside could not have been more different from the calmness of the exterior. It was bedlam. Despite the early hour, all sorts of people were there, refugees from Sudan, Somalia, and all over the Middle East, chattering loudly to one another in languages that I did not understand. I stood there for a moment in a daze, not quite sure what to do, before joining a line marked “Asylum Requests” and awaiting my turn to be interviewed.
When my turn came, I sat down at the desk nervously. “Fill this in,” the official in charge said without even looking at me. I scrawled the few details that were required of me on the sheet, then handed it back. Finally the official looked me in the eye, his contempt and boredom written plainly across his face. “Where are you from?” he asked me in a tone of voice that immediately reminded me of the corrupt checkpoint guard who had detained me on my way back to Baghdad.
“Iraq,” I told him, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. This was not the welcome I had expected from the UN.
“Do you have permission to be here?”
I shook my head.
“Why do you need political asylum?”
“I believe my life is in danger if I return to my home country.” I thought this sounded dramatic, but the official had clearly heard it a thousand times before. He looked at me with suspicion, as if deciding what to do with me—though in truth I don’t suppose he had the authority to do anything other than process me as he had everyone else. Finally he stamped my form and gave me a date several weeks hence when I was to return for further interviewing. He beckoned the next person in line before I even stood up to leave.
I left the room feeling slightly bemused. I had expected UN headquarters to be a haven, a place where I would feel safe, where my past would be something to invoke sympathy, not suspicion. In reality, I was just another number, an illegal alien, a statistic. Nobody was interested in me as an individual. With a start I realized that I could rely on nobody but myself to ensure my safety—and the fulfillment of my dream to make it to England.
Hitching the small bag that contained everything I owned farther up on my shoulder, I stood at the gates of the UN for a moment to gather my thoughts, this time taking in my surroundings in greater detail. There seemed to be more people outside now than when I had gone in, and I took a brief moment to scan the faces of those around me. Some of them were hanging around in groups, others sitting on benches across the road. On the street corner I noticed one man just standing there, loitering. He was wearing Western clothing, and he would have been entirely unremarkable had it not been for the fact that he was staring directly at me. I tore my gaze from him and tried to look nonchalant, but when I glanced back his eyes were still fixed on mine. Immediately I found myself short of breath, with nauseous waves of panic crashing over me as the warning I had received the previous night rang in my head. I started walking briskly away in the opposite direction. Desperately I tried not to look back so as to avoid calling attention to my nervousness, but in the end I couldn’t stop myself.
The man was no longer on the street corner.
I stopped, turned around, and scanned the crowds to see if he was still among them. No sign—until suddenly he walked out from behind a group of people. He started ambling coolly toward me, and even though I had no way of knowing whether he really had any interest in me or not, I was overcome by a paranoia that would let me do only one thing: run. Not caring how conspicuous I made myself, I turned and fled, losing myself in a maze of backstreets. I ran with a painful limp for five or ten minutes, all the while glancing back over my shoulder to check that I wasn’t being followed. I invited curious glances as I hurtled down the streets in my filthy clothes, seemingly running from nothing and with sweat moistening my skin. But when I stopped, it was not out of a desire to stay still. Out of the blue I was almost floored by an excruciating, burning sensation in my stomach. I stumbled to a halt, then bent double as I gasped for breath—half on account of my exertions, half on account of the terrible, piercing pain that was ripping through my abdomen. I collapsed on the side of the road, unable to move, and waited until this sinister pain had subsided.
The relief I felt when it had done so was like a balm. I touched my hands to my cheeks and realized they were wet from unnoticed tears, so I wiped my face with the back of my hand and tried to regain my composure. Part of me felt foolish, as though I had been running from shadows; but I knew that in the same situation, I would do the same thing again. I had come too far to throw everything away through carelessness. What the pain in my stomach had been I had no idea. Probably just hunger, or maybe stress, but I couldn’t worry about it now, as there was too much to do. I went to find someone of whom I could ask directions back to Hashemite Square, from where the buses out of Amman departed. It was time to meet Saad’s friend.
