Escape from Saddam (25 page)

“I don’t know,” he said, his face a picture of innocence. “I’m an American citizen and my girlfriend is American. I don’t understand why we’ve been stopped.” Even then I don’t think I believed him, and I was right—sometime later he let his cover story drop and admitted that, even though he really was an American citizen, he had been trying to smuggle this girl to New Zealand. More important, however, he had managed to sneak his mobile phone into the cell so that he could phone the U.S. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur and alert American officials to his presence. But he didn’t know the number and had no way of finding out.

I grabbed my opportunity. “I can help you,” I told him. “Let me borrow your phone, and I can call people in England to find the number of the UK High Commission for me and the U.S. Consulate for you.”

By now we had attracted the attention of certain others in the cell, and I became aware of them eyeing the American’s phone. No doubt everyone would be wanting to use it, and as he handed it over, I noticed that the battery life was limited. We couldn’t let any of the others get their hands on it and use up the precious time that was left. I just had to hope that nobody would be so desperate as to try to wrestle the thing away from me.

I used the phone to find the numbers I needed, and then called the High Commission. I explained to the woman who answered what our situation was, and she promised to see what she could do. “But I doubt we’ll be able to do anything for the Iraqis in your group,” she told me. “They’re out of our jurisdiction.”

I had known it was unlikely that they would be able to help my family, but hearing the words spoken so firmly made my heart sink. Still, if I could at least get myself out, perhaps I could do something for them. I was useless just stuck in there.

We waited some more.

Eventually, after we had been four days in that stinking cell, I heard my name being shouted: there was a call for me outside the cell. I was allowed out, with the eyes of all the other prisoners boring into me, and taken to a telephone. Someone from the British High Commission was waiting to speak to me.

“We can’t guarantee to influence what the Malaysians are doing,” I was told. “We can only try.”

“But what about my family?” I asked.

“There’s nothing we can do for any of them,” the British official stated with what sounded to me like a note of boredom in his voice. “They will have to stay here and wait for the Iraqi representative to come.”

“There must be something else we can do,” I pleaded.

I knew from my conversations with the Iraqis in the cell that the representative came only once a month. And when he did arrive, all he would do was take names and reprimand the inmates. “Why did you do this?” he would demand of them. “Don’t you realize what a reputation you are creating for Iraqis in this country? They’re not impressed back home with what you’re doing…” And then he would disappear; what would happen to my family was anyone’s guess.

When the call finished, I put my head in my hands and tried to fight off the feeling of furious frustration that was surging through me. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the task-force officer who had led me from the cell: he had been standing close by while I had the conversation and clearly understood what was going on. I prepared myself to be told to get back into the cell, but I was surprised when he spoke. “Your family,” he asked me softly in faltering English, “did they have any documents other than the passports they were stopped with?”

I looked around nervously, unsure whether this was a trap; but I was in a corner and had no option other than to tell the truth.

“Yes,” I admitted. “They had Iraqi passports.”

“Where are they now?”

“I shoved them down the toilet,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Listen to me. You
have
to get those passports back; otherwise your family will rot in a Kuala Lumpur prison. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen before.”

“How can I?” I asked desperately.

“Leave it to me,” the guard said. “I’ll have to take you back to the cell now, but I’ll try to call you out later.”

He led me back to the cell, where I continued my wait—even more scared this time, and more frustrated at the thought that in getting rid of my family’s Iraqi passports I may have ruined any chance they had of getting out of this place. In any case, the likelihood of the passports still being there was vanishingly small. What was more, my opinion of the Malaysians was at rock bottom, and I didn’t expect this guard to be true to his word.

