We crossed the border in search of cheaper accommodation. We never realised it would be free.
The bus to the border town of Silopi took about an hour, maybe more; the most intriguing thing about the journey was the queue of oil tankers waiting to get in to Iraq. Thousands upon thousands of them parked in a long line that stretched for a hundred miles along the road. Next to them were little tent communities of people sitting round camp fires or relaxing in hammocks suspended between the axles of their vehicles. This was one of the most incredible things that I have ever seen and we kept on wondering how long those men spent waiting to get to the front of the line. Later I was to meet a truck driver who had spent time in this line and assured me that it did not take that long at all.
It was dusk by the time we had arrived so we quickly set about looking for somewhere to stay. Even the filthiest place was not as cheap as we were used to paying so we asked a friendly taxi driver where we could find adequately priced lodgings.
Zakho, he said pointing in the direction of the mountain. Zakho is the equivalent border town on the Iraqi side of the border. After a bit of negotiation he offered to take us there for a reasonable price and so off we went. After all, it was only a few miles away, how dangerous could it be?
Before crossing the border we decided to leave our bags on the Turkish side to avoid looking too much like tourists in a country that routinely beheads outsiders. As we were only intending to stay for a few days, we weren’t going to need much in the way of luggage anyway so we befriended someone at the bus station who took our bags for us.
It was nearly midnight by the time we had cleared Turkish customs and got to passport control. We were both nervous and excited as everyone we had met had assured us that Kurdistan would be safe. On the Iraqi side of the border we were taken to the passport office where we sat under the inquisitive gaze of a handful of truckers and soldiers who were watching images of the war that was happening less than 100 miles away on the TV. Once we had received our entry permits we were briefly searched and then taken to a security building where we were searched properly.
Foolishly I had forgotten about a small lump of hash that I had hidden in my wallet along with a number of Rizzla, but the people searching us didn’t seem at all concerned. They just made a small joke to themselves and then carefully returned both items to their hiding places and gave them back to me. We were then interviewed, first together and then individually by someone who had studied English literature at Baghdad University and yearned to go to Cambridge and Stratford-upon-Avon. I was sorry to disappoint by telling him that I had visited neither. He was a very friendly man and spent much a great deal of time telling us where was and wasn’t safe and how hospitable the people of Kurdistan were going to be to us. It wasn’t all friendly banter though. They did have real concerns about us and our intentions in Iraq. We were both travelling under brand new passports issued less than two months before in Turkey which understandably raised alarm bells in their heads, so we showed them our old passports. Once they'd had a chance to thoroughly examine all of my old visas they began taking a particular interest in me. Many of the foreign fighters in Iraq came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Russia which was unfortunate for me as I had stamps from all of those countries in my old passport. What had I been doing there and who had I met? Was I perhaps a spy? Or a journalist? Or just a Mujahid on a mission from god?
Despite their questions I was very happy there with them and even complimented them on doing such a thorough job in keeping this part of Iraq free from fighting. After a number of hours we were told that the interview process was over and that we were free to go, but it being so late we should stay with them in the security building where we would be safe. I thought this a very kind gesture when they showed us to a room with a TV and some sofas where we were to spend the night. On the way we bumped into a British Iraqi family who were returning to the UK, who also told us of the hospitality of the people of the region, and how our safety was almost guaranteed. They even recommended us a few places to visit. We were both so excited to be in Iraq and after weeks of worrying in Turkey we felt sure that we had made the right decision in coming. We spent the night watching American movies on cable and even smoked a few sneaky joints out of the window.
The following morning, as we sat in an office drinking tea and eating bread we were told that we would be driven the 50 miles to the next town of Dohuk where they would make sure that we got into a legitimate taxi. So we said goodbye to our interviewer, who by now we had become quite friendly with, and although the evil bastard knew exactly what was in store for us, he made us promise to call in on him on the way back in a few days.
We were driven the half hour journey to Dohuk by a former member of Saddam’s national guard accompanied by a very large man with an AK who we presumed was for our protection, but later came to realise was for other people’s protection from us!
When we arrived in Dohuk we were driven straight to the police station where we were separated, strip searched, checked for a foreskin and then had all of our belongings confiscated. We were kept separated and locked up for a number of hours before we were eventually reunited and taken to a large holding cell where we were locked in with about twelve other people. In hindsight it was a luxurious cell, this being due to the police station having once been a hotel, but at the time we thought it was awful. There was loads of space to walk around and one wall was all windows that afforded us amazing views of the mountains and the surrounding countryside that we would never get to visit. We could piss in the corner of the room and squeegee it out under the door to the outside. There was and a bucket of water that we could drink from and even blankets.
The people that we were sharing the cell with were very friendly. They didn’t speak English but we managed to communicate just fine with them. They were mostly Iraqi, both Kurds and Arabs, but there were also a few Syrians there. From what we could work out, they, like us, were being held without charge and none of them had been there more than a couple of weeks although a few of them had been quite badly tortured and showed us their injuries and scars. Another one of them was on hunger strike. They were very kind to us and even saw us as a source of amusement as we were such a novelty. To us, however, they were a source of tragedy as their stories all seemed so terrible. Most of them had families at home who had no idea what had happened to them. They had all essentially been kidnapped by the authorities.
They had run out of cigarettes long before we arrived, and so when I brought out my packet I was pounced upon and a few short yet highly satisfying minutes later we were without again. Instead of tobacco they had been smoking tea, which was in abundance in large sacks at the far end of the room rolled up with the pages from books on human rights thousands of which were stacked up next to the tea. The irony was lost on all but me and Zim. Despite being held under lock and key, we were still in quite high spirits. We were having a crazy and, thus far, harmless adventure and we were still under the (misguided) impression that we were to be released the next day and were simply being held while we were being processed, something that was quite understandable in a time of war.