Wissam lived with his wife and children in a well-to-do Christian area some miles out of Amman. After an uneventful bus journey, I approached his house with a certain amount of trepidation. It was a large, beautiful place draped in grapevines and with fruit trees in the courtyard, not the sort of place I expected to find myself on my second day in Jordan. I knocked rather timidly at the door, unsure what to expect. The man who greeted me was friendly, if formal at first, tall and good-looking with piercing green eyes. He introduced me to his family, his wife brought us some tea, and we sat down to talk. As we dealt with the necessary pleasantries, I immediately gained the impression that despite his friendliness, he was a firm man, somebody who knew what he wanted in life and was comfortable with the position he had achieved. I could trust him, I knew; but I would not be able to overstep the mark. He would help me so far, and no farther.
“Now that I think about it, I remember you,” he said mysteriously when we had made ourselves comfortable in the shade of the vines forming a canopy over the courtyard. I looked at him questioningly. “When I came to Baghdad to study in the seventies, you were just a little baby.” He smiled at the memory. “Your uncle took care of me when I was a stranger in a strange land. He showed me where to go and what to do, and even let me stay with him for a while. I would be repaying him poorly if I did not do the same thing for you.”
“Thank you,” I said sincerely.
He sat back in his chair. “Why don’t you tell me everything?” he asked.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and started to tell my story: how they had wanted me to join military intelligence; how I had escaped the barracks; how Saad had helped me to get out of Iraq. Certain things I kept to myself—the shooting, the journey across the desert with the Bedouin—so as not to make myself sound too dangerous a charity case. All the while I spoke, Wissam stayed silent, nodding gently, and I realized that although some Jordanians—like the youths with whom I had had a run-in the previous night—resented the presence of Iraqis in their territory, others, like the man in front of me, understood what the reality of life was like in our country and were prepared to help us. It was a reassuring moment.
When I was finished, he was silent for a while as if he was mulling my story over in his mind. Finally he spoke. “Do you have money?”
“A few American dollars. Not enough.”
“And what is your plan from now on?”
“To get to England and study to become a doctor.”
He nodded silently. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“I don’t know. There must be a way, but I’ll have to make inquiries…” I knew it sounded feeble even as I spoke the words, but it was the truth.
Wissam waved his hand as if to indicate that he didn’t want to hear about such things. He knew that I was alluding to an underground world of false documents and people-smugglers, and he clearly didn’t want to go down that path. He clapped his hands briskly to divert me from the subject. “You’ll need a job, then,” he said in a businesslike fashion. “What can you do?”
Of all the questions he could have asked me, that was the one for which I was the least prepared. I had never really had a job, and my academic qualifications, such as they were, seemed next to useless now. “I can speak English,” I told him with a shrug.
“Okay,” he told me. “That’s good. Tomorrow I’ll take you around, speak to a few friends. We’ll see if we can find you some work. In the meantime, until you get a place for yourself, you can sleep here.”
As he promised, the following day he started taking me around to places he knew that might be able to offer me a job. We started out at a baker’s shop, but when they found out that I had never worked in a bakery before, they rejected me out of hand. “I’m sorry,” Wissam was told. “He has no expertise. We’ve got Iraqis who know how to bake bread lining up for jobs.” Everywhere we went it was the same story, and as the day progressed I started to grow demoralized—and so, I think, did Wissam.
“It looks like there are a lot of Iraqis trying to find work,” I said to him at one point. “Too many. What if I’m not successful?”
He didn’t answer.
Eventually he took me to the last place on his list. “It’s a company I know,” he told me vaguely, before explaining that it was run by three Iraqi brothers. The law stated, however, that you had to be Jordanian in order to own a company, so foreigners paid Jordanians to front their affairs for them. The man we were about to meet was the Jordanian front for the company.
“Their business is imports and exports, and they have offices in Baghdad. I’m sure they’ll be impressed that you speak English, but I imagine they’ll want to know if you have any degrees or more advanced qualifications. Just tell them you have.”
I nodded. Dissembling was becoming second nature to me now, and I knew that if I could lie my way through Iraqi checkpoints, I could lie about a few examinations. Besides, I liked the sound of this place. A proper company. There would be desks and carpets, people doing business—it sounded a lot better than the sweltering kitchens of the bakery that I had been to see, and maybe I would learn something useful. I wondered why Wissam had left this place till last.
