Love across the lines

It was never going to be easy for the American sergeant and the Iraqi doctor who fell in love in Baghdad - he was kicked out of the army and the country and she was threatened in the street. But now the couple, who married last August and haven't seen each other since, are to be reunited. They talk to Julian Borger

Sean Blackwell and Iraqi bride Ehda'a exchange wedding vows in Baghdad, August 2003. Photo: AP

Saddam Hussein is reputed to be a big Shakespeare fan. He particularly likes The Taming of the Shrew and, more oddly, Romeo and Juliet. For some reason, the ex-dictator believes the tale of the star-crossed lovers teaches children obedience to nation and family. In that case, Saddam must deplore Sean Blackwell and his wife Ehda'a's version of the love story, about which he may even have read before his capture. For a while, they were all over the press - the American sergeant and the Iraqi doctor whose impulsive love affair and speedy marriage briefly united the US army and the nationalist resistance in sheer irritation. Following their wedding, the US army confined Blackwell to base, stopped him seeing his bride and kicked him out of the military and all the way back home to Florida. Meanwhile in Baghdad, Ehda'a's life was threatened and she still fears for her family, whose name we consequently may not use.

But this particular story of love across the divide looks like it may have a happy outcome. The pair - who have not seen each other since a 20-minute wedding ceremony last August - are due to be reunited this weekend in the Jordanian capital, Amman. After a long struggle with prejudice and military bureaucracy, they will at last be together - bride, groom and the American television documentary team that has been recording every step of their travails.

Yet without the aggressive but sentimental glare of network television, the army might not have let Blackwell go so easily. At one point he even came close to being court-martialled - "for falling in love", as Vickie McKee, Blackwell's mother back in the Florida panhandle, always puts it. It was only after McKee and a local lawyer, Richard Alvoid, made the story world news that the army backed down on the threat of a court martial and dishonourable discharge. Blackwell was given a written reprimand - which he now paraphrases as: "You did this. We told you not to. Bad you" - and given an early ticket out of Iraq.

The story made headlines not just because it was a tale of romantic love on the front line. It also said a lot about Iraq's new occupiers and how they viewed the people they had declared liberated. It was last May, about a month after the fall of Baghdad, that Edhaa, 25, presented herself at the ministry of health, offering her services as a trained doctor at a time when the hospitals were on the point of collapse. She wanted to get out of Qut, the Baghdad satellite town where she was working and where educated, western-dressed women were under threat from resurgent Islamic militants.

The American administrators at the ministry did not want to know. But the sergeant in charge of security at the gate seemed pleasant and helpful. His name, as it turned out, was Sean Blackwell. He was 27 years old and in Iraq pretty much by accident. He had left the army in late 2002, and signed up with the Florida National Guard (the equivalent of the Territorial Army) thinking it would be a question of "barbecue and beers" a couple of times a month, and free tuition. He had planned to get a degree in nutrition rather than go to war. But a month after he signed up with the guard he received his deployment orders and found himself manning the gates of the Iraqi ministry of health four months later.

"He was the first American I had the chance to meet," says Ehda'a in a telephone interview from Baghdad. "He was very handsome with very nice eyes. He was trying his best to help." Blackwell had an idea about how she might find a job. There was some money set aside for clinics run jointly by army medics and local doctors, and there was a shortage of women doctors to examine women patients. In the end, the job did not work out - the army surgeon apparently did not want to work with an Iraqi - but at least it got the couple talking.

"It was kind of funny, I kind of flustered her," says Blackwell, at home outside Pensacola, Florida. "She was telling me [a story], like: 'They want to kidnap me' [referring to the fundamentalists in Qud] and I just kind of smiled and said, 'Well, I can't blame them.' She said: 'What?' and I said, 'I'd kidnap you.' I was just flirting with her. She got a little flustered and forgot how to speak English, and started talking to my interpreter in Arabic and he was translating for her, and then she started speaking English again. She was a little embarrassed. Open flirtation like that... well, it's a big no-no actually over there. But... it happened to work. That was basically it about how we met, and she just continued to visit every two to three days for the next four months."

Ehda'a would bring him food and talk to his friends. The way she tells it, it was as coy as a first encounter at the school gates. "After a few times we met, the translator was saying, 'What did you do to him? He spent all night asking about you and asking how to say [your] name.' "

For their first date, Blackwell took Ehda'a somewhere he knew would take her breath away - Saddam's palace. "It was a great day," says Ehda'a, in effusive English. "It was just like palaces of ancient ages." But she also felt sad. "Iraq is a very rich country and we in Iraq should live like everybody else, but Saddam took all the money because of his delusions of grandeur."

They talked about their families and found out that they had both been abandoned by their fathers as toddlers, and both were anxious to build stronger families. Blackwell's first marriage had collapsed and he had two daughters by two different women, but he insisted he was ready to start again.

Three months after their palace date, Blackwell - fed up with dating across the razor-wire - was already thinking about getting married. "It just felt like the right thing to do," he says now. "It was something that was more than us. I didn't want to give up something like that."