We spent much of that night laughing around with these guys. After dinner, which was surprisingly good, a few of them began playing chess with used cigarette butts while others went to the other side of the room to have an after dinner smoke. I declined to join them as tea is not my smoke of choice, neither is glossy paper. I retired to my blanket and tried, in vain, to fall asleep, something I finally managed a number of hours later.
The following day was spent pacing in a figure of eight around the two pillars in the room. I was not alone in this pursuit, but I was the only one that had opted for the figure of eight route. After a few hours I had grown very bored of this cell and was beginning to wonder what was going on with our cases, at which point I saw through the glass door that there was a man holding both mine and Zim’s bags. This did concern me a little as they had gone in to Turkey to get them which seemed like a huge amount of effort just for us. Thankfully I didn’t have too long to wonder the whys and what ifs because someone came to the cell to get me. I was taken out and led to the left, which worried me even more as I had been told by my cell mates the night before that the left side was where you were taken to be tortured. The right side was apparently the side you were taken to be released. To my great relief I wasn’t taken to be tortured, but simply to have my mug shot taken.
Shortly after this we were taken to the right side, the “release” side, given our bags and told that we were going to be set free that afternoon. We were both very excited about the prospect of being free, at last, to travel to all of the places that everyone had been telling us such good things about, the sun was shining and we were in Iraq with a great story to tell people when we got home; it was going to be a good day after all. Then we were handcuffed and locked in a small metal box on the back of a pickup.
All that we could work out from the soldiers and the three other Iraqis that were in the truck with us was that we were being driven to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This was not exactly what I’d had in mind when they said we would be set free, but none the less we tried to make the most of the journey by talking to the other prisoners in the truck and taking it in turns to sneak a peek out of the matchbox sized window near the roof which gave us an idea of the landscape that we were driving through, lush green Mesopotamian fields that were some of the first farms in the world. My greatest concern at the time was the driver who insisted on racing all the way there at break-neck speed overtaking anything and everything that got in his way with us being thrown around our tin box every time he misjudged the oncoming traffic. I did not relish the idea of being in a high speed collision whilst handcuffed and padlocked in a cage.
We arrived in Erbil flustered but unscathed where we found ourselves in yet another police station, but this one had a large wall around it and many more soldiers milling around some of whom escorted us through the building and in to a small office surrounded by a well tended lawn and some rather nice looking trees. Inside our handcuffs were removed and we were given cigarette each and allowed to watch TV while two men sat behind a desk and spoke in soft whispers. After some time the nicer of the two men, the one who had given us the cigarettes, asked us what we were doing in Iraq. We explained ourselves while the other man eyed us both intently with a scowl on his face. Suddenly the angry looking one said something to us in Arabic. The nice man repeated his colleague’s question in English.
Do you speak Arabic? To which we answered no. I think you understand Arabic very well said the angry man in slightly accented English. As I sat there nervously smoking my cigarette while someone who had never met me decided my fate I could feel his eyes boring into me as if he was trying to read my thoughts. As I returned the stare I became acutely aware that this man was utterly convinced that we were lying to him and had come to Iraq with the sole purpose of joining the jihad. Although this scared me I took refuge in the fact that it was not he who held my passport in his hand.
For the last few hours I had been wondering why they had even let us into the country at all. Surely it would have been in everyone’s best interests for them to have denied us entry. Isn’t that why countries have borders in the first place? To keep unsavoury people out. Not in this case though, they had not only let is in, but they had driven us further in to the country. As if Iraq didn’t have enough problems of it’s own without importing more criminals. Had we known what was about to happen to us we would never have gone near the border, but such is the beauty of hindsight. As I sat mulling this over the nicer man wrote something in his ledger, locked our passports in the drawer in his desk and motioned the guard to take us away. I had no idea what was going on but I began to entertain the thought that perhaps the nice man was not so nice after all.
We were taken back in to the main building and in to a small office where a moustached man in traditional Kurdish dress slept on a camp bed behind a desk as a TV played silently next to us. As I looked around the small cramped room I began to wonder exactly what they were going to do with us.
There were four of us in the room waiting to be processed by this man who did not look at all happy to have been woken from his nap. I was third in the line behind two of the Iraqis that we had shared the trip from Dohuk with. The first person in the line, a nice guy about 22 years old who had had his hands bound so tight in the truck that they were now blue was searched again and had his name logged in the book. All of his belongings apart from the money in his pockets were taken from him then he was shown to a small metal door in the corner of the room. One of the guards banged on the door and a few seconds later I heard the sound of a bolt being pulled back. The door opened and behind it stood a huge brute of a man with a big moustache wearing a blue boiler suit. He grabbed the young guy, pulled him through the door and punched him hard in the face before dragging him off.
At this point the gravity of the situation hit me hard. This was not just some crazy travelling adventure anymore, this was serious and this was happening to me.
Zim did you see that? I said. He had not as his back was turned while franticly trying to write his name on his bag, but he saw what happened to the next guy. I had to give the guard my name twice as he had no idea how to spell Christopher and then it was my turn to go through the metal door. I turned to look at Zim and forced a smile. I didn’t know it at the time but this would the last time we were to see each other for two weeks.