The man we were led in to see was enormous—one of the fattest people I have ever witnessed—with a long, scraggly brown beard. He had the unusual and slightly off-putting habit of placing his left thumb under his left armpit and digging it into his ribs, almost as if he was massaging his overstrained heart. His name was Khalil Bakir, and he looked at me with utter disdain. I had the impression that Wissam was a client of his and that that was the reason I was being given so much as the time of day.
“Can you make tea and coffee?” he asked in response to Wissam’s inquiry about job openings, surprising me because I had been preparing myself to answer much more complicated questions.
“Yes,” I replied meekly.
“Good. You can start the day after tomorrow. One hundred dinars a month.”
And so it was that I became an employee of the company.
On my first day at work they took a photocopy of my passport without paying it much attention. It was little more than a formality to them. Wissam had vouched for me and clearly his word was trusted, and in any case they were in no position to tell a genuine passport from a fake one. My job was to make tea and coffee for Bakir and his brother, do a bit of cleaning up, and run a few errands, and it wasn’t long until I started to learn more about the company and its workings.
The first thing that struck me was how little work everybody seemed to do. The office was staffed by Bakir’s family as a condition for him fronting the company. Clearly Bakir had told his Iraqi colleagues that if they wanted to set up in business, his nearest and dearest would have to receive paychecks. His family members were illiterate—they neither read nor wrote Arabic, which was not uncommon—and they did literally nothing other than sit around chatting and drinking the tea I made them. I remember thinking, perhaps slightly naively, that the import-export business must be a very profitable one in order to allow the management to keep on such a large number of unused staff. It was not up to me to say anything, however, because Bakir, their benefactor, had me under his thumb.
There was something about his demeanor that terrified me. I can’t explain what it was, but I do remember wondering why it was that I, who had escaped the army, been shot, and fought with wild wolves in the desert, was so scared of this one man. Perhaps it was the fact that he now held my livelihood in his hands. Iraqis were treated like scum in Amman. I was lucky to have this job, and it was the only way available to me to earn enough money to continue with my plans. Bakir knew he had a hold on me, and he took advantage of that to make me work hard: his gaze was ferocious, and his eyes followed me around the office as I went about my business, keeping me well and truly in line. I exercised all the politeness I had on him, but most of the time he seemed impervious to it, like a smooth, fat rock that would not shine no matter how many times it was buffed.
Deep down, though, Bakir had a heart. On occasions his sons, who were younger than I—one about fourteen, the other perhaps ten—used to come into the office. They were well dressed, and their full faces spoke of a healthy, plentiful diet and privileged lifestyle—a stark contrast to my ragged and undernourished features. I used to envy them and wonder why life had not rolled the dice for me a bit differently. Sometimes, after his sons had been to the office, I caught Bakir looking at me thoughtfully, as though the difference in our circumstances was not lost on him. And so, although he treated me with brusqueness, he also did his best to help me.
He knew that I spoke English—he himself spoke very little—and after a while, once it had become clear to him that he could trust me, he started giving me little jobs to do. Writing a letter, translating something—little tasks that an English-speaker was suited to. Then after about nine months and after I had demonstrated my ability, he sacked his secretary and put me in her place. It was a brutal move, and one that did nothing to dispel my fear of the huge man, even if what he had done was in my favor. I felt as if I was strangely favored but had a sword hanging over me nevertheless. I shuddered to imagine what Bakir’s reaction would be if he knew the truth about my past. Doubtless nobody in the company really expected this young Iraqi man to be around forever, but every instinct informed me that my story was best left untold.
But now I had more responsibility and a slightly bigger paycheck. Because the company had offices in Baghdad, I was allowed to divert some of my pay there, so that my family—normally Saad—could pick up the money when times were lean. I was not the only Iraqi to do this. It was a common way for my fellow countrymen to send money home, and as a result I met quite a few other Iraqi immigrants. Some of them paid me little attention; others I grew to be friendly with. An architect whose name was Abu Firas seemed to take a particular shine to me. Whenever I saw him at the company offices, we chatted; and now and then I saw him outside his favorite café in Hashemite Square.
