Escape from Baghdad

by James Ashcroft

  ‘What happened, the surge?’

  ‘That as well. The Shi’ites are in the majority. They want to drive out their neighbours and take their houses.’

  ‘I’ve seen the same all over.’ I thought of the opportunistic civilians on the winning side in every war zone who flooded into abandoned towns and villages after the fighting to pick the best houses for themselves.

  In Croatia and Bosnia it had been a regular weekend outing for families. They would pull up in front of nice-looking houses that hadn’t been claimed yet, throw food through the doorways and then send dogs in first, in case those tricky Serbs had left any booby traps behind.

  ‘Always the same,’ Cobus said. ‘We learn to love our fellow man but we love his property even more. You think there’s going to be a settlement in Israel?’

  ‘Not in my lifetime.’

  ‘Not in anyone’s lifetime.’ He pulled in behind a truck loaded down with odd shapes, which I suddenly recognized as satellite dishes. The traffic stopped for a while and we were hemmed in by honking cars. I eyeballed a hostile young man in the car next to me until he eventually looked away.

  We pulled away again. Cobus slowed as we passed the university – a Walter Gropius building mixing straight lines with traditional arches. It was completed in 1958, a date I recalled from school history because that was when twenty-three-year-old King Faisal II was overthrown by a group of Iraqi army officers, the coup paving the way twenty years later for Saddam Hussein.

  There were students on the campus, running between classes, clutching files, their faces etched with that same desire for normality I’d seen in the city centre. In the end, it’s the politicians who make war, the military executes it and the people suffer the consequences. An odd observation for a soldier? It’s a simple truth. In the forces we aren’t always dealt a good hand. We play with the cards we’ve got and do the best that we can. In Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia and a dozen African countries, NATO and the UN were often just trying to stop neighbours slaughtering each other. In Iraq now the war was winding down, Coalition Forces were doing the same. Maybe Cobus was right: we love our neighbour’s property more than we love our neighbour.

  In complete contrast to my grim train of thought, a wedding convoy streamed past, six or seven cars with windows open and Arab music blaring. The cars were absolutely stuffed with men, young and old, and kids and a couple of women, all laughing and singing, bombed on Sprite and Pepsi, waving at people as they passed. Two young men sat perched right up on the sills of the open windows filming over the tops of the cars, filming each other, the procession and the streets. Everyone smiled and waved at them.

  Except me and Cobus.

  Cobus pulled out his phone, pressed two keys. I heard it ring only twice before it was answered at the other end, with a tinny ‘Hello?’

  ‘Salaam alaikum, ja, it’s me . . . wahed dakaik, ziyen?’ One minute, OK?

  I couldn’t hear the reply, I was too busy looking out of the windows, covering my arcs, and checking the rear-view mirror to see if we were being tailed. This close to our destination I didn’t want anyone following us in.

  ‘Goed, see you soon. Hello.’ He hung up.

  I grinned, having forgotten how amusing I had found the Iraqi habit of saying ‘hello’ for goodbye on the phone. Cobus had obviously gone native.

  We turned off into a side street and in two more turns we were deep in a residential area. Almost immediately, Cobus was pulling into a hurriedly opened gate and we parked up on the driveway inside the walled compound of a neat, two-storey house, out of sight of the road. The Nissan’s engine shut off and in moments it was silent except for the birdsong. I glanced at my watch. It was coming up to ten. The smog was lighter by the river, the sky pale blue with ribbons of white cloud. Someone closed the gates behind us and we got out.

  I’d been feeling on edge since I’d arrived back in Iraq. From the warm seas of Côte d’Ivoire to the crush of Baghdad, via a night with Krista in London, was a leap between extremes. Tanya Carillo had unsettled my equilibrium, and Cobus and Mad Dog had been so spare with their info I’d begun to feel as if I were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That if they were lifting Sammy out of Iraq, there should have been a way to do so without my involvement.

  The moment I heard the birdsong in Karada, the muscles knotted across my back untied and the tightness in my gut disappeared.

  I got out and was immediately engulfed in a huge embrace from Sammy.

