Escape from Saddam (22 page)

Next morning, I checked my bank account. Nothing. The following morning I did the same. Nothing. But on the third day, it was there.

Suddenly I was filled with misgivings. You can’t do this, Sarmed, I told myself. It’s not right. There has to be another way. That lunchtime I returned to the computer terminal and transferred the money out of my account and back to William Hill.

I didn’t sleep that night, my mind awash with conflicting thoughts. It had been so easy to make the transfer; so easy to walk down the route that I knew would lead to huge trouble for me; so easy to decide, after all, not to do it. And maybe that was the right thing. Even if I sent Saad the money he needed, there was no guarantee that my family wouldn’t be thrown back into prison. Perhaps I should simply hope and pray that no harm would come to them, that when their captors realized that I was not going to come back, they would release them unharmed. Deep down, though, I knew that was a vain hope. What went on in the prisons of Baghdad was no secret; indeed Saddam no doubt
wanted
his people to be aware of the evils that awaited them if they transgressed. And as I was growing up I had heard of enough people who had disappeared never to be seen again. The thought of that happening to my family was too much for me to bear. I resolved to go ahead with my plan.

The following day I hacked in to the computer once more—this time, into several accounts. I transferred the very least I knew I could get away with to ensure my family’s release from prison and subsequent escape from Iraq. It wasn’t a very exact calculation, but it was based on my rough idea of how much I would need: £37,500.

The instant the
money hit my accounts, I transferred half of it, through the convoluted routes I had become used to, to Saad. When word came back that he had received it, I rested a little more easily. My relief was to be short-lived, however, as any expectations I had that the transfer of money would effect an immediate release were shown to be optimistic. Two weeks passed, then three, and from Baghdad there was nothing but silence. Saad was trying to make the payment to the necessary people, but it was an excruciatingly slow process. Meanwhile, I felt an increasing sense of paranoia: every time the phone rang, I jumped; every time I saw a policeman, I hid. Since arriving in England, I had forgotten how it felt to be a fugitive, but now that sensation was with me once more.

To keep myself occupied, and mindful of the fact that time was not on our side, I started making inquiries about how I could use the remainder of the money to spirit my mother, brother, and sister out of Iraq. Through acquaintances in the Iraqi community in the UK, I made contact with people-smugglers to determine the best way to get my family out, and how much it would cost. In Baghdad, Saad did the same. It became apparent, even with the remainder of the William Hill money, that it would be expensive: the smugglers saw our desperation and increased the price accordingly. We soon realized that we still did not have the funds to pay someone to organize the whole thing for us, so I decided that we would have the professionals arrange their transfer to a neighboring Middle East country; the remainder of the journey I would organize myself. Had I known what awaited us, I would never have made that decision.

My mother, brother, and sister had a thick wad of passport photographs taken in differing disguises and then sent to me in England. A Kurdish smuggler met them at home and gave them cloned Iraqi passports with false Kurdish names. It would be most difficult for my brother. He was nearly old enough for military service, so the penalty for leaving the country illegally would be especially severe for him. He had the benefit, though, of looking much younger than his real age, and his passport stated that he was several years younger than he actually was. My mother donned her
hijab
to make herself less recognizable, and within a couple of days of arriving home they said good-bye to Saad and to my grandparents and left with the smuggler in one of the familiar orange and white taxis that swarmed the streets of Baghdad.

The taxi could not simply travel west to the Jordanian border: the Iraqi border guards would quickly have seen that the passports were fake. Instead the route took my mother, brother, and sister north, through my father’s hometown of Samarra, past Tikrit, and into Mosul. From there they entered Kurdistan. The Kurds had a separate administration, but this was still officially Iraqi territory, and there was a heavy checkpoint at this stage. Without the help of the Kurdish smuggler, the fake passports would not have got them through; but he had some of the border guards in his pocket. A few wads of notes from the William Hill money placed into the hands of these corrupt officials soon bought them passage into Kurdistan. From there they continued north into Turkey, before doing an about-face and heading south through Syria and into Jordan. The border guards in those countries had no way of telling that the passports were fake, so they passed through, if not without suspicion, then at least without hindrance.