I stepped through the door and braced for impact but mercifully I was only punched in the back and not the face. I was standing in a small courtyard about ten metres by ten metres that had some doors leading off it. It was open to the sky but there was a wire fence acting as a ceiling that had an assortment of clothes hanging from it. There was a tap in the middle around which a few weeds were poking out through the concrete floor. The whole place was a dull shade of grey. I was pushed to one of the doors and instructed to take of my shoes and socks. The door was a large metal thing with two large bolts each with an equally large padlock and there was a smaller little door like a letterbox at eye level for keeping an eye on the inmates. I kicked my shoes in to a pile of what must have been at least a hundred shoes of odd sorts and as he drew back the bolts and opened the door it suddenly dawned on me that Zim and I would not be put in the same cell. I really did not want to be by myself and began wondering how I was going to deal with being alone in a room full of suspected terrorists. I didn’t have time to think about it though as the door had opened and I was being pushed through it before I knew it I could hear the sound of the bolts being slid across behind me.
The first thing to cross my mind was that there were far too many people in the room. In retrospect this was the mother of all understatements, I felt like I was in an Amnesty International brochure. All of my worst fears in one and yet for some strange reason I was too shocked or scared be scared just yet. Forty nine pairs of eyes turned to look at me from what I would have considered a single cell. I stood there frozen with my back against the door, barely even enough room for me to stand and glanced around. In that brief moment everyone in the room looked like a terrorist, long beards and angry eyes, exactly the people that I was trying to avoid and now here I was locked up in a very small space with loads of them. Surely the fact that they were in jail meant that they were all hardened criminals and were willing to chop heads for the cause or even just for fun?
Salaam... I mumbled in a weak gesture of peace.
Sit down, sit down a voice came from somewhere near my right knee. There was some shuffling and a small space appeared, just about large enough for me to squat in. Where are you from? The inevitable question. I winced as I answered them knowing that British citizens have few friends in Iraq, but also silently grateful that there weren't any British soldiers in this part of the country.
Before I could even stop and think what had happened to me I was summoned to meet the boss. It took me a minute or two to negotiate the five metres to the other end of the room, carefully stepping over the sprawling mass of people that lay in my way. Despite the intense lack of space and the boss and his sidekick being the two fattest people in the room, they were sitting in relative comfort and there was easily enough space for me to sit down next to them. For a moment I sat there in silence, their stares fixed upon me and I began to contemplate my fate. The very fact that there was a boss at all scared me as it played to one of the many stereotypes that I had about life in prison, the other being that I was going to spend the rest of my very short life being savagely ass raped by the fat sweaty mass that I saw before me, and, for that matter, anyone else who cared to have me as their bitch. Fortunately my first impressions were wrong and he extended his fat sweaty hand and introduced himself.
You are English? Welcome to my room, my name is Naif. You know like the English word knife. With which he slowly drew his finger across his throat. Ha ha, do not worry I am joking. I tried to crack a smile but forgive me if I didn't think it was the funniest of gags
I like English. What is your name? And with that we were friends. There was of course an ulterior motive for his 'charming' manner; he wanted someone to help him improve his English.
He called over an older Egyptian man called Ahmed, one of many, so we called him Caca Mouserie, (Egyptian Uncle). Caca Mouserie was one of the nicest people that I was to meet in prison. He had travelled the world as a ship's engineer, had lived for many years in Greece and Spain and spoke almost fluent English. Being able to speak to someone who could actually understand me made such a difference and he really helped me get through the first few hours. I was still visibly shaking and there was a tremble to my voice so he got out a small chess set carved from pieces of candle and we began to play to take my mind off things but somehow it made things worse as if I was putting off the inevitable. I have never tried so hard to lose a game of chess in my life, so after a few short minutes he carefully packed the game away and introduced me to some of the people that we were lying on.
This is Karzan, he is the Kurdish taekwondo champion but he has been in here for the last seven months. Karzan was missing all of the toes on one foot and delighted in telling me that he had killed five people. He then proceeded to point people out and give me each person's body count, simulating the method in which each victim was dispatched in gruesome detail. Of course he hadn’t killed anyone, neither had anyone else, but I was in such a state of shock that if he had told me Saddam was in the adjacent cell I would have probably believed him. My feet were resting on this young boy, about nineteen, called Ahmed Ali from Jordan. He had been fighting in Mosul when he was caught and proudly showed me the burn on his shoulder from a rocket launcher. Looking at him I found it hard to believe that he had been fighting but boys will be boys and had I been in his position I would have probably been the same.
I suppose that I should have been scared, which of course I was, I was petrified, but everything was just washing over me. I was still under the impression that there had been a terrible mistake and I would wake up any minute safe and sound back in Turkey. All I could think of for ages was that today is my ex girlfriend's birthday. For the last few days I had been looking forward to e-mailing her as her birthday is the only real time that I feel welcome to communicate with her. Now as the reality of the situation dawned on me I came to realise that I wouldn't be able to wish her a happy birthday after all. Not only that, it might be some time before I ever would.
After a few hours the door was opened and food was handed out. This cut down on space even more as we all crouched with our knees under our chins and tucked in to the food which was a chicken drumstick and bread which we ate with our hands as there was only about ten plastic spoons to go around. There were four two litre plastic coke bottles of water that we were allowed do drink from but we had to be sparing as that is not very much between fifty people. Everything was shared by two in the cell and eating was no exception. Luckily for me on that first night I shared with Naif, who obviously normally ate alone, which meant that I was well fed as he could pretty much eat as much as he liked.
Shortly after we had finished our food we were allowed out to the toilet in small groups. Prisoners assigned to the task would walk up and down shouting
De de hasara de, yalla de yalla de yalla yalla yalla, which loosely translates as Hurry the fuck up.
Toilet breaks were always very rushed; we were given about ten seconds after which someone would give the door a sharp kick sending it crashing in to our heads so it was important to get the job done quickly as it would be another six or seven hours until we would be allowed out for another few precious seconds of toilet time. For some people this was a serious problem. Caca Mouserie, for example had diabetes and a bladder infection, neither of which benefited from this kind of treatment.
