Posted on 11/20/2004 7:55:08 PM PST by saquin
EVERY room in Tahseen Hassan’s Baghdad home is dominated by the simple but tasteful touch of his wife Margaret. This was where she always felt happy and relaxed.
Last week the house was quiet as he tried to come to terms with the news that, after being held hostage for more than three weeks, she had been murdered.
“That was her chair,” he said, pointing to the empty cottage armchair in the living room, her books by the side table and her reading glasses where she left them the night before she was abducted.
“The house feels cold and empty. I miss her everywhere in this house. I miss her in the study, in her living room, in her kitchen, everywhere,” he said, looking up at the staircase from the library to the bedrooms. “I keep on thinking that she might be upstairs or in another room.”
Tahseen had shown immense self-control in a number of television appeals for her release after Margaret, the 59-year-old local director of the charity Care International, was kidnapped on October 19.
Now, however, he choked with emotion as he said: “I am totally destroyed and distraught. I think of her all the time and it is killing me. I never thought I would lose her this way. Her loss is immense for me. My heart aches with pain and I miss her so very much.”
When he took a private telephone call in the living room — her favourite room — the quiet house echoed with his heart-wrenching sobs. Recovering himself, he reappeared a few minutes later with a mask of self-composure.
“If only someone would give me news on whether she was dead or alive. Not knowing what has happened to her just breaks my heart,” he said. “If only they would give her back to me, dead or alive, so that she and I can rest in peace.”
For Tahseen, Margaret was more than a widely loved charity worker. She was his wife of 32 years, his “twin soul”. They met in 1970 in London, where he worked as station manager for Iraq’s national airline. He was nine years older.
“She was at the airport waiting for a friend of hers to arrive from Australia,” he recalled with a smile. “I just saw her and asked her if I could have a coffee with her while she waited. We talked a bit and then I started to see her.”
They were married in London, and when Tahseen’s posting ended two years later she insisted on returning with him to Iraq. She worked for several years as an English teacher at the British Council and, at the same time, she converted to Islam, learnt fluent Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.
After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the British Council closed its doors in Baghdad, she began working for Care International, eventually becoming its local head.
“She was the only humanitarian organisation that remained,” Tahseen said. “Margaret was a very dedicated woman as well as loving and caring, and she loved the Iraqi people and loved to help them. Saddam’s regime never interfered in her work.”
She feared that the American occupation in 2003 would add to the suffering of the Iraqi people, he said. “What she feared most has indeed happened in Iraq and has caused so much damage to this country, and yet she insisted on remaining to continue helping the schools, hospitals and disabled. She would pay from her own pocket sometimes for someone’s treatment or to help a family.
“She was a unique woman, and I do not say that because she was my wife but because all she wanted to do was to help the people. She was generous with her money towards helping them, totally unmaterialistic and driven by her love for her work, even though she ate little and was of small build.”
“She was a good woman. She was of a strong character as a woman, stronger than me in many ways even though I am the man, and she taught me many things. Mainly how to love unconditionally and how to be loyal and honest to people.”
He said she would return home on occasions and cry over the suffering she encountered. As the security situation deteriorated, he became fearful for her safety, but she insisted on remaining even when her family in Britain pleaded with her to leave the country.
“I asked her to carry her Iraqi ID at all times,” Tahseen said, “in case she was stopped — that she should show them she was an Iraqi, which she was in every sense of the word. But despite that she was kidnapped. I told her so many times that this country had turned into a mess and that she was a soft target, but she refused to leave.”
Days after her abduction he received a call on his mobile phone asking for the phone number and address of Care International’s headquarters. He refused, thinking it was a crank call. It was only later that he noticed the call had come from Margaret’s mobile and realised that it must have been one of her kidnappers speaking.
He waited at home every day for news. Then, 12 days ago, he received word that the Al-Jazeera television network had received a video of a woman’s execution. He was invited to go to its office in Qatar to see the tape but refused.
“I couldn’t go and watch a tape of my wife being murdered. I just couldn’t,” he said. Margaret’s brother went instead and described it to him.
“Apparently it was a 2.2 calibre bullet,” said Tahseen. “It breaks the spinal cord . . . damage on entry . . . Her mouth was taped, her eyes blindfolded . . . her head covered in some way . . . the bullet was fired at the back of her head . . . she slumped to the front . . . there was a sigh from her . . . it all happened and finished in about one minute.