He proved me wrong. A few hours later he let me out again and led me to the toilets down which I had stuffed the passports. When we arrived there, I stepped into the first cubicle and gave thanks first that I had caused the toilets to overflow and so remain unused, and second that nobody had seen fit to fix them for four days. Without hesitation I plunged my arm into the water and felt inside the U-bend. Something was there. Persistently I teased it out and with something between astonishment and relief pulled out a document. It was saturated, of course, and smeared; but the photograph was intact and it was clear what it was: my mother’s Iraqi passport. Quickly I retrieved the others, which were in the same condition. I shook what water I could from them, then dried them off underneath the electric hand-dryer on the wall. The task-force officer took the passports from me and placed them in little plastic bags as evidence.

Then I was led back to the cell.

With mixed feelings I sat down again next to my brother. In handing the passports over to the Malaysian guard, I knew what would happen: my family would be deported. My gamble was this: as there was no direct flight back to Iraq, and as they had entered Malaysia from Jordan, I hoped that the Malaysians would deport them back to Amman. At least then they would be on Middle Eastern soil, where they could speak the language and hopefully persuade—or bribe—the Jordanians to let them stay. The alternative was, as the Malaysian guard had made so plain, rotting here in a putrid jail. I couldn’t let that happen.

Before long, Rachel and I were released. We were informed that no charges were to be brought against us and that we were free to go back to London.

“I’m staying,” I told our captors defiantly. What else could I say? My family was still here, and I couldn’t desert them. We took a room at the airport hotel, where we cleaned ourselves up; but every time the water splashed on my skin or my eyes glanced at the soft, fresh bedding, great anger welled up in me. How could I be here while my family was in those squalid, cramped, and stinking conditions? They were people too—surely it was time they were treated as such. I visited them four or five times a day, bringing with me the hotel food that I didn’t have the stomach to eat and begging the guards to give it to them.

After a couple of days, I was told they were to be interviewed. I was allowed to act as their interpreter but was forbidden from having any other kind of conversation with them. One by one they were taken in front of Malaysian officials and instructed to make statements. They told the truth: about their imprisonment, about their journey through Kurdistan, Turkey, and Syria, about the fake Spanish passports. And then they were told what would happen to them. They had a choice: either their case would be taken before a Malaysian judge—which would take weeks and would probably result in a further spell of imprisonment, as there was no asylum in Malaysia—or they could pay a fine and be deported back to Jordan. The fine amounted to $750 each. Money they didn’t have.

I needed to find $2,250. I was stuck in Malaysia, and all I had was a debit card, a credit card, and the ability to withdraw £200 a day. Immediately I got on the phone to my bank in England and begged them to increase my overdraft and my withdrawal limits. Rachel and I cobbled together all the money we could—it took two days—and in the end we just about managed to put our hands on the amount we needed. We took it back to the cells and handed it over to a sneering official. He sat at his table, handed us a receipt for the money, put on a pair of latex gloves, removed the Iraqi passports from their bags, and stamped them. Then, having placed them in a plastic bag, he held them out to us at arm’s length as though they were diseased. His aloof silence spoke with an eloquence that I’m sure he could not have managed with mere words:
So it’s come to this for you people,
he seemed to say.
Your lives have come to this.
There was no sympathy, no indication that he knew what my family was running from or what they were being sent back to, and there was no point trying to educate him. I simply took the passports from him and left him to his delusions.

And so, finally, the time came for my mother, sister, and brother to be deported. Still we weren’t allowed any direct contact with them. All Rachel and I could do was wait behind a glass screen at their gate so that we could see them one last time, even if we weren’t allowed to talk to them. When they arrived, the sight pierced my heart. My mother, brother, and sister were handcuffed like criminals and led by armed officials to their gate. The Western clothes that they had worn for their journey now looked like a cruel, ragged parody. My mother looked even more bedraggled and beaten down than when she had first arrived. As she passed us, she refused to look me in the eye, and I didn’t blame her as she shuffled past. I hung my head, and Rachel put her arm around me. My sister saw us and managed a half smile. “Good-bye, Sarmed,” she mouthed. “Good-bye, my brother.” She followed her mother.

