Escape from Saddam (13 page)

Never had I
felt so vulnerable. As the sound of the bleating sheep disappeared, I stood perfectly still and tried to accustom myself to the solitude and the silence. It took me some minutes to compose myself, but with renewed determination I started to make my way toward the road. Now I was alone, and my senses became more heightened as I strained my eyes and my ears to judge if any unknown danger was close by. Occasionally I looked back and thought that I caught a glimpse of the patrol cars’ headlights; but if I did, they were distant—the patrol officers would not be able to see me from so far away. I could just see the road from where I was, and there were no patrols ahead. I would be very unlucky to meet anybody now, but all seemed reasonably silent around me. Unless I was forced to fire the Beretta, I was determined not to do so.

I soon realized, however, that sounds in the desert could be deceptive. More than once I stopped still because I thought I heard an unfamiliar noise alarmingly close, but I told myself over and over again that it was a faraway sound carried to me by the gentle but fickle night breeze. I kept the pace as fast as my wounded leg would allow, keeping my eyes fixed on the occasional light from the road ahead. I realized that it was not only sounds that could be deceiving, but distances also. Although I had no conception of time, the road did not appear to me to be coming any closer, and the longer I hurried through that dark expanse, the more unnerving my solitude became. As I walked, I could feel the swab around my bullet wound become wet—clearly the stitches had opened slightly from the movement.

Then, out of the darkness, I heard a sound I could not ignore, a sound that immediately stopped me dead. It was not new to my ears—it was unmistakably the same howling that I had heard with the tribesmen—but it was shockingly close. I stood perfectly still for some moments, aware only of the trembling whisper of my own heavy breath, before hearing another howl that made the blood stop in my veins. It was as loud as the first and no less desperate. But it was not its closeness that filled me with a sickening sense of horror; it was the direction from which it came. The first howl was somewhere to my right, the second to my left.

I have never known fear like it. A cold wave of dread crashed over me; I felt nauseous and all the strength seemed to sap from my body. I know I should have fired my gun in the air, but in that minute some other impulse took over, an impulse that forced any faculty of reason from my head and replaced it with blind panic. Foolishly, I ran.

I could never have outrun them. They were lean, desperate, and hungry; this was their territory. I was limping and terrified. The more noise I made, the more I attracted their attention. I became aware of other animals around me—I don’t know how many, but it was clear they were hunting as a pack and I was their quarry. Blinded by my tears, I stumbled, and their baying became more frenzied. Then, as if by some prearranged signal, the pack fell silent.

About twenty meters ahead there was a bush. In the darkness, I could scarcely make it out, but I could tell there was movement in there. I stood absolutely still. Vaguely I saw silhouettes ahead, prowling toward me. There were three, maybe four of them. I handled my Beretta nervously; despite my fumbling I managed to release the safety catch, but my hand was shaking too much for me to be sure of an accurate shot even if I had known precisely where I was aiming.

Suddenly the moonlight caught in the eyes of one of the animals, and for a moment it was illuminated. I will never forget its appearance: these were not the furry white wolves I had seen in pictures; they were thin, bony almost, and dirty. There was a madness in their eyes that suggested they were riddled with rabies, and they were more vicious than anything I had ever witnessed, or hope I ever will again. The eyes seemed disproportionately small for the animal’s face, but there was something almost human about it; as our glances briefly locked, it snarled and pawed at the sand, baring its teeth and preparing to attack me. I wanted to run, but I knew there was no way I could get away from these fast, hungry beasts; and in any case my legs had frozen to the spot in fear.

Then, as one, they started to run toward me, the momentary silence broken by the wicked sound of their barking and snarling. Almost by reflex, I opened fire.

The magazine of the Beretta contained only fifteen bullets. In quick succession I fired several shots blindly as the wolves ferociously hurled themselves toward me. The first few shots disappeared into the night. Although the noise of the gun stopped the charge of the animals for a moment, they were clearly worked up into a frenzy by the prospect of fresh meat so close; rather than turn and run as I had hoped they might, they scampered around in a circle before continuing their approach. They were close enough for me to smell—a sickening, rotten stench.

Once more I fired, all my skill with a gun dissolved by fear; it was more by luck than judgment that I hit at least one of the animals when they were only meters away from me. I heard them yelp as the bullets seared into their flesh, but I knew I was not safe yet. There was at least one more out there, and suddenly everything had fallen silent once more. I spun around, my arm outstretched and my quivering hand gripping the handle of the gun with all the strength it had, trying to spot whatever wolves remained as I stepped backward away from the bodies of the animals I had hit. How long I continued like that I cannot remember, but gradually I became aware of another sound. I stood listening for some moments before I realized what it was: the noise of one or more wolves biting into the carcasses of their injured—but not yet dead—colleagues.

