Posted on 03/23/2003 6:52:00 AM PST by NewHampshireDuo
As soon as the television showed missiles falling over Iraq Wednesday night, Khalid Al-Baidhani jumped from his living room couch and charged up the stairs of his Portland apartment.
"Becky, Becky, wake up!" he shouted to his wife. "It's happening!"
The United States had opened attack on his home country, and Al-Baidhani couldn't have been happier. Like thousands of Iraqi refugees nationwide, Al-Baidhani wants to see Saddam Hussein ousted and Iraq adopt a true democracy.
"God willing, the dark days will be gone soon," said Al-Baidhani, a machine operator who has family in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, located in the south. "I am sure Iraqi people are capable of changing the face of history."
Among Iraqi refugees nationwide, feelings about a U.S.-led invasion are far from universal. But many have voiced their support. Hundreds have volunteered as translators and guides for the federal government. Some, including Al-Baidhani, have agreed to interviews with FBI agents seeking intelligence for U.S. forces in Iraq, despite the concerns of immigrant and Arab-American advocacy groups.
A wiry man of 35 who wears jogging suits and an easy smile, Al-Baidhani praises U.S. intervention. He said it's the only way exiles can reunite with relatives they have not seen since leaving Iraq.
He hopes only that American troops don't pull out of the region as quickly as they did after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Their absence, he said, gave Saddam unchecked power to punish those in the largely Shiite south who rebelled against his centrally-based Sunni regime.
"The government came back with heavy weapons and crushed our uprising and started killing everybody," Al-Baidhani said.
During the rebellions, Al-Baidhani, the youngest child of a well-to-do businessman, watched from his front door one bright morning in March 1991 as soldiers rounded up 12 young men, then shot them on a street corner. Al-Baidhani, who had joined in protests against Saddam, feared for his life.
"I went mad," he said. "I thought I would be next."
He left within days, walking through the desert with eight other young men to find asylum in bordering Saudi Arabia. Only days later his brother was jailed for attempting to leave the Iraqi army and hasn't been seen since.
Another brother later was murdered by unknown assailants.
Nearly 12 years later, Al-Baidhani is optimistic that casualties will be slim. But he can't help but worry about his family. What if the "smart" bombs backfire on civilians? What if Saddam uses chemical warfare?
Al-Baidhani has tried calling relatives every day since war broke, but phone lines were dead. So he watches CNN and MSNBC into the early hours of the morning, hoping for word about his home.
He sees people on the news who say that diplomacy, not bombs, could depose Saddam. That President Bush is more concerned about controlling Iraq's oil wealth than freeing Iraqis from a dictator.
Al-Baidhani appreciates those opinions - "this a free country" - but disagrees. He said Bush is "the first and only president to raise his voice for human rights." And he doesn't care if U.S. interests do lie partly in his native country's oil fields.
"The people don't need the oil as much as they need freedom, food and medicine," he said.
He is grateful that he has all that in the United States; it was a long hard journey to get here.
After fleeing from Iraq in 1991, he lived for five years in the dusty refugee camps of Saudi Arabia, where guards beat Iraqis who asked for extra water, or got too close to the main gate.
Miserable, Al-Baidhani made frequent attempts to contact refugee resettlement agencies by getting permission to walk to their offices hours away.
Finally, a sponsor helped him resettle in Fort Worth, Texas. Because of his fluent English, he spent his initial months in the United States serving as an interpreter for the refugee workers.
But he quickly grew weary of big city life and low-wage jobs that were a poor fit for his college degree in chemistry. After a little over a year he got into his car and drove to Maine, home to an Iraqi friend whom he had met at a refugee camp.
He soon found work at H P Hood's milk processing plant in Portland, cleaning machines and filling in for machine operators on their breaks. It was not a job he had planned on, but one that he quickly grew to love.
In spring 1999, he met Rebecca Smith, a soft-spoken bank teller from Portland and mother of two young boys. Sharing the same laid-back personality and love of boxing and soccer, they began to date. By year's end, they were married in a traditional Shiite wedding. Now the couple have two children, Karar, 2, and Laila, 1.
As happy as he is, his past still haunts him.
"While I'm driving, I feel that somebody wants to hurt me. I still have nightmares in my sleep. I can't get over the things I've seen in my life," he said.
He asked his wife to remove from the walls framed pictures of his relatives, including dozens of nieces and nephews he's never met. They made the years of separation too difficult to bear.
Everything will change, however, Al-Baidhani said, if Saddam is routed from power. His family would be on the next plane to Iraq.
Al-Baidhani wants to pay respects to his father, who died just five months ago, financially embattled in the fallout from the 1991 war. And his mother wants to see his children and wife.
"Even if I need to walk," he said, nodding his head, "I will go."
Staff Writer Josie Huang can be contacted at 791-6364 or at: jhuang@pressherald.com
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