Finally I saw Ahmed. He was walking slowly, and when he saw me, his tired and worried face struggled into a broad smile.
Don’t worry about us,
it seemed to say.
We’ll be okay.
And then, just as I had told him to, I saw him hold his head up high and stick his chest out proudly. He nodded at me, I returned the gesture, and he walked on, disappearing from my sight as my mother and sister had just done.

Walking into whatever the future held for them, without me.

CHAPTER
15

THE GENUINE MAN

M
y family arrived back in Amman, where the Jordanian officials took one look at the state of their passports and said flatly, “You can’t enter our country on these documents.” No arguments. No bribes. No chances.

They were loaded, under armed guard, onto a bus and taken to the Iraqi border, where they were dumped. The border police were unimpressed with the condition of these pitiful refugees and their messed-up documents, so they threw them straight into a holding cell to await the next military transport back to Baghdad. There they were placed in a police holding cell to await trial. They were there for several days, undergoing the brutal treatment that they surely expected, before going up in front of a judge.

The court hearing in Baghdad was a joke, but what happened wasn’t funny. The courthouse looked serious enough from the outside—an imposing building with a set of scales emblazoned on the front next to the Iraqi flag and some of Saddam’s words of wisdom on the subject of justice. But there were no courtrooms or juries inside, nothing to ensure that the proper processes were observed; there was simply a bare office with a judge sitting at a table to mete out whatever justice he saw fit according to his whim. What terror my family was feeling as they waited silently outside to hear their fate, I can only imagine. Perhaps, after spending so much time in prison cells across the world, they were simply looking forward to knowing how they were to be dealt with. You find hidden strength at times like this: that, at least, I had learned.

My brother was called first. The room was sparse: an old desk, a flag, a fan, a picture of the leader, and a radio playing Arabic music. On the desk was a pile of paperwork, and by the judge’s side was a secretary, scribbling notes as the proceedings progressed. The judge, in his late fifties, sat there in casual clothes, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t look up as my brother walked in. Why would he? This was not a person who had come in front of him; it was just another criminal to be processed.

“What’s your name?” the judge asked.

My brother responded quietly.

The judge was handed his charge sheet. He asked no more questions—just glanced at the sheet of paper in the most cursory manner. “Three years’ prison,” he announced briskly before taking another drag on his cigarette. “If you pay a fine, perhaps I will reduce it.” But my brother had no money, so the negotiations could not proceed. He was taken away.

The same treatment was then inflicted on my sister and finally on my mother. The sentences they received were identical.

All three of them were escorted to Abu Ghraib prison.

Rachel and I
returned to England the same day my mother, brother, and sister were deported. It felt good to breathe the damp English air and to be treated like a real person once more. But as we returned to Leeds, I felt crushed by the weight of my failure. My family was back where they started, and I had to shoulder the responsibility. I knew I would have to try again, that I would have to raise money to bribe them out of mistreatment in Abu Ghraib and then pay smugglers to start a second attempt at escape. But money was scarce now, and all avenues seemed closed to me.

My first instinct was to get in touch with the people who had sold me the bogus passports and try to force them to give me the money back. I tried calling, but the number had been changed, of course. What did I have to lose, though? I knew where they lived, so I boarded a flight to Germany to try to track them down. The last time I had sailed through German immigration without any difficulty; this time it was not so easy. The official who looked at my travel document was more on the ball: “We don’t recognize this document,” he told me. “You can’t enter.”

I used all the charm I could muster to wheedle my way in. This is a legitimate travel document, I told the German officials. It is recognized everywhere. But they went to check with high-ranking immigration people; they even checked the wording of German immigration legislation. The document wasn’t recognized, they repeated. I couldn’t enter Germany.

I started to argue with one of the officials. I had been to Germany before, I explained; desperate that I not be forced to leave. I showed documents that proved I had entered the country in the past. The official raised an eyebrow. “So,” he said, “not only are you trying to enter illegally, you have already been here illegally…” He turned to some of his assistants. “Bring him in,” he told them cryptically. “Let him enjoy the hospitality of our lovely motels. I hope you enjoy your stay.”