The animals had been distracted by easier meat, and I had no option but to run. I circled around where I thought the beasts were and headed as fast as I could toward the road. I was shivering from the cold and sweating from fear; the wound in my leg made me limp and slowed me down completely; at one point I stumbled and, thinking in my near-delirious state that I had fallen upon a sleeping snake, I started shouting into the darkness for help. I lay on the ground trembling for about five minutes; then behind me I became aware of the noise of more wolves fighting over the dead animals. I did not know how long it would take them to strip the meat off the bodies, but I wanted to be well away when they did so. That was the impetus I needed: I pulled myself up and continued to hurry—half running, half limping, always glancing behind me, and occasionally firing one of my few remaining bullets in the direction of the wolves—toward the road.

For forty-five minutes I ran, stopping only occasionally to catch my breath and to vomit onto the sand through fear, propelled more by horror of the wolves than by any desire to reach the road. Eventually I arrived. There were very few cars, and I was in no state to tell whether those that passed were military vehicles or not. I collapsed. The wound in my leg hurt more than ever, and I could feel the sticky wetness of the blood beneath my trousers. I was in shock. I was freezing cold. I was unable even to speak. The lights of the cars in the road blurred before my eyes into a sea of movement, and as nervous exhaustion and delirium set in, I became vaguely aware of what looked like a white border-control vehicle stopping a few meters past me. I heard a confusion of voices around me but could not make out any faces. Out of the confusion I heard a man’s voice: “Get him in the car,” he said in an accent I didn’t recognize, “and we’ll take him back to the border crossing.”

“No,” I rasped, not even knowing who I was talking to. “I can’t go back to the border. I need to get to Amman…”

But as I spoke the words, my head fell heavily to the ground and blackness engulfed me as I passed out.

CHAPTER
7

AMMAN

W
hen I regained consciousness—perhaps seconds later, perhaps minutes—they were looking over me and talking in hushed tones. I could tell they were male by the sound of their voices, but their faces blurred in and out of focus as I lay there stretched out on the road, and I heard myself repeat the words I had already spoken: “Please, I can’t go back to the border.
Don’t
take me back to the border.”

The blurred faces looked at each other. “What are you doing by the side of the road?” one of them asked without hiding the suspicion in his voice. I tried to answer, but the words that came out of my mouth were confused and incoherent, and suddenly I felt myself being picked up by the arms and dragged along the road toward the car. The wound in my leg throbbed as my heels scraped along the rough surface, but soon enough they gently lowered me back down to the ground.

I looked around me, my head starting to clear. It was still dark, and the lights of the car seemed overly bright to my tired eyes, blinding me and still preventing me from seeing exactly who these people were. I felt a knot in my stomach as the thought returned to my mind that they must be border patrol guards, and the conversation that followed did nothing to ease my concerns.

“We’d better search him?”

“What for?”

“Find his papers, see who he is. Look at him—he’s in no state to tell us himself.”

Almost involuntarily I clutched the bag I was holding. I didn’t want anyone to start rifling through my things, although I was hardly in a state to deny these officials—if indeed that was who they were.

“We haven’t got time for this,” one of the men said impatiently. “The sun is coming up soon, and it’s a long way to Amman. I don’t want to be driving in the heat. Let’s just take him back to the border and let them deal with him.”

“No,” I whispered hoarsely, causing them to look around in surprise that I had spoken again.

The other man bent down in front of me. He was wearing a
dishdash,
and I remember his dark eyes sparkling in the beam of the headlights. “What’s your name?” he asked me quietly.

“Sarmed,” I told him.

He nodded mutely. “And what are you doing lying by the side of the road, Sarmed?”

I peered more closely at the man. If he was an official, everything about his demeanor was wrong: his clothes, the way he spoke in a concerned voice rather than harshly demanding immediate answers to his questions. But still I couldn’t tell him the truth: it would have been reckless of me to come clean especially when his companion—the driver, presumably—seemed so keen to get rid of me and continue with his journey.

As I decided how to answer him, I heard one of the car doors open. “What’s going on?” a voice asked—a woman’s voice, which instantly put me more at my ease. Suddenly it seemed much more likely that this was just a family journey. “Who is he?” She walked around to where I was sitting and gently put her hand on my cheek. “You need water,” she told me. “I have some in the car.” Seconds later she was handing me a bottle, and I drank from it gratefully. The driver was pacing infuriatedly in the background, clearly wanting to be off, and as I finished drinking, his friend repeated his question: “What are you doing here?”

