Between Two Worlds

by Zainab Salbi

  My daughter, please don’t worry. I ask you to remain strong, keep your ethics strong, and do whatever is right. You are a strong woman. Listen to your elders and heed their advice. Keep your self-respect. Hopefully God will reunite us again. Love to everyone in America. In two days we are going to another town above Tikrit and below Al Mawsil. We do not know when we will return. God willing, we will see you again. We are proud of you.

  Mama.

  The Los Angeles Times ran a copy of that letter as the war ended, along with a quote from me saying, “My mother really is my best friend, and I am her only daughter. I just want to go home.” I also said I was worried about my father and my older brother because Mama had barely mentioned them in her letter.

  Amo had lost the war. It was an unprecedented, humiliating defeat. I didn’t think his ego would be able to handle it. I honestly thought he would step down or even commit suicide and leave some grandiose statement to ensure his legacy. It actually surprised me when he didn’t, and I found myself talking to him in my mind as I drove to work in my Chevy. If you ever believed one single thing you said on all those nights about how much you loved your people and your country, why don’t you resign? Haven’t you taken enough lives already with your senseless wars? If you can’t leave, Amo, please have the decency to kill yourself! Wouldn’t death be the punishment you would mete out to anyone else?

  But he stayed and fought—this time against his own people. Iraqis in the United States cheered when we heard through the media and the Iraqi-American grapevine that for six days Iraqis all over the country rose up against him. Kurds were fighting in the north. In the south, planes had dropped leaflets promising U.S. support if Shia rebels rose up against Saddam, and Shia did rise up, struggling to overcome decades of oppression by Saddam. Then, somehow, a deal was cut, and Saddam Hussein was back in control. Kurds were given certain protections and self-governance by the United States; the message about the gassing had come through to the American people. But the Shia in the south were afforded no such protection. Saddam Hussein was allowed to violate a “no-fly” zone over the region and massacre thousands of Shia. He sent gunmen into the holy cemetery in Najaf and attacked the shrine where rebels had taken refuge. He bombed the ancient marshes of the south where insurgents had hidden. To make sure they never hid there again, he ordered his engineers to divert the Euphrates River itself and dessicate their villages, floating settlements of reed and mud that had occupied that delta for five thousand years.

  In the context of such suffering and death, who would even notice the toll the war took on one family who had lost no one? I found out later that during the bombing, my father had sat in a corner, almost paralyzed in sadness at the destruction of his country. “Iraq is gone,” he kept saying, and numbed himself with whiskey. Mama was hysterical, unable to cope, until she began worrying about how to find food for her family during war, as women do, and learned to bake bread over a portable heater. It was in those few chaotic days after the war ended that Mama saw a small opening to finally leave her cage. She figured Amo had more to worry about than a few friends moving to Jordan. “I’m leaving,” she told my father. “You can come with me or not.” But he couldn’t leave Iraq and she couldn’t stay. My brothers, forced to choose between them, split up. Haider, who was always close to my father, stayed with Baba. Hassan, who was very attached to my mother, left for Jordan with Mama.

  The love, the singing, the smiles and happiness I remembered during the first ten years of my life—all that was gone. Amo had torn my family apart. My mother blamed my father for staying in Iraq and my father blamed my mother for my failed marriage. As for their three children, we were now living in three different countries, all going in different directions, not knowing when we would see one another again, and not knowing why our parents had allowed this to happen to our family.

  When Mama left for Jordan, Aunt Layla went with her. The story of the two women leaving Baghdad reminds me of the American movie Thelma and Louise, about two women escaping abusive husbands. Iraqi roads were tightly patrolled, Amo’s agents were armed and loose, and the borders were closely guarded. My mother and aunt packed Hassan in the backseat, tossed in an autographed picture of Saddam Hussein like an amulet in case they needed to prove their loyalty, and headed for Jordan. At check stations, they turned the radio to a patriotic channel and uttered the requisite “Amo Saddam, may God preserve him!” Many hours later, after driving through flat desert, they finally asked a Bedouin man where the Jordanian border was. “Ladies, you’ve been in Jordan for an hour!” he told them. Laughing, they pulled over, got out, turned up the car radio as loud as they could, and lit up Virginia Slims.