Only when they locked me up did I understand what they were talking about.

I was questioned and searched more thoroughly—and intimately—than I had ever been searched before. I was left in a cell overnight, and in the morning I was handcuffed and escorted to a military vehicle with a flashing light. The van took me to a plane bound for England and I was ushered, on foot and under armed guard, into the plane. Only when I was sitting in my seat were the handcuffs removed, and with the suspicious eyes of all the passengers on me, I was deported. There was no way I was going to get that money back.

In Baghdad, Saad still had some of the William Hill funds left, and he was determined to use it to get my mother, brother, and sister out of Abu Ghraib. Inside that awful place, there was a religious course where inmates were instructed to memorize huge swaths of the Koran. They were tested and had to speak it out loud, and if successful would be given a full pardon for whatever crime had sent them there, as long as their crimes were not of a horrific or political nature. Unsurprisingly, it was almost impossible for inmates to get themselves into this incredibly popular course.

Saad was unable to use the William Hill money to bribe corrupt officials to release my family, but he
was
able to buy their way in to the course. And so, after suffering the inhuman indignities of that place for longer than anyone deserved, they were set free. But as ever, we did not know how long it would be before someone came for them once more. Their situation hadn’t changed: someone still had to try to get them out of the country.

My finances were at rock bottom. So were Rachel’s. Aside from what I had sent to Saad, I still had a tiny amount of the William Hill money, but not nearly enough to pay smugglers to get all three of them over to the UK, and I knew now that I couldn’t risk trying to arrange things myself. This had to be done by the professionals, as and when I managed to earn the money. My mother, brother, and sister would have to come out one by one. With what was left of the money, and by scrimping and saving, I managed to put together enough for the first attempt, and in April 2001, about three months after my return from Germany, it was decided that my sister would leave first.

While the secret and illicit arrangements were being made, I could concentrate on nothing else. The sense of apprehension I felt could not have been more intense had I been the one who was making the escape attempt, but I had to try to keep things as normal as possible; otherwise I would have gone mad. I still had my Saturday job at a big department store in Leeds—I needed the money now more than ever, after all—and one Saturday I was going about my business in the store when, across the floor, I saw a face I recognized. It was my former boss from William Hill. He was gazing around the department as though looking for something, or someone, so I put my head down and tried to remain inconspicuous in an attempt to shake off the cloak of paranoia that had suddenly descended on me. Before long, however, I heard a voice behind me that made me start.

“Lewis!”

I slowly turned to confront him, fully prepared for what I thought was about to happen. But when I looked at him, I was surprised. There was a big, friendly smile on his face—he seemed genuinely happy to see me. “When you left,” he boomed, “we had to employ an army of number-crunchers to do your work for you!” I smiled awkwardly. We chatted for a few minutes and then he left, clearly unaware of what I had been up to. For myself, I felt a surge of relief: it looked as if I had some more time.

Saad made arrangements for the first leg of my sister’s escape from Baghdad. He found another Kurdish smuggler and arranged a price for delivery out of Iraq. Marwa took the same route as last time, through northern Iraq and into Kurdistan and then Turkey. From there, I arranged with somebody in the UK for her to travel in the back of a truck to Dover, where she crossed over using an Austrian refugee’s travel document, probably sold to smugglers by the original owner. It was a slow business—probably more painfully slow for those of us waiting to hear good news than it was for her, distracted as she was by her nerves and her fear. To be deported back to Iraq once was bad enough; she couldn’t risk things going wrong again.

She succeeded. The thrill of excitement I felt when I took the call to say she needed me to receive her at UK immigration was more wonderful than I can express. I rushed down there and took her in my arms, holding her for what seemed like hours in an embrace that I didn’t want to end. The last time I had seen her had been in the airport in Kuala Lumpur. Then she had the haunted expression of a person who had had all the fight sucked out of her, who was resigned to the fact that she was going to meet an unknown and unwanted fate. Now that she had claimed asylum, however, all that fell from her. I remember thinking what a remarkable effect freedom has on people.

