I really did have plenty of reasons to label the members of the Ba’ath Party ravens that brought ill fortune. But that helped no one, not me either. For two years I worked with banned parties. I wasn’t a member of any but I did help where and when I could. Distributed posters, secret letters, forged documents. Tried to persuade the young men round us to join. I was motivated, above all, by rage. But a little by my naivety too. I hadn’t the slightest clue what I was risking. Just knew I wanted to work against these ravens. I often think, nowadays, about this stupidity that changed my life. But every time I also think that if history ever repeats itself, I’ll still do the same.
Two years later, in March, I heard that the police had arrested Qasim. He was a joiner and worked in a Shi’ite party. I knew him very well. Yes, I’d already even worked for him. We’d been in the same class for a year at grammar school. I once distributed a flyer for him with the slogan ‘Liberation is our goal’. After a few months, Qasim was executed. I was now afraid but no longer afraid that he’d told the authorities about me. Moreover, I never had the feeling I could end up in jail. Throughout, I tried not to think of what had happened to Qasim and I stopped meeting the younger men.
At the same time, our large family had a new addition. Saber — the child of my sister Karima and my friend Sadiq. Karima was a teacher and Sadiq a lecturer in literature at the University of Baghdad. They were, so to speak, my actual family. I spent most of my spare time with them. Sadiq was a great friend of mine. Together, we read works banned by the government and listened to music declared sinful. Three months after Saber was born, I found myself in jail.
Qasim had, indeed, not betrayed me. It was another prisoner, who knew Qasim, me and many others, who had given them a lot of names. As a result, at the end of November that year, the police rounded up forty-one people. The boy who’d revealed our names worked as a police spy for a year before finally — as I later learnt — fleeing to Iran. After Saddam was overthrown, I discovered the guy again on Iraqi TV. In the media there, he was celebrated as a fighter and politician. In Iran, and now also in Iraq, he’d managed to end up in important political positions. His face is on Iraqi TV every day. His mugshot on the billboards in the streets.
In jail, there were neither heavenly nor earthly paths. Only walls, hunger, lice, torture and instruments of torture, rats, prisoners, ghosts, guards, police magistrates, dampness, skin diseases, fear, struggles for survival. . Many of my friends died while being tortured or of hunger, and their sad faces accompany me to this day. I, though, somehow survived. It took a long time but at some point I was released.
The day after my release, Karima said to me, ‘The child’s face didn’t radiate positively in our lives.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He sent you into jail. He must have been born under a bad star.’
‘That’s superstition. Don’t talk nonsense!’
I felt a bit strange, though. Of course, it couldn’t be Saber bring me bad luck. At the time, I was less interested in superstitious fate stuff, more in how I could get far away from Iraq as fast as possible. Despite that, the words of the fortune-teller haunted me — he had predicted I would leave Iraq. It seemed he had been right.
Shortly before I fled Iraq, Karima became pregnant again with her second son, Basem. Two months after he was born, I found out I could go to Jordan. My sister laughed on the phone: ‘Basem’s got a good kick! He sent you far away! He was born under a good star!’
‘You’re mad!’ I replied. She laughed and laughed, could hardly stop.
But my escape to Jordan was actually an escape into a second hell. Those Iraqis who could flee to Western states at least found security for life and limb. In other Arab countries, such as Jordan, life was hardly any different from that at home under Saddam. Not only because almost the same kind of dictatorship existed there but also because many Arab peoples thought Saddam a hero. A symbol of the cohesion of the Arab nations and their power. They therefore viewed the exiled Iraqis, especially the opposition members, as traitors. Iraqi exiles consequently lived in misery and fear, also of their fellow countrymen. For, in the neighbouring states at that time, countless spies and members of the Iraqi secret service were up to tricks.
I remember, in Jordan in the nineties, an unwritten law existed whereby an Iraqi could be deported to his homeland if a Jordanian accused him of a crime. For that reason, many Iraqi opposition members, who had continued to be politically active in exile, suddenly disappeared. Completely apolitical people — who only wanted to live in peace — were suddenly no longer about.
Where else could you flee? Back then, only a few countries remained to which a mere mortal of Iraqi background could travel. Not a single Western state would give an Iraqi a visa. Plus, to get to the West, illegally, cost around ten thousand dollars. Where was I to get that kind of money? So I went to Libya.
In Libya, I lived like a down-and-out, had some work every now and again, a place to sleep every now and again. After I’d been in that sandy, dismal country for about a year, Karima came to Libya with her family. They too were fed up with Iraq. They too were trying to make a new start. They found an apartment in Misde, a little town in the desert. At the arse-end of the world.
For me, exile was somewhat more bearable. Though I was working in various other towns, between five hundred and a thousand kilometres away from Misde sometimes, I went to visit them twice a month and spent the time with the children. Karima cooked her best dishes, specially for me, and told me news she’d gathered from her women friends. I loved the way she told stories, the kind of passion she had. As she sat at home all day every day, looking after the children and, thus, not leading a very varied life, she was a master in making every banality sound exciting and important. I call this ability ‘the imagination of Arabian housewives’.
Sadiq, lecturing in literature at the teacher-training college in Misde, could be depended on for the most recent books. With him, I could always discuss the most interesting topics, about which not everyone in this dull sea of Arabian sand could, or would, speak. My nephew Basem was very like me. He always said he wanted to be a poet like his uncle. He was soon known to, and popular with, all the Iraqis who lived in the neighbourhood. He had an incredible talent for mimicking people and bestowed us with many relaxed and cheerful hours, in which — for a short while — we could forget the misery round us. Saber, on the other hand, was more like his father. Calmer, more serious, more of an intellectual. At school, he always had the best marks and sometimes asked questions that I could understand and answer only after some serious thought. Karima’s family was my oasis in the Sahara, a substitute homeland.