While I was washing my hands I was called over to talk with the guard who was supervising us. I was a little nervous but I was to become very accustomed to being the object of attention. It turned out that he was the least psychotic guard in the whole prison and quite a nice guy as well. His name was Ahmed and even thought the real motive for him calling me over was to practice his English he gave me a cigarette and assured me that there had been some sort of mistake and that I obviously wasn't a terrorist and he was quite sure that I would be released the following morning.
Do not worry you will not stay here long. You are only here because you arrived after the director had gone home and no one can be released without his approval. He said I am sure that you will be out of here in the morning.
He even went to another cell who were still eating and got me another chicken drumstick and a piece of bread. I felt quite bad as I was feeling so scared that I didn't really have an appetite and I knew that there were those in my cell who were watching me that would have loved to be eating it and were also more deserving of it. I sat there eating with him hoping that they wouldn't resent me too much for the preferential treatment I was getting.
All too quickly it was time to lock the door again and so I reluctantly went back in. As soon as the door was locked behind us people started doing namaz. As our days were filled with nothing, prayer seemed to provide a real focus. There were people in the cell that certainly weren't as religious on the outside and yet inside they were as pious as could be. The only two books that we were allowed were Korans and they were treated with the utmost respect. So much so in fact that I, as a non believer, wasn't even allowed to touch either of them, even if that meant waking someone else up to pass it along the cell.
As we felt the night draw in (it was hard to tell as there were no windows in the cell), we arranged ourselves for bed. Naif and his three friends, Mohammed Fil, Cac Najat and Karzan all had enough space to lie down comfortably. They took up about four metres squared between them, leaving fourteen square metres for the remaining forty six of us which works out as almost exactly one square foot of space each. We were all in pairs and took it in turns to lean against the wall and half lie down. We slept in three hour shifts. I say slept but being nearly six foot I am taller then the average Iraqi and so had even less space to play with. The space was the worst thing to deal with but there were other factors too such as the harsh white light coming from the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling that were on twenty four hours a day which took some getting used to. Then there was the heat. Fifty men in one very small cell with no windows, you can imagine that it got pretty hot. Thankfully it was only spring. And of course the smell.
For my first few nights I was paired up with this kind but very annoying man called Kawa who slept against the door. This was kind of a mixed blessing as the strip under the door was our only supply of fresh air, so I was relatively cool, but everyone else in the room became very concerned that I might block it up so I was constantly being told off in either Arabic of Kurdish, neither of which I could understand. I hardly even closed my eyes that night and after three hours Kawa and I changed places, but three hours after that he refused to change back so I spent the night sitting up trying to get whatever sleep I could until dawn when I had to get up to make room for prayer.
Morning namaz started before sunrise which was most inconvenient as this was the only time that I would ever really be asleep. We would all have to stand up with our backs pressed against the wall to make room as the faithful, which was everyone apart from me and two others, took turns to pray. Islamic prayer takes very little time, but as it had to be done in shifts it would be at least half an hour until everyone was finished and I could return to my space on the floor. This was something that I had to endure five times every day, but the other four times were almost enjoyable as it gave me the opportunity to stand up and stretch out my legs. Standing at any other time was forbidden.
Shortly after Morning Prayer we were allowed out to the toilet. The temperature out of the cells in the morning was freezing and as we had no blankets it took a while to warm back up enough to feel comfortable by which time they would come to give us our first meal of the day. Breakfast generally consisted of bread and curdled milk, occasionally we would get boiled eggs instead, or a watery tahini like substance called Rashi. Lunch was always rice, bread and baked beans or a watery vegetable stew. Dinner was often the same but sometimes with meat. The food was ok; it tasted good and never made me sick but as with everything in this cell it was shared between two. The portions were pretty meagre to begin with so we never ended up with very much food at all. The unwritten rule was that you would keep half of your bread to snack on later, but as this was forbidden it had to be hidden under people, the result being that later in the day we would end up snacking on stale pieces of bread that tasted of cigarette ash and sweat. As for water, we had four big soft drink bottles that we could fill up from the tap when we went to the toilet so water was available but in short supply and therefore had to be rationed. The biggest problem while eating was space. If you imagine that under normal circumstances we each had about one square foot of space. This is just about manageable when you are just sitting or sleeping and can lean on someone else, but not when you are eating. We would all have to squat facing each other, our heads almost touching with the plate in between us taking it in turns to use the spoons that were in very short supply.
Mostly the days were filled with sleeping or trying to sleep. As there were only actually a few hours in the early morning when I would be exhausted enough to sleep through the discomfort, I spent much of the time in a bit of a daze, too tired to really be fully functional and too uncomfortable to sleep.
For the first few days I kept on expecting to be released that day and every time a guard came to the door I expected him to call my name. But they never did. I found out of one of the nicer guards that the Chief of the police station where we were being held finished work at 4pm everyday and I knew that he was the only person with the authority to release me, so as 4 o’clock approached and passed I would resign myself to the fact that I would have to endure another sleepless night. Maybe tomorrow.
After a few days I was moved to a better space next to Caca Mouserie, The Egyptian man who spoke English. My sleeping partner was a young Kurdish man called Ricard. I was quite happy in this spot as I could talk to Caca Mouserie which helped me get through the days and at night Ricard would let me lie on him so that we could both sleep at the same time and during the day he would go to the other side of the cell to chat with some other of his friends leaving me twice the space to stretch out in. Ricard was a strange character. An ex soldier he used to tell me stories about swimming across the Euphrates and driving tanks in the desert. Every Sunday he would remain in silence for the whole day in remembrance of his daughter who had died on a Sunday some years earlier.
