Escape from Saddam (12 page)

This did not mean, however, that the Bedouin were above suspicion. The authorities were not so naive that they did not realize that certain Bedouin tribesmen took advantage of their nomadic status to earn themselves extra money. The border guards in this region allowed the Bedouin to wander at will but nevertheless kept close tabs on them. There was no guarantee that we would not be stopped and questioned as to our movements, and if this happened, it was essential that I look and act like a member of their tribe.

Abu Mustapha’s nephew was a little younger than I—perhaps sixteen—but the ravages of life in the desert had not been kind to his features, which were weathered beyond his years. We sat together in a communal courtyard around which the village’s houses were built. In the middle of the courtyard, the burned-out shell of an old car lay in a pool of mud and water, and thin-looking sheep and goats wandered around at will. The nephew quizzed me about myself and my life in Baghdad and Mosul, and I did my best to answer his questions patiently, aware that the world I was trying to escape may well have seemed strange to him, just as his world did to me. But my mind was focused on the path that lay ahead, not that which lay behind, and I was eager to talk to him about our evening’s work. “What will I have to wear tonight?” I asked him.

“Come with me,” he said. We went inside and he found me a dark, embroidered
dishdash.
He also gave me another, heavier robe. “This is to protect you from the cold,” he explained. “In the desert, the temperature drops at night. You will freeze if you are not properly dressed.”

I put the garments on. They had a heavy, musty smell to them, but they fit well enough. He then handed me a long stick. “This is what we use to herd our sheep,” he explained. “It’s not difficult. If you tap them on the right, they will turn left; if you tap them on the left, they will turn right. Come with me, we can practice.”

We returned to the courtyard, and he identified the sheep that belonged to his family. Families marked their animals on a particular part of their bodies, either with henna or with some other dye, so that they could distinguish which beasts belonged to whom. Together we practiced herding the sheep that we would be taking with us that night, while the nephew explained to me that if I was spoken to I would have to try to speak in his dialect. This would be difficult for me—the difference in the accent was extreme, and I did not believe I would be able to fool anyone. I did my best to practice with the nephew, but I could tell by the look on his face that I was at best unconvincing. I would have to hope no border guards spoke to me.

The day passed slowly. As the sun was setting, I sat in the guest room waiting for my guides to tell me it was time to leave. When Abu Mustapha arrived with his brother and nephew, I saw that they were wearing headdresses tied tightly around their heads and their chins, and they had strapped bullet belts in the shape of an
         around their bodies. Both of the older men were carrying their evil-looking
berrnaw.
I looked at them inquiringly. “In case of wild animals,” Abu Mustapha said by way of explanation. “Come, we need to get moving.”

I put on my Bedouin garb, grabbed my bag, and followed them outside. My belongings were strapped to one of the sheep, and the place was full of activity. Primitive bells around the necks of the cattle clinked as they wandered freely, children ran around, and the wife was cooking bread in the courtyard. It was a heady, homey smell, and under other circumstances it would have made me hungry; but even though the journey ahead was long, my stomach was churning from apprehension and I had no thought for food. We left the bustle behind us and set off into the silence of the desert night, four Bedouin tribesmen and seven sheep, a common sight in the deserts of Jordan and Iraq and one that I hoped would pass unnoticed.

As soon as we were clear of the village, the tribesman spoke to me. “In that direction,” he pointed away from him, “if you walk for twenty miles, you will hit the Syrian border. But the border with Jordan lies this way.” He pointed straight ahead. “We are heading for an area where there are fewer Iraqi patrols,” he told me. “I hope we do not encounter any, but if we do, you must leave it to me to do the talking. Busy yourself with the sheep, and do not attract attention to yourself.”

“What if they ask who I am?”

“We will simply tell them that you are our relative and you are coming with us to sell some sheep.”

It didn’t seem very convincing to me, but I could do nothing now but trust my guides. I nodded and looked ahead. Even in the twilight I could see the desert stretching out before us, and I wondered how on earth these people would be able to navigate their way through such a featureless expanse of land. Behind us, the lights of the village twinkled in the distance; ahead was a barren, hilly landscape. Small bushes dotted the desert sands, spiky cacti of various sizes, some small and unassuming, others huge and gnarled. “We will take you across the border and point you in the direction of the road that will take you to Amman,” the tribesman continued.

“Can’t you take me to the road itself?” I asked him. I didn’t relish the idea of being left alone in the desert.

He shook his head. “It would be too dangerous. The Jordanian border guards know that we would never travel along that road—we need to make them believe we are traveling between villages, and the road is completely out of the way. If they catch us heading toward it, they will be sure to start asking questions that we do not want to answer, and they will check us out thoroughly. It won’t take them long to find you.”

As the light failed, it became impossible to see what lay in front of us, but the Bedouin seemed in no way unsure of their route. Soon it was very, very dark. It was not the darkness that I was used to in the city, or even in the desert surrounding my unit; here we had only the light of the moon. We could still just see the village behind us, and somewhere, far away, the distant lights of another settlement. The tribesmen used these landmarks as points of reference and occasionally consulted a compass by the light of a match, but their most important navigational tool was their own knowledge of the desert.

It quickly grew cold—I was glad of my heavy overgarment—and I became aware of the engulfing silence, the stillness of the desert. The Bedouin talked in low voices ahead of me, and occasionally the sheep bleated; apart from that, other than the sound of our own footsteps, there was no noise.

Suddenly the silence was broken. In the distance I heard an unfamiliar sound, somewhere between a bark and a high-pitched whine. It shocked me, and I stopped walking for a moment. “What is that?” I asked nervously. “What was that howling?”