I looked straight into his eyes with all the sincerity I could muster. “My car was stolen,” I told him shortly.

He raised an eyebrow, as if urging me to tell him more.

“There were two guys by the side of the road,” I continued lying with a little more confidence. “They flagged me down and I pulled over to give them a lift, but they had a gun and they forced me out of the car, beat me up, and then drove away. That’s why I’m in such a state.”

The man nodded his head, scanning my face for any signs that I was not being truthful. Whether he found any or not, I can’t say, but I felt that there was still an air of mistrust around him. “So why don’t you want to go back to the border? It’s not far—you can report the crime there.”

I shook my head violently. “I’m Iraqi,” I stated, though it was clear that he already knew that from my accent. “Those guys stole all my papers. If you send me back to the border, I’ll never have any chance of finding my car again, and I won’t be allowed to stay in Jordan.” In the end, I knew, I would simply have to appeal to his better nature, and that of the woman who seemed to have taken a shine to me. “Please,” I begged. “I can’t go back to Iraq.”

“But…” he started to protest, but I interrupted him immediately.

“Give me a lift to Amman.
Please.
”

“We can’t give him a lift,” the driver barked from the darkness on the side of the road. “The car’s too full of people as it is. Where are we going to put him?”

The others were quiet. Awkwardly I pushed myself up onto my feet, wincing as a shock of pain ran through my gunshot wound, then peered into the car. The driver had a point. In the front passenger seat was a small, sleepy child—clearly he had been traveling on the lap of whichever adult was sitting there—and in the backseat was a girl of about eight, another older man, and a young man of about my own age. It was full to capacity, but I knew I had to persuade them to take me. My only other option was to wait for a bus, but it was a long, almost empty road. I had no idea how long it would be until a bus passed, and even if one did I was worried about how I would flag it down. I walked around the car, desperately trying to come up with a solution. As I did so, I heard the woman start chanting a prayer in a light, monotone drone. When she had finished, she started entreating the driver. “Don’t send him back to the border. Can’t you see how scared he is?”

“No.” The man was adamant. “There’s no room.”

“We can squeeze up,” she offered.

“Don’t be foolish.” The driver glanced over at me and then turned back to the woman. “Look at him,” he said distastefully. “He stinks.”

He was right. I looked down over the heavy
dishdash
the Bedouin had given me and saw the stains where I had vomited in fear. Added to the fact that I had been sweating like never before, I can’t have been an appealing prospect. But I couldn’t let that get in my way. “I’ll hold on to the roof rack,” I told them.

The three of them stared back at me uncertainly. “It’ll be easy,” I said, trying to persuade myself more than them. “I’ll sit here,” I indicated the small metal frame that was attached to the trunk at the back of the car and on to which their luggage was strapped, “and hold on to the roof rack here.” I climbed onto the luggage to show them. It was uncomfortable crouching there, but I felt that I could manage it for a while.

The man who had been questioning me walked over. “What if you fall? I could bind your hands to the roof rack with rope,” he suggested. “That way you’ll be safer.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll be able to hold on.” I didn’t much like the idea of being shackled to the car. I was used to being on the run now, and I didn’t want anything to hinder my escape if that was what was required.

“This is stupid!” The driver stormed back into the fray. “I can’t drive to Amman with him clutching on to the back of the car like that. I’ll have to drive slowly, and it will take us all day to get there. He’ll fry in the heat.”

“We won’t have to take him all the way.” His colleague started to back me up. “Just until we find another vehicle on the road to take him. A taxi or a bus—there’s bound to be something coming along soon.”

The driver looked pointedly along the road. There were no other cars along the long stretch. “Whatever,” he shrugged. “
Yella.
Come on. We haven’t got all day.” He stomped off, and after a few seconds I heard the unmistakable sound of him urinating against one of the low scrub bushes that lined the road.

The woman looked after him with amusement in her eyes. “Now we’ve stopped,” she said lightly, “we should eat something. Are you hungry?”

I nodded keenly, then sat down again to reserve energy for my next ordeal. Meanwhile, the others got out of the car and eyed me suspiciously and without speaking. The woman placed two bowls in front of me, both wrapped in muslin cloth and tied together at the top with a heavy knot. She unwrapped them and offered me the food they contained. In one bowl was
kofte
—ground meat mixed with onions and herbs—and in another was bread. “
Tafadel.
Go on,” she said, encouraging me to help myself. “Eat.” I took some food and devoured it quickly while she offered it around to the rest of the party.