Occasionally, when Bakir was not looking, I used the company phone to make calls home and speak to my mother or to Saad. Sometimes they even phoned me. These conversations were short and nonspecific, for we couldn’t be sure that nobody was listening in. Personal household telephones could be—and frequently were—tapped; and if you wanted to make a call from a public phone, you had to submit all your details, including your civil registration card, and then wait for two hours before making the call. Anonymous calls were practically impossible. So everyone was careful not to disclose anything that might give away where I was—they just asked after my well-being and thanked me for the money I had sent or told me that they were okay this month and that I should hold on to my earnings. They knew how important it was that I saved up.
As time went on, these phone calls home became more sinister and traumatic. At first all I had was a vague sense of misgiving, the uncertain impression that something was wrong. Gradually, however, I managed to piece together from our coded conversations that a soldier from my unit had, about three months after my escape, arrived at my grandmother’s house to deliver notice that I had gone AWOL. A month or two later, things escalated when my mother, my brother, and Saad were apprehended by Al-Istikhbarat and taken to Division 5 in the area of Al-Khadimiya.
What happened to them there, I did not know at the time. I had to piece it together from snippets I gleaned from my mother and from what I knew went on in that place. He was told that I had six months to return to my unit. If I did, they said, I would be dealt with leniently. My ears would not be cut off, and I would not face the imprisonment or even worse that I would be expecting; I would just be made to complete my military service in the usual fashion. My family knew, of course, that they were lying, and they remained firm. So they threatened them with economic sanctions. If he did not help them, Saad was told, they would arrange for him and his family to be cast out of the house in the Al-Zaafaraniya compound, which he had been given as a gift because he was an amputee from the Iran-Iraq war. Still Saad insisted he did not know where I was. So they took his gun from him, held it to his head, and cocked it. “How would you feel,” he was asked, “if we shot you with your own gun? Now tell us where he is.”
Saad remained silent.
At that point, the interrogation was handed over to somebody else. The two officers who had apprehended Saad had seen him in his home environment, with his parents and his sister. Perhaps they would have been inclined to treat him with undue lenience—to treat him like a human being—if it had been their job to take the questioning to the next stage, so a specialist was brought in to complete the job. Someone who could complete the job without emotion or mercy. Someone who did this kind of thing day in, day out.
My uncle was brutally beaten across the face and chest with a thick iron bar. The fact that he had suffered so much on account of his country meant nothing to his assailant. Whether he asked for pity, I don’t know, but I doubt it: his pride was too great for that. His skin was then branded with a hot iron—a common way of reminding people of the pain they had undergone. Then he was released, but not without the demands of the intelligence officers being reiterated: I was to return within six months; otherwise the consequences for my family would be dire.
I found out the details of what had happened to them only later, but through my coded conversations with Saad on the phone, I deduced that I was being pressured to return, and I knew such pressure would be far from lenient. I fell to pieces. I suppose I had always known it was possible that my family would be questioned in some way, but I didn’t really expect it to go to that extreme. Saad had filled me with his confidence, and I had felt sure that he would be able to protect everyone from the most extreme of the security forces’ predilections. It seemed I had been wrong. The treatment that Saad had undergone did not bear thinking about, and it was all because of me. There was only one thing that I could ethically do: turn back, return to my unit and hope that I was afforded the leniency that Saad had been promised. But when I made my thoughts known to my uncle, I was shot down in coded flames. “Forget my studies over here,” I had told him. “I’m going to come back. I’ll finish them another time.”
“No,” Saad told me sharply. “Think of all the money we’ve spent sending you abroad to study. Just remember what I told you when you left.”
I wanted to ask him how he would deal with this situation, but of course I couldn’t. I knew the answer to my unspoken question in any case. It would come down to money. A few dinars in the pockets of the right people, and perhaps he would keep the military police away from my family, for a while, at least. It wasn’t foolproof—after all, there was no record of whom he had bribed—so he might have to grease the palms of different people in the future. But for now he sounded confident despite his horrible experiences: “You just concentrate on what it is you have to do,” he told me, “on behalf of your family.”
With terrible misgivings, I gave up all thoughts of returning; but the terrible prospect of my mother and siblings being harmed did not leave my mind for a single waking moment.
