Posted on 03/09/2003 7:51:54 AM PST by SJackson
On a cold, sunny Saturday afternoon, a friend joins me for coffee in a quiet cafe in Washington, D.C. Wearing jeans and a Dallas Cowboys cap, he settles in and orders a latte. During the week, he works as a network administrator at an e-commerce company that survived the tech bust. On this day, though, he has agreed to talk to me about a far more difficult past.
"I was an American before I came here. God just accidentally gave birth to me in the wrong country," he said.
His name is Ali. Born in Baghdad in 1967, he grew up in a secular, middle-class Arab family, the youngest of three children. His father worked as a banker and his mother as a teacher.
He first encountered Americans at age 7, when Iraqi Airways contracted with Boeing Co. Boeing brought experts and engineers to Baghdad. Two American couples moved into townhouses down the street. Back then, Bugs Bunny cartoons played along with the original "Fugitive" (Richard Kimball), "Casper the Friendly Ghost," "Star Trek," the "Brady Bunch" and "Eight is Enough."
Ali was intrigued by America, and particularly by the Americans down the street.
"They were fun," he said.
After two years, the Americans left, and Iraqi television changed too. Russian cartoons replaced Bugs Bunny and Casper the Friendly Ghost. The president's deputy, Saddam Hussein, made more and more public appearances. One morning in 1979, the radio announced that the president had resigned and turned over power to Hussein. TV became all Hussein, all the time.
War broke out with Iran. Checkpoints sprang up throughout the city. Military patrols randomly seized recruits.
"They would stop men walking in the street, take them by force, put them in a car and send them to the training center," Ali said. His father was among the ones they took.
"Somebody came home and gave the keys to my older brother and said, `Your father has been taken to the training center. His car is parked in this area. Here are the keys.'"
Ali's father returned from two three-month tours of duty uninjured. Ali's older brother, also kidnapped by a patrol, was not so lucky. Iranian soldiers ambushed his unit. Bullets and shrapnel ripped through his abdomen, leaving him permanently disabled.
At Ali's high school, he and his classmates endured indoctrination visits from government employees who regularly lectured them on Hussein's Baath Party. Students obediently remained silent during those "talks," never asking a question or debating a point.
"Nobody questions the government in the Mideast," Ali said. "In the Mideast, government is God." The price for questioning is high, as Ali's family learned.
"My uncle's son-in-law was in the military," he said. "He was a practicing Muslim so he came under suspicion. They court-martialed and executed him. After that his entire family was black-marked. My uncle, aunt and cousins tried to escape. They were caught and sentenced to life in prison."
Although Ali's immediate family had not kept in touch with their uncle or cousins in years, they were black-marked by extension.
"Once you're black-marked, there are no job promotions, no scholarships, no study abroad, no future. Forget it," Ali said.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
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But there are interrogations--lots of interrogations. Neighbors in government uniform regularly called Ali's father over to party headquarters for inquiries. Ali's father was away on a trip when an official knocked on the door one day. Ali, the only man in the house, went instead.
"One of the guys at party headquarters owned the grocery store across the street," he said. "His sons and I were friends."
Authorities chatted casually with Ali, asking him about his uncle and cousins.
"`I haven't seen my uncle in 10 years,' I said. They found that hard to believe. They started to get more and more aggressive . . . They accused my family of being traitors, anti-government, bad people.
"Then one of them actually insulted my father, called him a coward. I got to the point where it's like, `I don't give a damn.' I stood up and tried to grab the guy who insulted my father."
Party headquarters wrote a report on his outburst, and the family came under more intense scrutiny. Despite the oppressive atmosphere in the city, neighbors and friends enjoyed happy moments.
"We'd lie out on our roofs in the summer and watch the stars," Ali said. "We'd sleep there all night." Sometimes Iranian pilots provided residents with unexpected fireworks displays in the evening.
"The Iranian pilots were so incompetent that they'd always misfire. People would stand at their doors or in the street and watch the light shows."
When Ali turned 18, he entered the engineering division at the University of Technology. The draft interrupted his studies just as the Iran-Iraq war was ending. Assigned to an army engineering unit, he worked on amphibious personnel carriers. On warm days, soldiers used the vehicles as platforms to dive into the Tigris River for a swim.
The military transferred his unit to the southern port city of Basra on the Persian Gulf to clear out river mines. His commander, injured during the war, behaved erratically, barking orders then forgetting them.
Troops began moving farther south. Ali and his unit waited for transportation to carry them and their amphibious vehicles. None came. "They forgot about us," he said. "The Iraqi army doesn't exactly have American military efficiency."
Then one morning over breakfast, the radio announced a military coup in Kuwait, Iraq's pretense for its invasion.
"They said the new leader had requested aid from Iraq," Ali said. "They said Iraq was going to send units to support him. Soldiers thought they were going to a military exercise."
The United States massed troops in Saudi Arabia and geared up for the Persian Gulf war. Ali and his abandoned unit listened to Voice of America, the BBC and U.S. military broadcasts from Saudi Arabia on a shortwave radio at night.
American air raids flew over Iraq. Ali threw on civilian clothes and deserted his unit. With the swift U.S. victory in Kuwait, he fled to an American military checkpoint.
Sent to the Artewiya refugee camp, he received a small stipend he used to buy a radio and an English-Arabic dictionary. Brushing up on the basic English he learned in high school, he listened regularly to Voice of America and interacted with U.S. troops and other English speakers in the camp. An American soldier gave him a copy of Car and Driver magazine.
As Ali's English improved, a Pakistani UN worker noticed and asked him to be a translator. He worked fourteen hours a day and received glowing letters of recommendation.
"Ali performed a difficult job under great pressure and, at times, with personal sacrifice," wrote Ellen Dumesnil, director of the United States/Joint Volunteer Agency Refugee Program. She arranged an Immigration and Naturalization Service interview to begin Ali's processing to live in the U.S.
Saudi soldiers frequently encouraged refugees to return home. Many did, tired of life in the camps. The Saudis transferred Ali and other refugees to the larger Rafha refugee camp.
"Rafha was so big it was more like a village," he said.
Ali continued to translate there, earning more written commendations.
Rumors spread that Iraqi intelligence had infiltrated the camp. A riot broke out one night. Saudi soldiers shot refugees to suppress it, ordering the rest to stay in their tents.
"We heard shooting in the distance, but we remained still," Ali said.
Finally, in July 1993, Ali got his official date of departure to the U.S. He packed a small blue suitcase with a few pairs of underwear, shirts and pants, and stuffed $10 in his pocket. He boarded a plane to New York's Kennedy International Airport.
He believed God had accidentally given birth to him in the wrong country. Now the error was corrected.
When Iraq is liberated we need to get the truth out. About the horrors that Hussein has perpertrated and the help he got from the eurowhiners.
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