  “I am free!” my mother shouted to the empty desert. “I am finally free!”

  But Aunt Layla hadn’t told Mama her husband was joining her, and Mama wound up starting over alone. When news reached Amo of my mother’s escape, Mama later heard from Aunt Nada, Amo started referring to her as “that Persian traitor” and “that foolish woman.” He apparently never forgave her for fleeing, but did not deem her worthy of punishment.

  When Mama came to visit me in America after the war ended we were both women in the process of divorce. I didn’t tell her what Fakhri had done to me. I couldn’t. She had gone through enough already. Instead, we talked about the future. I told her how much I was enjoying working and earning my own living and going to school at night. For the first time, I was in charge of my own life. She told me about her new apartment in Amman and a restaurant she planned to start.

  “Why don’t you come back to Amman with me?” she asked me, excited. “You can finish college there. There are some families who have expressed interest in asking for your hand when they learned you left Fakhri.”

  “Are you kidding me, Mama?” I told her in amazement. I had finally gotten a taste of independence, and there was no way I was going to give it up. “You want me to marry again? I am not going with you, Mama. I am staying in America and finishing my school here. If I go with you, I will be trying to live the life you want me to live instead of the one I want to live. Please, Mama, let me go. Let me make something out of myself, and I will go back to Iraq someday. I want to help the people there. Let me go, Mama.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, but she said yes.

  From Alia’s Notebook

  One day in December 1989, Saddam called for us and when we arrived at his compound he was watching TV. He was watching the news about Americans who were invading Panama to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega. He was very, very upset to see this. He asked us, “Can you believe what these Americans are doing to Noriega? He was their friend and now they are invading his country and taking it away from him.” He was very upset and angry at this.

  The last time I saw him was a year later, on December 28, 1990. That was two weeks before the Gulf War. We had just been in the States a few months before and it seemed to us that the Americans were serious about war. We expressed to him our concern. I remember he was fishing that night and he started laughing and ridiculing the Americans and all their military equipment and satellites, etc. He didn’t expect a war. As a matter of fact, I asked him directly if he was expecting one and he said that the Americans would not strike Iraq because they feared the reaction of other Arabs. He also didn’t believe American soldiers could handle the heat of Iraq.

  He was relaxed that night. He even cooked for us and made traditional stuffed lamb. He talked about how he would lead the Arab world in war if America did dare to attack. He talked about a dream he had had recently where he, along with Hussain Kamel, were followed by barking black dogs. In that dream the dog had tried to attack him but Hussain Kamel hit him with one blow, killing the dog and saving Saddam. He said he had another dream in which he was standing and thousands of Muslims were praying behind him. In this dream, he said a man with headgear—referring to a religious cleric—turned to him and asked him to lead the prayers. In Saddam’s mind, that implied that he was going to lead all Mu
slims. He truly believed in these dreams and drew strength from them in those days.

  The day I left Baghdad, which was soon after the war, I felt I was finally liberated from my chains. It wasn’t an easy decision. He was mad at me for leaving the country but I didn’t care. I needed to leave and free myself and my children. I had forgotten myself in these years. I need time to decompress and recompose myself. I need time to find the me inside myself again. My life, as well as the lives of so many Iraqis, had been stolen from us not only by the Gulf War, but by Saddam himself. It had been a long time since I had a good night of sleep without having to deal with fear and nightmares from him.

  9

  BECOMING ZAINAB

  ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT of 1991, I surrounded myself with my most valuable belongings and boarded a train for Washington, D.C. At my feet was a Persian rug. Around my waist were pieces of jewelry my mother had given me as a wedding present and all the money I had been able to save working for eight months as a cashier, sales clerk, and accounting assistant. It was vividly cold, and I wrapped my plaid Dior coat around me as I tried to sleep, a poor person with a rich person’s baggage. I had made a vow to myself never to let anyone hurt me or control me again. I was in what I thought of as my “survivor mode,” and if anyone had asked how I visualized myself, the answer would have been as a castle with a moat around it and guards on top with their weapons pointed out. I would have no romantic relationships with men at all. I would tell no one about my life in Iraq. No one in my life now knew anything about the pilot’s daughter I had been or the arranged marriage I had escaped, and they never would. I was starting over. Whatever I made of my life from here on out would be my doing alone. If anyone asked how I came to be in America, I would give the same answer I had given the newspaper reporter: I was here on vacation and had been caught by the Gulf War. No one would ever ask why I hadn’t chosen to return.