  ‘Hey, Sammy, you’re fatter than ever. Shlonek, ziyen?’

  ‘Khullish ziyen, hamdillah! Oh Mister James, it is very good to see you.’ Sammy shook my hand manically and kissed me firmly on both cheeks in the Iraqi fashion.

  We studied each other as we walked into the house together. Sammy looked a lot older, or maybe I hadn’t remembered all the lines on his face, but his eyes had the same merry intelligent sparkle. I wondered what he was thinking about me. He was beaming away and wiping tears from his eyes.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, please come in.’ He gestured for me to enter the front room. ‘You came.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything else to do.’

  ‘You English . . .’

  ‘Scots,’ I reminded him.

  He grinned, then became serious and waved a warning finger at me. ‘I hear from Cobus, there are two childrens now, two girls,’ he said. ‘You have many responsible now.’

  He looked at me pityingly, and I knew he was thinking how sad I must be not to have a son to leave in charge of the household when I was away.

  ‘What’s a life without responsibilities?’ I said.

  ‘Very good, Mister James. You are becoming an Arab.’

  ‘Just James will do, Sammy,’

  ‘Na’am, Mister James.’

  We looked at each other and both broke out in enormous grins. Sammy was the same old Sammy, animated, gold hair sprayed in place, his white shirt neatly ironed.

  We were in an old-fashioned kitchen with an iron stove and a motionless fan suspended from the ceiling. Brilliant light fell through the shutters on the small window and made stripes on the far wall.

  On the table the delicacies in earthenware dishes made me feel guilty for those fleeting qualms about the task ahead. The food hadn’t been prepared for the family. It had been prepared for me. Iraqis can be lazy, exasperating, and they may slit your throat without a second thought. On the other hand, they can be enterprising, adaptable and were often the most generous people I had met in the world.

  We passed through the kitchen and climbed a flight of stairs into a living room where a row of Japanese prints was lit by the sun coming from an open window. I could smell incense – jasmine, I thought – and the dull odour of old dust in the Persian carpets. The room had ochre walls, low tables and big embroidered cushions with red and gold tassels. To one side, there was a carved chest with two sets of candelabra and a row of brass vases that sparkled in a band of bright light.

  The family was lined up as if for a photograph, my gaze going from one to the next. They looked relieved but ground down.

  ‘Captain Ashcroft,’ Sammy said, and came to attention, playing the clown as always. ‘British officer . . .’ He beamed again. ‘You remember my wife, Fara?’

  Fara smiled as she offered me her hand. It was like a cold flower as it passed quickly across my palm. She was wearing a fitted maroon dress with a row of small buttons and a brightly coloured scarf that was tossed casually over one shoulder, perfectly modest but chic at the same time. She had studied French literature at the university and spent a year as an exchange student in Paris. She was the only woman I’d met in Iraq who spoke openly about the war and had her own point of view unfiltered through the opinions of her husband.

  Now in her late thirties, as striking as ever, Fara had aged prematurely, the last few months of strain written in lines around her kohl-rimmed eyes. She was not the relaxed, friendly woman I remembered. Although obviously pleased to see me, she seemed distracted as we made our greeting
s. I leaned forward, pretending I was going to kiss her on the cheeks, and she shrieked and jumped away laughing.

  I asked how she was, in French, and she replied, smiling, in the same language, relaxing a little as she remembered our ritual.

  I presented my gift to the family to her, a little tea set in fancy porcelain with eight small cups. It was the colourful type of thing that people in the UK would have turned up their noses at, but the family was delighted. I wondered how many of their possessions they had lost, moving from safe house to safe house.

  Then I shook hands with Sammy’s brother, Abdul. He was a younger, plumper version of Sammy, his pot belly making him look pregnant in a long white dishdasha. Abdul had been the one that had been kidnapped and the family had been lucky to get him back alive. Many of those abducted were killed, even after the ransom was paid. After losing everything the family had moved into one small flat with minimal rent to pay. I had no idea whose house it was where they were now staying.

  ‘Shukran, shukran, Mister,’ he said. Thank you, thank you.