I stayed with Wissam for a couple of weeks, but I soon had the impression that he considered his debt to Saad to be repaid. Nothing was spoken; there was just a vague subtext. I certainly did not want to outstay my welcome, so I asked if I could sleep at the company offices for a while, and arrangements were made for me to do so. After a couple of months I discovered that the company owned an apartment in the prime area of Amman, and I was offered the opportunity to stay there. Excited by the prospect, and expecting the apartment to be something rather special, I made my way to the place, only to find that what awaited me was quite different from the picture I had in my mind.
The apartment was occupied by ishroog, backward and illiterate itinerants from the south of Iraq. It was a three-bedroom apartment with about twenty of them living there. The floor was covered with tattered cushions gathered into makeshift beds, and the occupants seemed to keep their few belongings in old nylon bags. The apartment was not too clean, and as I stepped inside I became aware of the musty smell of too many people living in too cramped a space. Everyone eyed me suspiciously before asking me a barrage of questions. Who was I? Where did I work? Who had given me permission to stay there? I answered the questions honestly and in good humor, not wanting to fall out with these people, who were clearly going to be my roommates, on the first meeting; but they didn’t make it easy, closing ranks like a group of frightened criminals. They worked at the head office of the company, it transpired, and because I wasn’t working there and wasn’t a threat to their jobs, they grudgingly welcomed me into the fold.
As part of my job, however, I occasionally made trips to the head office, running errands for Bakir, and it was there that I started to learn even more about the company’s business. It was a large building—eight stories high and owned by the company—and in the reception area was a large picture of Saddam Hussein meeting with King Hussein of Jordan. The company wore its Iraqi origins firmly and even proudly on its sleeve. I had learned from chatting with people in the office where I worked that the driving force behind the company was an Iraqi, a member of the Al-Bu-Nimer—the Tiger tribe from the Sunni Al-Anbar region near the Jordanian border. Although Al-Anbar was a long way from Saddam’s power center, the members of this tribe were very loyal to him and received favors as a result. The main man was called Mushtaq, and he had something of a reputation as a flamboyant character. Occasionally I saw him at the head office—from time to time he came to work in a football shirt, but usually he wore brightly colored yellow or pink suits and a wide smile. Even from a distance he had a magnetic personality—good-looking, confident, and suave—and I was keen to meet him.
One day I got my chance. Running an errand of some sort, I was sent to Mushtaq’s office. He was friendly enough, gregarious, but clearly supremely busy and without much time to devote to a lowly secretary from one of his other offices. His own office was huge and richly appointed, but as I stood there answering his half-interested questions, my attention was not focused on the furniture. My eyes fell on something that to me seemed much more sinister. On Mushtaq’s desk, in pride of place, was a picture of Mushtaq himself shaking the hand of Uday Hussein, and another picture of him with Saddam. I found myself transfixed. They looked so easy in each other’s company—clearly theirs was a relationship that went a long way back. What would Mushtaq do if he knew that one of his employees was here on a fake passport with fake entry stamps, having gone through everything I had gone through in order to leave Iraq? I felt my skin prickle underneath my clothes and realized that I had not taken in a word of what Mushtaq had been saying to me. I made my excuses and left.
That night, back in the apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I lay there listening to the heavy breathing and snores of my roommates, unable to get the image of those pictures out of my head. By this time, my bullet wound had largely healed up. It still bled from time to time, but it had crusted over and grown much smaller. It should still have served as a reminder for me to be constantly wary. But in the weeks since starting at the company, I had allowed my guard to drop a little. I hadn’t been careless, but I found that I had slipped into this new life with surprising ease. The picture I saw in Mushtaq’s office, however, brought home to me the fact that I could never forget I was on the run. I was grateful to the company for giving me a job, but I knew without question that the business interests of my employers would always come before their charity to me, so I could never let them know the truth about my situation. Part of me wondered if I should look for other work, but I soon dismissed that idea. Having started to make acquaintances with other Iraqis who congregated around Hashemite Square, who had to make do with filthy jobs for scant wages, I knew that I was lucky to be in my position. I was able to put money aside for my ultimate escape from Jordan, and even send a little back home to my family. I would just have to be on my guard.
As I lay there that night, I felt sick. Then I felt scared. Then I steeled myself to continue working hard to earn the money that would buy me my passage out of Jordan.