  I had a job waiting for me in Washington as an assistant to the ambassador in the League of Arab States, and my priority was to get my college degree. After I arrived, I found an efficiency apartment located in Adams Morgan. It was so tiny, I barely had room for a bed and a small table, but I was so proud of it. I enjoyed every step I took exploring the streets of my eclectic new neighborhood. Around me were Guatemalans, Ethiopians, Thais, and other immigrants and citizens—all with their own histories and aspirations. I found myself invited to a New Year’s Eve party with a whole set of people my age, and I realized that was the first party I had been to where no one knew me. I played games and laughed with people I’d never met, and we stayed up until after dawn the next day. It was the most fun I had had in years. I felt free. Everything around me felt free. There was a mix of young men and women from different countries, and one of them was a tall, thin young Palestinian-American named Amjad Atallah, a recent University of Virginia graduate who was working in the publications department of a student exchange organization. He had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen, and I couldn’t help staring at them. He asked if I’d like to go out to lunch, but I refused without a second thought. No men. I was going to clear my head and get my university degree and then consider my options.

  I enrolled in evening classes and began hanging out with this new crowd, playing games, cooking, and just enjoying ourselves. It turned out that Amjad and I worked in the same building, and I didn’t have a car, so he began offering me a ride when we were getting together with friends after work. One night a friend offered to give us all Tae Kwon Do lessons, and we were joking around and laughing as we practiced the movements he taught us. At one point, he chose me to demonstrate.

  “Hit me on the chest, Zainab,” he instructed me.

  I laughed and gave him a light jab.

  “Not like that,” he said. “Hit me harder.”

  I giggled and hit him again.

  “Harder.”

  “But I fear hurting you,” I said.

  “You won’t. Trust me.”

  His voice was firm and focused. I hit him with real force on his chest. He didn’t move. “Harder,” he kept saying, “Harder.” And finally I hit him.

  “Harder.”

  And I focused my eyes and hit him for real. I hit him as hard as I could, and I kept on hitting him, and somehow, in front of all these people I barely knew, I felt my anger and hate of Fakhri come out through my fists. I hated him for hurting me. I hated him for humiliating me. I hated him for raping me. And finally I burst into tears and ran out of the room with my new friends looking after me. A near-stranger had crossed the moat and broken down my defenses less than a month after I arrived in Washington. I sat down near a piano in an adjoining room and was sobbing uncontrollably all alone when Amjad came in and sat down next to me. He put his hand on my hand and didn’t say a word. I don’t know how long we sat there. I was embarrassed to cry in front of him, but I was also comforted by his unjudging presence. He drove me home in silence without asking any questions.

  He stopped by my little apartment a few weeks later, and we wound up chatting on the floor because I had no chairs. It happened to be Valentine’s Day, an American holiday I knew because of its greeting cards. I found myself talking to him about Fakhri because, despite my vow to leave my past behind, I felt he deserved an explanation. I remember looking at his face for some reaction: a rejection? But I saw only kindness in his eyes. So I kept on talking. And little by little, I told him about what Fakhri had done to me and about why I had come to America in the first place. He listened. For the first time, I realized what it felt like just to tell someone openly about my own feelings and my own life. I cried at some points and laughed at others. It was healing and reassuring, and it felt so good that I found myself telling Amjad almost everything I had vowed to myself to keep secret, so he would understand how important it was for me to start over on my own.

  “My father was the pilot of Saddam Hussein,” I said finally. “We were his friends.”

  And I waited again for signs of rejection.

  “Thank you for trusting me,” he said. “I am honored, really.”

  “So you don’t hate me?” I asked.