After a few days, I can’t remember exactly how many but I do know that I was a Wednesday, our cell had a wash day. A nice Turkomen man from Kirkuk whom I later became friends with lent me a small hand towel so that I could wash and I was given a bucket and a bar of soap to take in to the toilet. Like the daily toilet breaks this was rushed taking less than a few minutes so I had little time to actually wash but I did come out slightly cleaner that I went in. Had I known that this was the only time I was going to be allowed to wash I would have perhaps scrubbed a little harder. Naif ordered someone to wash my t-shirt and give me a pair of tracksuit bottoms to wear instead of my jeans. By changing my clothes I felt that I had begun to accept my fate. I was no longer under the illusion that I was going to be released the following day and as I was no longer dressed in the clothes I’d arrived in, I looked like any of the other prisoners, dirty and dishevelled. I looked as though I belonged.
This was the best day that I would have in the prison as we were allowed to stand outside for about forty five minutes while people did their washing. It was a beautiful day and although all we could see of the outside world was a rectangle of blue sky through a wire mesh above us, I got a real sense of being on an adventure in Iraq and even felt quite happy for a while.
While we were standing outside one of the guards called me over. He was dressed in the traditional Kurdish dress which is essentially a boiler suit tied round the middle with a big scarf – kind of 80’s workman chic – complete with turban and moustache. He was a tall, young man called Yaseen, with striking green eyes. He, along with everyone else in the jail, wanted to know how I had ended up in this place and what I thought of Kurdistan. His English was ok so I chatted to him while he gave me cigarettes. He was someone who I had avoided up to this point as I thought that he might have been a bit of a psycho but I was wrong and he turned out to be very nice to me. Being nice to me, however, did not qualify someone as a nice person. None of the guards were at all brutal to me. They looked on me as a fool and a nuisance but no more. As I was an outsider I was somehow separate from their anger. This did not apply for the others in the jail as I witnessed one evening. Our cell was out for our evening toilet break and I was squatting beside the door talking with Naif, waiting to go and join the toilet queue when we started to hear screaming coming from the cell next to ours. As the screaming got worse I could hear the people around me all muttering under their breath
Shut up…shut up the atmosphere changed suddenly and everyone became quite tense. The two guards on duty went over to the door of the cell and began shouting at him to shut up but this only seemed to make things worse so they opened the door. At this point another guard came and began to usher us back in to our cell. I hung back by the door to see them drag the wailing man from his cell. I couldn’t understand exactly what he was yelling about but got the general idea. I don’t belong here…let me out…I have done no wrong…Allah forgive me. There is something quite upsetting about seeing a grown man cry like a baby but this paled in comparison to seeing that same man being beaten across the face time and time again. We all sat in the cell in silence listening to the screaming and the beating from the other side of the door that continued for some time until eventually the man either fell unconscious or decided that he’d had enough. Even though this wasn’t an unusual occurrence it shook everybody up a little. No one more than me. One of the guards doing the beating was Yaseen who had given me the cigarettes a few days before.
The next day a friend of mine was released which was a great relief as I had begun to wonder if anyone ever got out of this prison, but the release of Nebil made me feel like perhaps I would be freed too. We had shared food for the first few days and he spoke some English. He was a portly little man from Baghdad who had been trying to escape to Europe but had been caught in Greece without a passport and sent back to Iraq. He was wearing a woolly jumper with a tweed shirt and had a well kept beard. He reminded me of an old geography teacher I had in school. Looking at him I wasn’t in the slightest bit surprised to discover he was a Christian. As such he was a bit of an outsider and so we bonded in the first few days as neither of us really fitted in. For the most part though, he kept to himself. He was a very paranoid man as had been badly beaten on his first day, a few days before I arrived. He said that they had confiscated his bible and was convinced that the room was full of spies. He was released because he was a Christian and therefore not a threat to the new Iraq, so I assumed that I would also be released forthwith.
Some time later on in the week I was called out of the cell. I put on the first two shoes that I could grab from the pile, two sodden left shoes of different sizes, and shuffled after the guard my feet squelching with every step. I was taken by a short little grumpy soldier out of the compound and in to a building opposite. As I looked around me on every corner there were bored looking guards nursing their Kalashnikovs. No chance of escape then, I thought to myself. Once inside the other building I removed my ill fitting shoes and was pushed into a corner while my hands were cuffed behind me. I caught a glimpse of a few men sitting cross-legged on the floor, their hands tied behind their backs and blindfolds tied over their eyes. Shortly afterwards I too was blindfolded and led in to a room and put in a chair. Being blindfolded is a seriously frightening experience, the room began to spin as if I was drunk and I was bracing myself for a punch in the head or a bucket of cold water to be thrown on me. I managed to wriggle my head enough to move the blindfold slightly so that I could see a small piece of floor out of one eye which made my head stop spinning and sat in silence not knowing who was in the room with me or even how many. After about five minutes a man started talking to me in English. He asked me if I spoke Kurdish or Arabic, I apologized. Then he asked me about my religion. He was very calm and precise, even though his English wasn’t that good. He obviously had my passport with him as he was asking me lots of questions about where I had recently been. In fact I had two passports, which made me look even more like a criminal as my old passport had become full up so I had got another one from the embassy in Ankara but my Turkish visa was still in the old, now invalid, passport meaning I’d had to present both at the border where they were confiscated. Many of the visas in my old passport were from countries that the authorities have deemed as ‘rogue’. My interrogator was under the impression that I had converted to Islam and had been trained by someone in Afghanistan and had come to Iraq to fight a holy way against America and the Iraqi people. He simply refused to believe that I had been on holiday. I had recently spent a month in Pakistan, the same in Afghanistan. I had visas from Jordan, Russia and Iran not to mention that my new passport had an unused Syrian visa which led him to believe that that was my intended route out of the country.