  Abdul’s wife, Ayesha, was thin and nervous. She lowered her eyes and did not offer me her hand. Even inside the house she was wearing a headscarf. I nodded and grinned at the six children: they were aged five to fifteen, the girls in kilts and long white socks, the boys in jeans and European shirts. They were the future. They were the people Iraq was going to need and was going to lose.

  Sharif Mashooen, Sammy’s father, stepped forward, spine rigid as if this were a parade and I was the inspecting officer.

  ‘Thank you for coming, sir,’ he said, bowing his head in a short, swift motion.

  It was embarrassing. He had been a general.

  The women and children left and the men sat in a circle on cushions. Sharif studied me, obviously wondering if he was right to put the safety of his entire family into my hands.

  ‘How is Sandhurst these days, Captain Ashcroft?’ he asked. His English was excellent.

  ‘Just as tough as in your day, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s how it should be,’ he remarked happily.

  Sharif had gone through the academy in the 1950s or ’60s and, as Sammy had once told me, served on the general staff under King Faisal II, grandson of the first king.

  When the Ottoman Empire fragmented after the First World War, Iraq came under British rule. To quell the subsequent unrest, the British resolved to establish a monarchy. Knowing from experience that the natives would revolt if a sovereign were chosen from a rival community within the country, the net was cast beyond the borders. The long-term aim of the British was to unite the Shia, Sunni and Kurds, and keep Iraq stable for the cheap labour and oil British companies would extract from the desert – funny how some things never change.

  The British settled on a scion of the old Hashemite dynasty from al-Hejaz, a town in present-day Saudi Arabia close to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He was crowned King Faisal in 1921 and was largely accepted by the troublesome Iraqis.

  General Mashooen was one of the last survivors from the royal court. He must have been well into his eighties but remained every inch a British-trained officer with a clipped moustache, silver hair Brylcreemed with an immaculate parting and a suit with razor-sharp creases. He was from an old merchant family that had traded in the flowers cultivated for rose oil, big business when the first merchant ships from Europe ventured up the Persian Gulf.

  The general was a devoted supporter of Mr Bush and continued to believe that the campaign to topple Saddam was the right thing to have done and would be beneficial in the long term. He didn’t care if the war had been illegal or that Saddam didn’t have WMDs. As almost every other Iraqi, he was unconcerned with such ridiculous trivia, which seemed to interest only a small community of people far away and unconnected to the real Iraq. An old soldier, he thought in terms of patriotism and practicality.

  ‘Iraq has always survived the invader. It will survive this time,’ he told me.

  ‘You’re not sad leaving everything behind?’

  ‘Sad? No. It is the realities of change,’ he said. ‘You either bend like the willow or break like an oak. We Sunnis held the power. Now it passes to our brothers the Shia. Our turn will come again, mark my words. The best thing for us all was the end of Saddam.’

  Three months earlier, on 30 December 2006, the first day of the Festival of Eid, when Muslims give presents, the gift to the nation was the execution of Saddam Hussein by hanging at an Iraqi army base aptly called Camp Justice. The tyrant’s last wish was to be shot by firing squad. The request was denied and the execution was filmed by a guard on his mobile phone, the footage finding its way on to the Internet within hours. Another guard claimed the body of Saddam had been stabbed six times – true or false, it was a safe bet that General Mashooen was right, the Sunnis would rise again and one day the tomb of Saddam would be a place of pilgrimage. After the fratricidal inter-Iraqi carnage of the last few years, many of the Iraqis I had been friends with, Sunni and Shia both, were so sick of the criminal gangs, they had confided in me that if Saddam had come back they would have welcomed him.

  The women and older children reappeared carrying trays with the food I’d seen in the kitchen, the earthenware dishes with hummus, falafel, rice wrapped in olive leaves, chicken, fish and warm pita. There was mint tea in a silver pot, served in tall glasses with little cakes sprinkled with sesame seeds. Ayesha and the children left again, but Fara tucked her legs under her and squatted on a cushion in the corner. Cobus sat down next to her and the two of them squabbled in a friendly manner, each trying to serve the other.

  It was a special celebration, humbling me with their welcome, and a tray of precious cans of American sodas was produced for my selection.