  “No, of course not,” he said. “That was not a life you chose. It was chosen for you. I think it took great courage for you to leave Fakhri. I don’t hate you. I am proud to be your friend. You make me understand what the Iraqi people have gone through.”

  He promised to keep my confidences, and I knew he would never break that promise. I trusted him, and we began spending time together. When I mentioned that I missed Iraqi food, he took me to an Iranian restaurant, the closest thing to it in Washington. When I told him I missed hugging my family, he brought me a teddy bear. When I told him that I couldn’t take lunch break at my work, he brought me lunch at my desk. I had only been in Washington for six weeks and out of my marriage for just over a year, and despite all my resolutions, I began to wonder if I was falling in love. I knew how dangerous that was. What did Amjad’s kindness mean? One night on the way home from a movie with friends, I asked him to stop the car to talk. It was late, nearly midnight, and we walked along the Potomac River in Georgetown. It was so cold we could see our breath in the air.

  “Amjad, you have been nothing but nice to me, too nice in many ways,” I said. “I don’t want to be confused, so I need to ask you. Are you nice like this to all women around you or are you being nice to me particularly? I just don’t want to be hurt. Whatever your answer is, it is all right with me, but I need to understand, Amjad. Are you just a friend or are you more than a friend?”

  He took a deep breath, looked at me with those magical eyes of his, and said, “Zainab, I want to spend the rest of my life with you if that is okay with you.”

  I felt this tremendous rush of love for him. I had no idea he was going to say that, and I hugged him and lost myself in his wonderful warmth. He told me then that he had fallen in love with me the night we talked. I felt the unfamiliar wool of his fabric against my cheek, and I wished to myself that I were falling in love for the fir
st time, that I could wipe away the men that had come before. My heart was racing, but I kept hearing a voice in my brain saying, Careful, Zainab. Careful. Slow down. Don’t make this same mistake again.

  “I don’t know about the rest of our lives,” I finally told him. “Let’s take it a step at a time, and we can revisit this whole thing in two years.”

  He didn’t question the time. He just said, “I understand.”

  “And you have to understand a few things,” I said. “This is not going to be an easy ride for me. You should not expect any kissing or sex for that matter. None of that. And if it ever works out between us, you need to know that I don’t want to have children.”

  He looked at me for a while, and I could see him taking all this in and processing it.

  “If I have to make choices,” he said, “then I pick you.”

  I hate the cold, but life was beautiful that night. We stood there holding each other until our feet grew numb.

  Amjad never expected to meet, let alone fall in love with, a “friend of Saddam.” He was a political activist who had regularly demonstrated against U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. In some ways, he knew more about the current history of Iraq than I did, because we had had no free media at all and, ironically, because I had seen Saddam Hussein from so close up that it was hard for me to put him in the proper perspective. When Amjad and I talked, I was shocked to learn that some facts I had been taught to believe my whole life were simply wrong. I learned from him that Iraq, not Iran, had started the war and one million young men from both sides died for nothing. Though my mother had shared with me her sense of the sheer loss of life and the futility of the war, the enormity of Amo’s fraud was staggering to me. It had all been a setup, not a defense. By declaring war on Iran when he did, Amjad felt, Saddam had galvanized Iran in its most vulnerable revolutionary stage and ensured the control by hardliners when many factions were still fighting to determine future control of the country. None of this surprised me, really, and yet the more I learned, the sicker I felt about the time I had spent with Amo. My mind kept swinging back and forth between images of Amjad and me at the time of the Iranian war. While he was protesting the war in front of the Iraqi embassy in Washington with a kafiyeh wrapped around his face to protect his identity from Mukhabarat retaliation, I was all dressed up at the farmhouse at the beck and call of the man who caused it all. Through him, I became interested in learning more about Iran. Who had our enemies been anyway, and why had they risen up? What was the story behind Persian women; what was their role in the revolution and what had they been through since the revolution? Amjad became my mentor and political soul mate. I told him that I felt very guilty about my on-again, off-again attempts at faith, and confessed that I had stopped praying or even fasting for Ramadan after the Gulf War and my experiences with Fakhri.