There was nothing that I could say to make him understand why I had come to Iraq. To him my reasons seemed too absurd to be true.
We went on like this for a while and then suddenly without warning I could hear him walking towards me. He stood behind me for a moment, untied my blindfold and then returned to his seat behind a desk. We were the only two people in a room that was a very normal looking office. The walls were a pale yellow and there were lots of filing cabinets. On the wall was a picture of Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and now the President of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, and a Kurdish flag. There was another smaller flag on his desk. I was on a chair right in the middle of the room facing a young man behind a desk. I had pictured a much older person wearing a uniform. This guy was wearing a suit and seemed about the same age as me, in fact when I asked him he said that we were born within a few weeks of each other. The questions continued and he began to ask me about Zim. Zim is American but his family are Yemenite Jews. He looks like he is from Yemen, he looks like a Muslim.
…but your friend is Muslim.”
He is not a Muslim
What is his religion?
I don’t know. He is probably a Christian. But he is definitely not a Muslim
We found Koran in bag. He is Muslim
No. He is not.
And so it went on. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If I say nothing then ‘he is a Muslim and therefore a terrorist.’ If say he is Jewish then…I am not sure what might happen.
Eventually he called for the guard to take me away. The last thing he said to me was that he would see me again at one o’clock, but that turned out to be a lie. Many days later I found out to my great disappointment that everything that this man said was a lie.
I had really been looking forward to speaking to someone in authority as I thought that they would instantly see that a mistake had been made and set me free.
On the way back to my cell I began to feel even worse than I had before as I realized that they really believed all of the shite that they were saying about me. It would have almost bee funny had the situation not been so dire. Since being detained at the border I had also been accused of being a spy and a drug smuggler both of which I thought were much more plausible and easier to disprove. The problem with being accused of being a terrorist is that the burden of proof lies with the accused. Once accused it is very hard to convince people otherwise especially if you don’t speak the language and spend all of your time away from your accusers in a cell.
I remained in a depressed state for much of the day and well in to the next. The following evening, however there was some excitement. At the insistence of the ICRC (Red Cross) some of the prisoners were being transferred to another prison to relieve over crowding. Despite being told by many of the people in my cell that the other prison was luxurious in comparison to ours with only eight to a cell and access to a TV and books, I was very scared that they would choose me too. I had just got used to this place and more importantly it had got used to me. I was no longer a freak from the west; I had become just another prisoner. As well as this I was frightened that Zim and I would be split up. I never saw him, but I did get some comfort in knowing that he was not far away. Better the devil you know. My worrying proved to be pointless as I was not chosen for the transfer but unfortunately many of my friends were. Most of the English speakers, including Caca Mouserie as well as an Iranian called Yousef who spoke French whom I had befriended were scheduled to leave later that evening. In my paranoid state I was convinced that this was because of me. I had already been told that there were spies in the cell reporting to the guards, and now I thought this was their attempt to alienate me from the others.
I was sad to have lost so many friends but on a positive note twelve less people in the cell meant more room for the rest of us. We were now down to thirty seven people which was much more bearable. Naif moved me to Caca Mouserie’s space which meant that I didn’t have to share with anyone so I could sleep all night and sit up against the wall during the day, I still had the same amount of space – or lack of space – but I no longer had to move every three hours.
One Sunday sometime after lunch there was a knock on the door and a woman’s voice came through the peephole. I was half asleep but someone beside me woke me up as something important was obviously happening.
Salaam Aleikum she shouted in to the cell.
Waleikum Salaam Miriam everybody replied in unison. Hang on I thought. Who the fuck is Miriam? How does everybody know her name and what on earth is she doing here, in prison?
Miriam, it turned out, was from the Red Cross who visit the prison every few weeks to make sure everything is ok and to register all new prisoners to make sure that people aren’t simply disappearing. Their main role as far as the prisoners are concerned is to act as a messaging service between those inside and those on the outside. As we had been denied all contact with the outside world this was an invaluable service. Most of the people in my cell had been ‘abducted’ from work or the street or even the mosque and simply never heard of again. I am sure that there were many families who were mourning the loss of people who were in fact alive but incarcerated with no way of contacting home.
The Red Cross had visited the day before I arrived in the cell and had given out toothbrushes and towels, although brushing teeth was forbidden, so I knew that they visited from time to time and had pinned all of my hopes on them coming soon and contacting my embassy to arrange my immediate release.
Jadid, Jadid? came her voice again through the hole. Are there any new prisoners? I stood up and said my name. She was shocked.
Where are you from?
The UK I replied
You don’t have a Muslim name?
No, I am a Christian. I had temporarily adopted Christianity in an effort to seem less like a Mujahid.
What the hell are you doing here? She asked
I was hoping that you could tell me.
She disappeared for a while and then came back and asked me to step out of the cell.
She took my details assuring me that she would be in immediate contact with my embassy in Baghdad and instructed me to write a letter home. Quietly confident of my imminent release I couldn’t understand why I had to write a letter. Surely I would be out of this hell hole in a matter of hours, a day at the most now that the Red Cross and my embassy were involved. I wrote the letter anyway and after an agonisingly short time talking with her I was sent back to the cell. This time however I passed through the door and greeted everyone with a huge smile on my face. I had no longer disappeared, my whereabouts was now known and wheels had been set in motion. My release was assured – at least that is what was going through my head at the time.