By now the British government had issued me a document allowing me to travel abroad, and while my family was making their circuitous journey around the Middle East, I had business to attend to. I had had success traveling from Jordan to the UK by way of Malaysia, so I decided that this was the route I would arrange for them. However, they needed false passports, because the fake Iraqi ones they had would be no good. I had nobody like Abu Firas to help me arrange things, so I had to do it all myself.

A friend of mine, a member of the Iraqi community in Leeds at the time, had been smuggled from Jordan to the UK by way of Romania by an Iraqi people-smuggler—an Alsamari called Radwaan—in Romania. That was a difficult route, so it seemed clear that the smuggler in question was skilled and influential. Radwaan and I spoke at length on the phone, not once or twice but many times as we both tried to get the measure of each other. He was persuading himself that I was serious and not simply a time-waster or, even worse, someone trying to set him up. I wanted to be sure that this faceless voice at the end of a telephone line could do what he claimed in return for the many thousands of pounds I was going to have to pay him. Eventually, the rapport between us became more comfortable, and we reached the stage where we could talk plainly about what it was I wanted. I asked him directly if he could provide passports for my family.

“Of course,” he replied smoothly.

“What’s available? What can you give them that will get them from Jordan and then in and out of Malaysia?”

“It’s limited,” he told me. “Spanish is your best bet. Or Israeli.”

“And are they original passports? Foolproof, I mean.”

“Of course they are.” He didn’t sound offended that I had asked the question. “You can check them out before you buy, if you like. Just go to Germany, and see my brother. He’ll show you what you’ll be getting for your money—nobody will be able to tell the difference between the passports we supply and the real thing. You won’t have any trouble at all.”

Something about Radwaan’s manner filled me with confidence. He had the quiet, easygoing attitude that had first recommended Abu Firas to me, and he wasn’t pushy, didn’t try to give me the hard sell. But I had only one shot at this, and he could hear the indecision in my voice. “Go and see my brother,” he insisted. “He is the one you’ll have to give the money to. Then make your decision.”

The brother was living in Mannheim with his Romanian wife and small child. My travel document wasn’t officially recognized in Germany, but I decided that I would risk it anyway. Sure enough, I got off the plane and presented my document at passport control, and as soon as the officer saw the words “Great Britain” at the top, I was waved through. The contrast between the power of that slip of paper and the passports I had used in the past was almost shocking. I went to stay at the brother’s house and spent hours talking to him, once more getting the measure of the man as I had done with Radwaan. Finally, after several hours of wary and then friendly conversation, he pulled out some sample passports. They were Spanish, and to my eye they looked perfect. The final product, I was assured, would have my family’s real names marked inside, along with the photographs that they had sent me. I smiled inwardly: these were as good, if not better, than the fake UAE passport Abu Firas had arranged for me. But still, they were going to cost thousands of pounds each—money I was still reluctant to pass on to these people, no matter how sweetly they spoke.

“How will you want the money?” I asked him.

“Cash,” he said shortly. “In person. Here.”

“I can’t transfer it from London?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly before smiling sympathetically at me. “You are still worried?”

“It’s a lot of money for me,” I told him honestly. “If this does not work, my family will be stuck. I’m not rich.”

“I understand. Perhaps you should go to Bucharest, speak to Radwaan. It’s good to know exactly who you are dealing with.”

And so I did. From Germany I flew to Romania, again without the necessary visa. When I arrived at passport control, it became clear that my entry into the country would not be as simple as it was in Germany. As a stern official examined my document, though, I heard a voice above the hubbub: “Alsamari! Where is Alsamari?”

I held up my hand, and a rather overweight woman jogged, red-faced, toward us. “You’re here to see Radwaan?” she asked.