We had been there for about half an hour by the time my rescuers decided to start off again. “Are you sure you’ll be able to hold on?” the woman asked me, worry etched on her face.

“He had better be,” the driver muttered. “I’m not going to travel along at a snail’s pace on his account.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured the woman. I climbed up onto the back of the car once more, hitched my bag onto my shoulder, pulled my Bedouin robes tighter around me, then clutched the roof rack as firmly as I could while the others clambered back into the car. I closed my eyes, mumbled a quick prayer, and we set off.

At first it seemed as if the driver had been a bit disingenuous. He drove slowly and carefully, taking care not to drive over any bumps in the road. But as his confidence, and mine, increased, so too did his speed. Grim faced, I held on as the wind blew in my face, my eyes half closed to protect them from the elements. It didn’t take long for my arms and the rest of my body to become stiff and uncomfortable, so I occasionally allowed myself to let go with one hand as I shuffled myself into a less stressful position before holding on tightly again as the car shuddered at high speed over the less-than-perfect road surface.

As we drove, my mind was doing fireworks. How had I got myself into this position? The wolves were still fresh in my thoughts, and as I squinted out at the bleak expanse of desert that was just starting to lighten up with sunrise, I wondered how many more of those awful beasts were out there. It wouldn’t do to find myself alone again at the side of the road—I clutched on to the roof rack with renewed vigor and tried to put all thoughts of falling from my mind.

The road remained fairly empty. Occasionally a car would pass us traveling in the opposite direction, its headlights announcing its presence on the long, straight road a long time before it was actually upon us. Whether their occupants found the sight of a frightened young man clutching on to the back of the car they passed a strange one, I can’t say. Nobody stopped to look, and the driver of our car was traveling too fast for anyone to overtake us from behind. It was a far cry from how things would be a few miles up the road in Iraq, where the fear of checkpoints and border guards would have made this way of traveling an impossibility for me. The scenery around me might have been practically identical, but already I could sense the differences between the two sides of the border.

We drove like this for nearly an hour, by which time my arms and wrists were aching from the exertion of holding on so tightly, and nausea was encroaching on me. Every time we hit a bump, I felt the shock, unsoftened by the car’s shoddy suspension, reverberate through my whole body. Occasionally my mind wandered as I reflected on the almost dreamlike sequence of the night’s events; but I was brought harshly back to reality when I realized that my grip on the roof rack was not as firm as I thought it might be.

Suddenly I felt the car slow down slightly, and the driver veered into the middle of the road, forcing me to steel my body against the force in the opposite direction. I swore under my breath—what was he playing at?—but then I noticed that the driver had put his hazard indicators on. I peered over my shoulder. Behind me were the unmistakable lights of a bus’s headlights, and in the instant I became aware of them, there was a deafening noise, a screeching siren of a horn as the bus driver tried to stop the strange car ahead from driving so dangerously. My nerves already frayed, I wanted to close my ears with my hands, but that wasn’t an option as I had to maintain my grip on the car; instead I scrunched up my face and tried to calm my body from the shock the noise had given me. The car’s driver, however, remained firm. He stayed in the center of the road, gradually slowing down and waving his arm out of the window to indicate to the bus driver that he should pull over. Whether it occurred to the bus driver that this was strange behavior—more befitting a bandit trying to hijack the bus or a couple of drunks fooling around—I don’t know; certainly I remember simply feeling relief that I might soon be able to find myself a more comfortable mode of transport. After ten minutes of driving like this, the two vehicles gradually came to a stop in the middle of the road.

The two men climbed out of the front of the car and walked toward the bus. “Stay there,” one of them told me as they passed. “We’ll do the talking.” I did as I was told.

There was a hiss as the bus doors opened, and after a few seconds’ pause, two men climbed out of the bus—the driver and conductor, I presumed. One of them, a short, squat man with an ugly face, was carrying what looked like a piece of heavy metal piping strapped to his hand with a sturdy length of leather. The way he was holding it made it perfectly clear that this was something that had been specially adapted to be a weapon, and that he was perfectly prepared to use it without any qualms. For a moment nobody spoke, and the threat of violence hung in the air.

“What do you think you’re playing at?” the man holding the piping finally growled at my two new acquaintances.

The man who had been sitting in the passenger seat pointed at me. “He needs a lift. We can’t travel with him like that for much longer.”

None of the suspicion left the other man’s face. “Does he have any money?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask him.” He walked back to me. “Well, do you?” he asked.

“A little,” I said warily. “American dollars.”

He reported this back to the coach driver, whose eyes softened slightly although he maintained his grip on the metal piping as he walked up to me. “Okay,” he asked, “what’s your name?”