Later that night we had a new arrival in the room which meant that I had to move to share a space with one of the many Mohammeds. At 17 Mohammed had the dubious honour of being the youngest member of our not-so-happy family. Not only that, he was also incarcerated with his two older brothers and his father, who were all in separate cells, in order to flush the fourth brother, the only one they actually wanted, out of hiding.
My time next to Mohammed was the most comfortable of the whole ordeal as he was the cell bitch so would spend much of the day giving the bosses massages and sleeping near them, leaving me space to stretch out. Unfortunately he only spoke Arabic and so we couldn’t really converse much but despite this, or perhaps because of this, we got on really well. He was an incredibly pious boy and took his daily prayers very seriously. Watching his lips move as he muttered prayers under his breath, palms out in front of him, his eyes closed I couldn’t help but wonder how someone who had experienced so much injustice could possibly believe in a god.
The following day as I was taken to the interrogation block I had high hopes that this would be a good day. The routine was the same as before except this time they left the cuffs and the blindfold off. Almost as soon as I sat down in the chair I went in to a rather aggressive tirade about the appalling job that the police were doing. We argued for quite some time about the innocence of my fellow cellmates but despite never having even spoken to most of them he was utterly convinced that they were all terrorists hell-bent on destruction and therefore in need of incarceration.
He did however say that he no longer thought that I was a threat and so I would be released in 2 days time. This set me off again. If I was innocent then surely I should be released immediately. You have just told me that there are no innocent people in you jail and here you are sending an innocent person back there. Does this not seem somewhat wrong to you? – Apparently not, and so shortly thereafter I was squatting on the floor with my knees tight up under my chin surrounded by the all too familiar lice infested bodies of my cellmates.
As I shuffled over to one of my friends to enjoy an after dinner smoke the door was opened again and four more people were pushed through one of them cradling a broken nose in his hands and bleeding all over everyone. This bought the number back up to 50 which meant less than a square foot per person. One of the new arrivals looked like a younger, more muscular Ben Kingsley. His name was Saddam and he was a mean looking bastard. He was covered in small scars and his shaved head revealed even more. He did speak some English though and so we chatted. He thought that I was just as crazy as I thought he was but he was quite friendly. I have no doubt that he was one of the more guilty people in the cell. He didn’t seem like the innocent type and would constantly ask me what I thought of his namesake the ex president. Saddam the prisoner thought that the other Saddam was a great and strong leader with a great military record having gone to war with Kuwait, Iran and the United States. When I pointed out that he had lost all of those wars my remarks fell on deaf ears
That evening I was woken by the sound of sobbing. It was Yaseen, the youngest of the new people who was crying out that there had been some terrible mistake and he wasn’t supposed to be here. His cries fell on unsympathetic ears and before long people were telling him to shut up.
He was only a few feet from me so I started to chat with him in my broken Arabic and sign language during which I learned that his new bride was expecting their first born in a few months. It was awful to look in to this boy’s eyes and lie to him so blatantly saying that it will all be ok when I knew full well that he would be in this cell for the birth of his son and who knows how much longer after that.
Two days after my last visit to the interrogation block, the day I had been promised I would be released; I was again called out and escorted back there. I would like to say that I was happy and excited to be going back over there where I thought I was to be released, but I had come to distrust everything that anyone in authority told me so I shuffled along with the usual ambivalence.
On arriving in the policeman’s office I was greeted by Zim who was already sitting down. This was the first time that we had seen each other since we had arrived so we each had so much to say. He seemed well although he had been beaten by the guards. We compared notes on the conditions of our cells and the various parasites that were living in our skin and clothing.
The policemen then laid out various pieces of paper on the desk all covered in Kurdish writing telling us that once we had signed these we would be free. We refused, naturally, but after some time it seemed like it didn’t even really matter. We were already in jail with no real prospects of release and if we were about to sign a confession for being terrorists then hopefully we would have been sent to a proper jail with beds and space and all manner of luxuries that we had been without, so eventually we did sign the papers. Who knows what we had just agreed to but he seemed very happy and assured us that today was the day. We would have to go back to our cells while he took these papers to be approved by the chief of the police station - I should have smelled a rat - and then we would be set free to travel Kurdistan. He even apologised to us for the inconvenience and hoped that we would enjoy traveling in his beautiful country.
Back in the cell I told everyone that I had been released and it was only a matter of hours before left so started saying goodbye to people. I gave away some of my bracelets and the face towel that I had inherited. For about an hour there was like a little party atmosphere in our cramped little box.
Two hours passed, then three…four…five. That fucking liar! I have never been so disappointed in all of my life. I had grown used to them lying to me but this time I really had believed. How could I have been so stupid as to trust that cunt? I never saw that man again but if there is any justice in the world he is now lying in an unmarked grave somewhere with a bullet in the head
The next day was a terrible day for me but a great day for Iraq and especially Kurdistan. It was the first day that I had no real hope of leaving anytime soon. The Red Cross hadn’t seemed to do anything and I had given up on the prison letting me go. I will never forget that day, but neither will many of my cellmates as it was the day that Jalal Talibani, a Kurd, was sworn in to office as the new president of Iraq. We all listened to it on Naif’s radio and it was an incredibly emotional time. There was complete silence in the cell save the crackly voice from Baghdad and the tears from many of the older Kurdish people in the room.
During the time of Saddam it was a tradition on important days such as this to open the prisons and release all inmates held without charge. In Kurdish this pardon is called afoo. We were all up most of the night discussing the possibilities of afoo for us. Innocents held without charge in a Kurdish police station, surely we would be some of the first to be released. I remained sceptical as it just all seemed a little too good to be true that they would just open the doors and let us all out. After all there were one or two bona fide terrorists in there with us. Surely they wouldn’t just let us all go.