Slowly Abu Mustapha turned around to look at me. He was smoking a cigarette, and the light from the tip vaguely illuminated his face, giving him a sinister aspect. “They are wolves,” he said quietly and in an almost singsong voice.

“If they catch you,” added the nephew as if sensing my tension, “they will rip you into little bits!” He grinned at me.

I gave him a flat look. For some reason he was clearly enjoying my discomfort, but I did not let him relish it for too long. I turned away and continued walking; but though I tried to seem nonchalant, beneath my studied calm was a terrible sense of panic. As we continued our slow march, the noise of the howling grew nearer. Whether the wolves had sensed our presence, I couldn’t tell; but it was not something I felt I wanted to find out. The tribesman clearly had the same thought. He raised his hand, and we came to a stop. Swiftly he raised his rifle toward the direction of the howling and fired a warning shot. It seemed to do the trick and the howling receded, for now, at least.

The later it got, the more edgy I became. The sound of the wolves had worried me, and in the dark I became increasingly aware that there might be any number of other hidden dangers in the desert that night. I was wearing my army boots, which was a relief because I trod on all manner of unknown, unseen objects and textures. My great fear was that I would tread on a slumbering snake. Had I been wearing my army trousers, it would have been less of a worry as they were made from tough material; but under my Bedouin
dishdash
I was wearing only thin jeans, which were by no means robust enough to withstand a snakebite. Snakes had always been my greatest phobia, and I do not think I would have been able to continue my journey if I had encountered one.

Every so often, the wolves grew closer, and the tribesman fired a shot toward the sound of the animals to ward them away. The sound of the
berrnaw
was twenty times louder than any handgun, so it encouraged them to stay clear. But I also had reason to be nervous about the gunshots. Each time the tribesman fired, the noise announced our presence to any border guards who happened to be in the vicinity. It seemed unlikely that we were going to avoid being noticed by them for long.

It had been fully dark for about an hour when we first saw the lights of a patrol vehicle. Rather than head straight for us, it drove around us in a circle and then disappeared from sight. “Perhaps they didn’t see us,” I said to the tribesman.

“No,” he replied. “They saw us. They will be back.”

He was right. We continued through the desert, and sometime later we saw lights coming from a different direction. Whether or not it was the same patrol, I couldn’t tell, but it seemed likely that they had been circling us, either to make us nervous or for some other, more obscure reason. Eventually what looked like a pickup truck approached us straight on, stopping directly in front of us with the headlights beaming straight into our eyes. In the back was a large spotlight, and a guard sat there operating it. I froze momentarily but then remembered what the tribesman had told me: “Busy yourself with the sheep, and do not attract attention to yourself.” I took my staff in my hand and started herding the animals, which had started to wander. The tribesman’s nephew did the same, calling to the animals as he did so; I kept quiet so as not to attract attention to my accent. Abu Mustapha approached the patrol vehicle as I made some pretense of checking the luggage strapped to one of the sheep.
“Allah bilkhair! Allah bilkhair!”
he called congenially into the night.

Three patrol officers got down from the car. They did not look friendly. “Who are you?” the driver asked roughly.

“My name is Jaffar Mohammed Hassan, known as Abu Mustapha, from the Al-Shamarry tribe,” the tribesman replied smoothly.

“I see,” replied the driver. “One of my brothers-in-law married into your tribe. Where are you going, Abu Mustapha?”

“We are taking these sheep to a village nearby to trade, but we have no truck to transport them, so we travel on foot.”

The driver did not seem to find this odd—it was common enough for the Bedouin to travel in this way. He turned his attention to the rest of us. “And who are these people?”

“This is my brother, and these are his sons who are helping us.”

The driver looked closely at us; I continued to busy myself with the sheep, worried that if I caught his eye he would ask me a question.

“You should come to our house,” the tribesman said suddenly to divert the driver’s attention. “On behalf of my village, you are most welcome!” It did not seem an odd invitation—such gestures of hospitality are central to Bedouin tradition—but the other two border guards seemed particularly unmoved by it. It served its purpose, however, as he turned his attention away from me and back to the tribesman.

“Abu Mustapha, I expect you all to return to your village, and I do not expect any of you to go missing.”

The tribesman smiled. “Of course,” he told the driver. “If only my vehicle hadn’t broken down.” The two other border guards eyed him suspiciously; then they all climbed back into their vehicle. “You are welcome anytime in our village,” he called after them as they screeched away across the sands.

I watched them disappear behind a hill. “Do you think they will come back?” I asked the tribesman.

He shrugged. “Who knows?” he answered me noncommittally. “We had better keep moving. The border is very close.”

We walked for another hour, and gradually in the distance I started to notice moving lights. “What are they?” I asked nervously. I was still terrified that the patrol would return, and any sign of movement compounded those fears.

“That is where you are headed. It is the road into Amman. We must leave you soon.”

Slowly the lights ahead grew imperceptibly closer, and once more the tribesman raised his hand to call us to a halt. “We can’t take you any farther,” he said. “We have bypassed the two main checkpoints on the road. All you need to do is continue in that direction toward the lights and you will be okay.”

I nodded.

“If you hear the wolves, fire some warning shots into the air. It should scare them off.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said. It seemed inadequate, but what else could I say?

“
Bilsalamah,
” he replied in acknowledgment. “Be safe.” He hugged me perfunctorily before quickly kissing me on each cheek. The others followed suit, before silently turning to retrace their steps. It did not take long for my guides to disappear into the blackness, leaving me with nothing but my bag and my gun.