“He told me he was certain it was Margaret, but I have a feeling she might still be alive despite what everyone has said about her death and what they have seen. I must keep — a person must have hope in life.”
Desperate for a call with news of his wife’s whereabouts or directions to her body, he has not left their home since news of the tape surfaced. He clings to the hope that, although Margaret was no actress and would most likely have refused to enact her own death for a video to please her kidnappers, she might have been forced to do so and could well still be alive.
“Everyone thinks she’s dead but I still have some hope,” he said. “I miss her presence, chatting with her, sitting with her. She was my second soul.”
He said he had managed to maintain his composure throughout the weeks, making appeals to his wife’s kidnappers, because that is how she would have wanted him to behave.
“I had to for her sake. She would not want me to behave in any other way. I am certain if the roles were reversed this is how she would personally behave. I know she would want me to be strong for her and so I have tried to be so,” he said.
But alone now, Tahseen cries and turns to the Koran for comfort. “I read it out loud for her soul and for mine. I cry and sometimes that relieves me. I am not ashamed of that, for what is a human being but a bundle of emotional nerves?”
While he insisted he would never lose faith in his religion, he found the people who had been carrying out such killings in the name of Islam repellent.
His eyes wandered towards the chair where Margaret would sit in the living room at the end of the day, either watching television or reading a book when nothing on TV was of interest to her. He would join her there.
“We would talk about work, but without either one interfering in the other’s,” Tahseen remembers. “Margaret devoted herself to her work and to the people in Iraq, whereas running the house and a travel agency was my territory. She had all the freedom to carry on with her work. I never interfered in it and neither did she in mine.
“I never expected that one of these days I would lose her so quickly like this. I cannot bear to be here without her. If she is dead I am not staying in this house. Her stamp is everywhere. It feels so cold and empty without her.
“I will find somewhere else . . . far away from anything near the Middle East, Arab or Muslim.”
stupid of her to "convert" .... much good it did her. Her husband should have wise up and converted ...
wised up
Oh, yes, it's been so much worse since Saddam was bounced. Then again, those plastic shredders are getting a much needed break.
Very sad. You have to hope that they recover the body, so he can at least say good bye to his wife.
They did recover the body. Margaret Hassan was the armless, legless body that was found in the streets of Fallujah. They said that half the head was gone. What a tragedy.
Heartbreaking.
Are they sure? This article, at least, implies that they have not.
I'm fairly certain. They did DNA tests. For her family's sake I hope not.
what is a human being but a bundle of emotional nerves?”
Sometimes that's what keeps us going, but that is not at all what we are made of.
God bless both of them. It's a most horrendous loss.
I pray he finds some comfort.
No one deserves to die at the hand of these haters...
Yes, and isn't it obvious to anyone who has eyes to see, that wherever there is Muslim rule, there is torture and death. Catholics and "right wing" Christians are not the ones rounding up non-believers and severing their heads and limbs while being videotaped.
Islam, in its pure, uncompromised and undiluted practice, is NOT a peaceful religion.
This was a very good woman who was murdered by very, very evil men. All she ever did was help people and she was terrorized and killed for it. My heart goes out to her husband.
We HAVE to win this war and ELIMINATE every damn terrorist over there. They cannot be allowed to get away with such abject evil.
Interesting.
Her husband can always grab a gun, go to Iraq where it is warm, and deal the MFs who killed his wife.
There are very intersting articles on the news wires about Holland specifically, and the EU in general, wringing their hands about Muslims in their midst who have immigrated, but not assimilated into European society, thus destroying Dutch and European culture. Muslims really do believe in achieving an Islamic world--by force if necessary. There is no such thing as peace through "tolerance." The Dutch, and the rest of Europe, are finally awakening to this fact.
Mike, I think Bunny is right. The body that was hacked up was Mrs. Hasson.
The article does sound mixed up though. Almost like they took two sets of notes, written three weeks apart and merged them.
The article is weird, but John Howard of Australia said it was her and one of our troops that had to photograph the body was quoted as saying they were pretty positive it was her.
Maybe I can find a link.
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