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For whom the Iraqi bell
tolls
By Paul Belden
AMMAN -
His wisp of a mustache and the pimple near his nose
speak of a maturity not quite realized, but the even
strength of his brown-eyed gaze speaks of a realization
not far off.
The boy spoke no English, but as
his words were translated for my benefit, his gaze never
left mine - he wanted to tell his story, he wanted it
understood. His name is Hamad, he said. He is 18 years
old. He is Iraqi. He is an exile. But not for long. And
he is not alone.
Hamad is one of thousands of exiles
living in Jordan, where ties to Iraq run deep. So deep
that, when war came, the government so feared a deluge
of refugees descending on the Karamak border crossing
that it built a tent city near the town of al-Ruweishid
to contend with the expected crisis. But then something
strange happened, something that is happening still.
The exiles who showed up at the border - almost
all the exiles who showed up at the border - were coming
from a direction nobody had expected. They were coming
from the west, from inside Jordan itself. And they were
heading east, home to Iraq. According to reports, more
than 5,000 of them have to date made this trip.
Hamad is a Shi'ite, and not new to war. He was
born into a country that was then at war, and that has
seldom since known a day of pure peace. His family home
is in the area near Basra in the marshy south of Iraq.
His father, a soldier, was killed when Hamad was two
years old. An ambulance driver assigned to a unit that
saw heavy fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, Hamad's father
made the mortal mistake of performing his job. In 1985,
with the war turning sour, and the battle at a critical
moment, he brought out a truckload of wounded men from
the front to the rear. Those directing the battle shot
them all. A lesson for the rest.
Life for
Hamad's family suddenly changed. And not only because
the absence of his father made daily existence that much
more difficult. Having suffered a grievous wound at the
hands of the regime, the family was naturally placed in
a category of eternal suspicion. In practical terms,
what this meant was that Hamad grew up watching one
member of his family after another disappear. In Saddam
Hussein's Iraq, being suspect and being Shi'ite rather
than Sunni Muslim was a lethal combination.
In
1989, one of Hamad's uncles, a brother of his mother,
was arrested by the mukhabarat, Saddam's secret
police. To this day, no word of his fate has been heard
by the family. But nobody holds out the least hope. He
is dead, they are certain.
Another maternal
uncle, seeing the moving finger write, and not being
himself illiterate, fled to Kuwait. A bad choice of
direction, as it turned out: In 1990, Saddam's forces
flowed into the country like a swollen river, and this
time the uncle did not flee fast enough. He was captured
and returned to the country. There ensued a brief and
furious burst of pleading and attempted negotiation with
the regime. But there was nothing the family could offer
that was deemed worth the man's life, and he, too, was
never seen again. A lesson for the rest.
Hamad
grew up, and life went on.
His mother re-married
a man with family ties to Jordan. A lucky break - and
the family began the long, slow process of seeking exile
from a nightmare. But the escape route was only wide
enough for one person at a time. The stepfather managed
to escape first, touched by the miracle of a Jordanian
visa. The mother followed a few years later. While he
waited to follow, Hamad lived with two remaining uncles
in the al-Faw peninsula. They were fishermen, earning
their living on the waterways that feed and weave
through the Shatt-al-Arab.
Eighteen months ago,
Hamad and his younger brother, Sijad, now 10 years old,
escaped. Not entirely legally - they have no passports -
but they arrived in Jordan in any case, joining their
mother and beginning the next stage in their plan for
escape as the stepfather had meanwhile moved to Sweden,
the ultimate destination for them all. Last month,
Swedish visas for the rest of the family arrived.
But then came the war, and now Hamad sits up
every night, all night, drinking endless cups of tea,
smoking endless cigarettes, and plotting to reverse the
route he has traveled. He cannot watch this war unfold -
cannot watch the daily, nightly scenes of devastation in
the place of his birth - and not be at hand to help, he
says.
His mother does not know of his plans. And
he does not plan to tell her. He will leave a note, he
said.
As we speak, his mobile phone rings and he
talks briefly. Clicking the phone shut, his face lights
up. It was his friend, he said, an Iraqi boy his own
age. They are planning to make the homebound trip
together. Their plans were set, he said. He has no visa,
but that does not seem to concern him. He will not talk
about his plans in detail. But he will find a way, he
said. He is sure of that.
I asked Hamad what
will he do when he arrives.
He will fight to
defend Saddam, of course.
But that is the
translator's answer, spoken in a rush before the boy has
yet heard. It is an understandable response, bursting
with the pan-Arab pride in the Iraqi resistance that
fills the very air of the Middle East at present.
But Hamad's eyes have not left mine. He waits
patiently for the question to be asked. He has not yet
spoken. "What will you do in Iraq?", I asked. Will you
fight the Americans? What will you do?
He is not
uninformed. He knows of the reports of uprisings in
Basra. He knows - indeed, he cannot escape, feels it
every day, in every conversation - of the strong Arab
pride in the Iraqi resistance.
Finally: "I do
not know," he said. "Whatever my uncles are doing, that
is what I will do. I do not know. But I have to go. I
have to be with them. I am going."
And in his
strong young eyes I see the future of Iraq.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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