More to the point, we had now established that the route my sister had taken actually worked. All that remained was to raise the money to pay smugglers to get my brother and mother out, because their joy at knowing that my sister was safe was tempered by the constant fear of a knock at the door. But we were nearly there. I could almost taste the success, and in my mind I constantly replayed our imagined, joyous reunion on British soil.

Safe.

It was so close.

Not long after
my sister arrived, I was out walking and I bumped into another familiar face: the recruitment consultant who had found me the job at William Hill. Something about the way he looked at me as he approached made me feel uncomfortable, but it would have been rude to turn away when I had so obviously noticed him. Besides, it was probably just my paranoia talking.

“Lewis,” he nodded knowingly at me, “how are you doing?”

“Okay,” I replied, not wanting to have to explain all my troubles in the street.

“So tell me, what have you been up to?”

I shrugged. “The usual.” Something told me that I wanted this conversation to finish as quickly as possible.

“You know, it’s a real coincidence,” he continued persistently. “Someone came to the office yesterday asking about you.”

I fell silent.

“He said he was an investigator.”

I smiled nervously. “Don’t be silly.” I tried to laugh it off. “What would an investigator want with me? It’s not like I get up to much worth investigating.”

“Maybe not,” he said thoughtfully. “But be careful, Lewis,” he warned before going on his way. “He looked like he meant business.”

I ran all the way back home. I had expected this, of course, but that didn’t stop it coming as a shock to learn that someone was on my trail. I couldn’t be put away now, not with my family still stuck in Baghdad. In a state of paranoia I shut myself in a room and reformatted the hard drive of my laptop computer. I don’t know what I thought anyone would find there, but it comforted me somewhat to feel as if I was doing something to cover my tracks.

And then everything went quiet. Ostensibly Rachel and I went about our daily lives, but I felt as though a sword was hanging over me by a thread. As often as I could I tried to speak to Saad and, in our roundabout, coded way, give him the message that I so desperately had to impart: time is slipping away. We
have
to get them out, and soon.

One Saturday two or three months later I received a phone call while on duty at the store. It was security.

“Lewis,” one of the security guards greeted me amicably, “could you pop down to see us for a minute?”

“Sure,” I replied. I assumed I had forgotten to remove a security tag from an item of clothing and someone had complained—it was easily done—so I sauntered down to the security offices. The door was opened by a large female security officer of whom I had always been rather wary but who on this occasion seemed to be almost oversolicitous.

“Come in, Lewis.” She smiled at me.

I walked in to find two men in suits. One of them was fairly nondescript; the other was enormous—six foot three with broad shoulders and a thick black and white goatee. Each man stood in one corner of the room. The big man looked at me.

“Are you Lewis Alsamari?” he asked without formality.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Please take a seat.” He gestured at a chair in front of him, and I sat down.

“Did you work at a company called William Hill, Lewis?”

As soon as he asked the question, I knew that all the horrible suspicions that had been flitting through my brain in the last thirty seconds were about to be confirmed.

“Yes,” I replied.

He nodded calmly. “Lewis Alsamari,” he recited. “I’m arresting you on charges of conspiracy to defraud. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

Nobody spoke. I did my best not to let the emotion show on my face as I tried to think clearly. What should I do? Admit everything? That had always been my plan when I had assumed that my family would all be safely in the UK. But I didn’t know what they would do to me if I confessed now, and I had to make sure I was around to help my family in what I hoped would be their final attempt to leave. So should I deny everything? Or should I keep my own counsel and not say anything for the moment?

I chose the latter course of action.

The large man broke the silence. “We’re going to take you away now, Lewis,” he said firmly but not unkindly. I was led to my locker, which I opened; my wallet and keys were removed and placed into an evidence bag.