  Sammy piled a plate for me.

  ‘Eat. Eat,’ he said. ‘You are thin.’

  ‘I’m not thin, you’re fat,’ I replied.

  Sammy slapped his belly with the palms of both hands. ‘I am a camel,’ he said. ‘I fill up when there’s food and I am ready to walk across the desert for a week without problem.’

  Members of a family all play a different role. Sammy was the joker. Abdul was the quiet one. In the traditional way of well-heeled Iraqis, after the first son had gone into the military, Abdul had studied accountancy and, a Sunni, performed some minor role in Saddam’s government – a job he would only have got as a member of the Ba’ath Party, an establishment figure in pre-war Iraq, a traitor in the eyes of the Shia extremists today.

  The old general was the patriarch, but it was Sammy who had earned good money with Spartan and kept the family afloat. After we had left, Sammy had been unemployed and only gained a few dollars here and there, fixing cars and selling a few cans of black-market petrol. He poured tea and loaded my plate with sesame cakes.

  ‘Eat. Eat. Tomorrow you may be dead.’

  ‘And, if I’m not, I’ll be fat.’

  He liked that and laughed, then had to explain the joke to his brother.

  Sammy spoke a quaint, old-fashioned English but he was quick-witted and I recalled the first time we had met. He had acted as our guide on a job to escort a French journalist to an interview near Fallujah. When we ran into an ambush, he drove off into the desert, leaving us bogged down and under fire. Les and I both swore to kill him if we ever saw him again.

  Two minutes later, we were still trying to extract ourselves under heavy fire when Sammy reappeared, zooming in from the left in his ridiculous little car, he and his two cousins firing AKs out of the window into the flanks of a completely unprepared enemy. Their accuracy was shocking but, surprised, and now under fire from two sides, the enemy had quickly broken contact and withdrawn.

  When they were out of sight, Sammy drove down the hill to join us. He was grinning from ear to ear, very pleased with himself.

  ‘What took you so long?’ I said.

  ‘Traffic,’ he replied without missing a beat.

  We had all laughed, and I knew that this man would be a good fri
end.

  We left one maimed vehicle stripped of equipment and headed for home with the gibbering reporter. More importantly, I poached Sammy for Spartan and offered him twice what he’d been earning working for the French.

  We now had a depressing conversation about how the interpreters in Iraq had been abandoned by the British as well as the Americans. I didn’t blame the family for being angry. Sammy mentioned that in October, just a few months back, seventeen young interpreters working for the British in Basra had been grabbed by jihadis while travelling on a bus. All had been beaten and executed, their bodies dropped around the city as a warning to other ‘traitors’.

  The mood was sombre after that and nobody said anything. Sammy refilled my glass. I ate another sesame cake. Fara caught my eye and we exchanged smiles.

  ‘Délicieux,’ I said.

  We had gathered to discuss our plans for the escape, but the Iraqi way is to come at such things slowly. You can be on the point of defusing a bomb, but an Iraqi will insist on asking after your health before you start easing the detonator from the det cord. First you eat, you drink tea, exchange gossip.

  Yes, Krista was well. Natalie was at school now. Baby Veronica was always getting up to mischief.

  ‘A chip off the old block,’ said Sammy.

  Many Americans had grasped the value of social exchange so important to the Iraqis, the daily pleasantries that started every meeting, that you shared with colleagues and associates every morning, no matter that you might have seen them only a few hours previously.

  Unfortunately others were often blunt, which they saw as efficient, but left Iraqis feeling offended. The combination led to some extraordinary consequences. The Iraqi minister in charge of environmental issues refused to hold meetings with Colonel Hind, the officer in charge of water management, until Mad Dog had replaced him at the CPA. Colonel Hind had not just slighted Iraqis, but upset just about everyone who met him. He was what Tanya Carillo would have called an ‘asshat’ and you don’t want to know what we Brits called him.

  The result was that Hind had been forced to send us, his contractor bodyguards, to meet with the minister. We drank tea, talked about Manchester United, and ex-Para Seamus Hayes and I made decisions on laying new water mains on behalf of the United States tax payer worth a hundred million dollars.