I nodded, and she spoke a few words out of earshot to the official, who immediately stamped my document and allowed me to board my flight to Bucharest. Clearly Radwaan was a man of more influence than I had expected.

He picked me up at the airport, a jolly man whose friendly demeanor belied a serious, businesslike attitude toward his chosen profession. We went to his house, and he showed me some more sample Spanish passports. “These are the best,” he told me. “Original. You can’t get better than this. No one will raise an eyebrow at them. And, if you don’t like the finished product…”

I looked at him expectantly.

“You don’t pay for them. It’s as simple as that.”

Finally I was convinced. I had the recommendation of my friend in London, I had seen the kind of influence this man had over passport officials, and he wasn’t even asking for the money up front. I went to my bag and handed him the thick sheaf of passport photographs my family had sent me. He smiled. “I don’t need as many as that,” he said before selecting a few of each member of the family and handing the rest back to me. Then he drove me back to the airport.

Once more, as I was passing through passport control, my travel document aroused suspicion. A monster of an official, a huge man with square shoulders and a tiny square head—he looked like Frankenstein’s monster—surrounded by three or four much smaller men, spoke to me in broken English with a thick Romanian accent.

“Do you have anything dangerous in your bag, like bombs, or weapons, or gases—anything like that?”

“No.”

“Where are you flying to?”

“London.”

“You’re British. You have British passport.”

I handed him my travel document. “Yes,” I said confidently.

One of his eyebrows shot up. “This is not a British passport. Open your bags.”

Reluctantly I unzipped my hand luggage and gave it to him. It took less than a few seconds for him to pull out the wad of photographs that I was carrying. He looked at them silently; then he looked around at his friends. They all grinned, a nasty expression that made it perfectly clear they knew what was going on. He let me squirm for a few moments without taking his eyes off me before he spoke again.

“Who have you come to see in Romania?” he asked slowly.

“I came to see my friend.”

“What is his name?”

“Radwaan.”

Immediately I saw the light of recognition in his eyes. “Ah.” He smiled. “Radwaan.” He turned around to look at his friends. “He’s come to see Radwaan!” he told them loudly, and they all started to nod their heads knowingly.

It was clear that they knew who Radwaan was, and what he did. It was equally clear that Radwaan had them in his pockets.

“Okay,” he said finally, packing the photographs back into my bag. “Off you go.”

As soon as
I returned to England, I collected the money I needed and flew back out to Mannheim to deliver it. A week later I went back to Germany to collect the passports. They were immaculate, just as I had been told they would be. All the while, I was illegal in Germany. If I had been caught with these things in my pocket, I would have been locked up; but such thoughts were far from my mind. I can honestly say that I didn’t even give the danger of my situation a second thought.

By the time I had all the documents in order, my mother, brother, and sister had arrived safely in Amman. I had no desire to delay things, as I was half expecting the police to knock on my door at any time on account of the William Hill money, but I allowed myself a few days to cobble together any supporting evidence of my family’s identity—ID cards, student cards, and the like—before booking my flight to Amman.

But before I did anything else, I had to speak to Rachel.

She knew I was desperate to see my family. How could she not? It had been Rachel who had comforted me in the dark days since my family had been dragged into prison, and Rachel who had put up with my prolonged absences as, unbeknownst to her, I risked my liberty to obtain the Spanish passports. She had lived with my increasing distraction and panic; and at night, when my fears were increased tenfold, she had soothed me with her quiet, understanding embrace. Now I had to tell her that I was about to do the one thing that I had hoped would never be my lot: return to the Middle East, where I would be illegal, and embark upon a series of events that could result in my family’s deportation back to what awaited them in Iraq, and to my own imprisonment.

“I can’t pretend it’s not dangerous,” I told her. “I can’t pretend there’s not a risk that I won’t come back.”

Rachel looked into my eyes. Any intuition I had that this would be a tearful moment was instantly dispelled as she stared at me with such immeasurable determination that I was momentarily taken aback. “What?” I asked, afraid for a minute that she was going to try to persuade me to back out of everything.