Ehda'a says simply: "We just fell in love. We couldn't help it. We are willing to do whatever we have to do."

That initially involved Blackwell arranging to see Ehda'a's mother and brother, asking their permission, and then converting to Islam in an Iraqi court. But the army was a tougher nut to crack. Blackwell's commanding officer in the First Armoured Division, Colonel Thad Hill, was not about to let him marry.

"I'd been pushing for a meeting with him to try and come up with some sort of compromise, but he kept blowing me," says Blackwell. "I did get to speak to the sergeant-major prior to the wedding. His reaction was somewhat racist - 'Have you thought about your lives together, what they eat, the clothes they wear, the way they worship' - talking about Muslims." Blackwell told the sergeant-major he had already converted to Islam. "Oh Jeez, he just about fell out of his chair. It wasn't very well received and he basically told me that he battalion commander felt the same way."

But Blackwell ignored the views of his superior officers and went ahead with his plans. He and Ehda'a arranged to marry in a small garden behind a restaurant in the Baghdad district of Wasiriyah, during a break in one of the groom's patrols. His fellow soldiers stood guard with their rifles and a heavy machine gun.

It all happened very fast. Ehda'a, in a floral dress, was so nervous that she offered Blackwell her right hand by mistake. Blackwell, who wore combat fatigues, claims to have taken it all in his stride. "You're already in Baghdad so you're in sensory overload as it is, so I don't think nervousness was ever a factor."

(Another soldier in Blackwell's unit, a 37-year-old corporal, Brett Dagen, announced he was going to marry too - a friend of Ehda'a's. The two couples exchanged vows side by side, but days later that marriage dissolved.)

When Col Hill found out about the marriage, he hit the roof, and threatened to court-martial Blackwell for putting his fellow soldiers in danger by giving away the time and place of the patrol. It is a charge the former sergeant fiercely denies. He argues that his daily patrol, checking on supplies at petrol stations, was already regular and predictable. He also says Ehda'a's family and the judge did not know the venue for the wedding until the last moment, when they were fetched by an interpreter. As for Ehda'a, he says, she is trusted to mingle with and translate for senior members of the occupation authority.

The army has refused to comment on the case, but under press scrutiny it withdrew the most serious charges against Blackwell, and issued a watered-down reprimand instead. But while Blackwell was tussling with the army, Ehda'a had to deal with an increasingly violent and hostile atmosphere in her neighbourhood. Blackwell describes one incident in which she was approached as she left his base by taxi. "Some guys pulled her over and got out, and said if they ever saw her come out of our compound again dressed the way she was they would kill her," he says. There were more incidents like that, and he pleaded with her to lock herself in her house, but she insisted on continuing to work as a translator. Many of Ehda'a's friends have rejected her or tried to convince her to end the marriage.

Blackwell's experience has left him bitterly disullusioned with both the army and the politicians who sent him to Baghdad. For him, the lies he says the army told about his wedding mirror the ones the nation was told about the war. "When I first joined the military I planned to stay in for life, and I always knew the government would - I don't want to say lie - maybe exaggerate some things or stretch the truth a little but I always thought it was for the better good of the people," he says. "But in this situation I don't think it was."

Now, at least, the couple hope their trials are almost over. Blackwell has negotiated his army discharge and Ehda'a has secured a visa as far as Jordan. The US state department has told them they might get a US visa in as little as a month.

As soon as they get to America, he is going to take his bride on a tour of some states, show her pictures of others, and let her choose where she would like to live. He thinks the Florida panhandle might be a little too "redneck" for her. He will study nutrition and she will get her US medical qualifications. And they are going to have another wedding, barefoot on the beach on Florida's Gulf coast.

"After the Iraquis are given sovereignty again we may see an increase in this sort of thing...."

Wonder how this convert of Islam is going to handle all his infidel relatives...like Mom, etc.

You must not have read this part. The Dems will love him.

I was having fun picturing him nude before I read he's a dillusioned nancy boy :O

OK, for some reason I thought you were male, but now I see you're either female, like me, or.... YIKES! :-P

Blackwell arranging to see Ehda'a's mother and brother, asking their permission, and then converting to Islam in an Iraqi court.

How many GI's in Vietnam converted to Buddhism in order to marry their Vietnamese war brides?

I have a bad habit of scanning things then reacting to them.

I thought this story would be interesting in as much as the cultural differences were being challenged and that is a big step in the right direction!

I was dissapointed to find upon further scutiny that this fellow is not in my camp.

My Bad!

Yep, she is the love of my life. BTW, this sort of thing is normal in wartime. Happens down throughout the history of the world. I know of at least five half Japanese families here in Middle Georgia that are a result of the American occupation of Japan after WW2. Also know a big ole half Vietnamese galoot with a big ole southern accent and Tony Lama boots who just loves Travis Tritt. ;)

You know the folks in our camp would wait to do the right thing and not disrespect the military. I suppose all these strict rules are because of the people they're dealing with.

Two marriages in the hopper.

Someday he'll figure out that you don't necessarily need to marry 'em just to sleep with 'em.

/me trying to figure out how and why someone goes through marriages so fast.

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