Being neither Kurdish nor Iraqi meant that I found it hard to get really excited about a new president so I excused myself from the hights festivities and put a towel over my head in an effort to sleep.
After not too long I woke to find Mohammed Fil poking me and taking the piss while many others were laughing. Mohammed Fil was the boss’ best friend and a real joker. He was also a complete Nazi. I tried to ignore him hoping that he would soon get bored but he continued, drunk on the idea of a new Kurdish Iraq, until he started to touch my dick to rapturous applause. I am not a violent person so the first time I let it slide, but when he did it for a second time I sat bold upright and punched him square on the chin. I have never punched anyone in my life before or since so it came as much as a shock to me as it did to him. Needless to say he stopped what he was doing and looked over to Naif for support. Thankfully Naif had been watching what was going on and found the whole thing rather funny so I didn’t get in any trouble and returned to my towel unmolested scowling at everyone. Let that be a warning to the rest of you!
This little episode marked then end of my “honeymoon” period in the cell. The novelty of having a stupid tourist in the cell had worn off and I was treated more and more like the others. With 50 people in the cell now there was no room for moving any more so I had to remain in the same place all day and night surrounded by the same people. I was no longer free to clamber over to the other side of the cell to chat with this person or that. Life became even more stagnant than it already was. Tempers began to fray, the heat and the smells, the B.O. and the bad breath, the stink of our clothes and the lice that infested them, the constant scratching of your scabies riddled neighbour at all hours of the night, the lack of drinking water, the constant fucking praying and above all the lack of space to even sit down in. There were arguments everyday and I had grown to really hate some of the people sitting near me, not because they were bad people just that I couldn’t stand the sight of them and their filthy habits. But as I hated them so they hated me as we were all as filthy as each other. There was no one I hated more than Ahmed from Mosul who I was sharing with by this time. He was a scheming little cunt, undoubtedly a criminal, who would always wake me up early and demand we swap places then refuse to swap back when it was my turn, he would eat most of our food and leave me with none and, as he was new to the cell and the novelty of seeing a white boy in the space next to him hadn’t had a chance to wear off, he would constantly be trying to joke with me wanting to be my friend. It drove me to despair. So much so in fact that after about five days of his incessant selfishness and thievery I demanded that Naif move me, and so it was that I came to be sharing with Nebhan, perhaps the nicest person in the whole cell.
I remember Nebhan from my very first day. As I stepped in to that room for the first time and they all looked up at me it was Nebhan that I saw first. He had a long Taliban style beard looked to me just like the kind of person that would chop off my head and post the video on youtube. He had a very inquisitive stare that scared the shit out of me and I was properly afraid of him for my first few days in the cell. I could not have been more wrong. Nebhan was a sweet and gentle man about 26 years old who lived and worked as a shepherd in the countryside outside of Mosul. He didn’t speak any English but he knew hundreds of seemingly random English words as if he had memorised pages from a dictionary and was crazy about football. His general knowledge was incredible and we would talk for hours naming world leaders, capital cities, and of course football facts, managers and world cup winners. He also seemed to be a wealth of knowledge on Iraqi history, but this is where his lexicon ran a little dry and so much of his teaching was lost on me. Despite looking like something out of the CIA ‘How to spot a terrorist’ handbook, he was an amazing person and it was my privilege to share with him.
Nothing is ever all good though. Sitting next to me and taking up half of my space was a huge brute of a man named Naza. A gentle giant, but a giant nonetheless, Naza claimed to be a trucker by profession but I had my suspicions that he was in fact a tramp not least because of his habit of always picking peoples used cigarettes out of the ashtray and smoking them right down to the butts. He was crawling with all manner of creepy crawlies and was always scratching himself until he started bleeding and would then move on to another part of his body. At least a third of my body was in constant contact with this man. 24 hours a day. The first night I slept next to him he had is back to me and he kept hitting me with his elbow. After a while I presumed that he must be masturbating, but this seemed a little too much even for a filthy bastard like him, so I peered around to see that he was in fact just vigorously scratching his groin. Relieved I returned to my sleep but the scratching continued for at least another ten minutes.
During my time next to Nebhan and the giant tramp there was an influx of young Kurdish boys caught without passports in Greece and Turkey trying to escape to Europe. Two of them had been arrested in a nightclub in Istanbul and so they were sitting over in the corner still with their leather jackets and skin tight flares on.
On Day fourteen the Red Cross came again and this time they wanted to formally interview me. I was taken out and in to another empty room where I met Johan a Swiss guy who I later found out was the Red Cross team leader. He wrote down everything I said and spoke to me about possible repatriation. He seemed to know what he was talking about and gave me hope again. He was much more serious than Miriam who I had spoken to the last time and I really believed that he would do something to help. I wrote another letter home and he began to ask me questions about life in the jail. Did we get the books that they sent? No. Did they take people out of the cells to ease overcrowding before every Red Cross visit? Yes. It was such a pleasure to talk to someone in English and I was understandably disappointed when they eventually sent me back to the cell.
Before I go any further I would like to talk about a few of the other people in the cell as we all had become quite friendly. First of all, of course is Naif, the boss, He ran an internet café on the outside but he was singer and even had a few CDs out. Sometimes one of his songs would be played on the radio. As he was the boss he was allowed little perks such as a radio. He was a very kind man and looked after me well. He had been in that cell for ten months.
Haji, a man in his 70s being held hostage until the police caught his son in law. Ma Talat was the most interesting person in the cell. He was a political prisoner and had spent seven years in jail in Baghdad under Saddam and the last fourteen months in our cell. During which time he had learned about two thirds of the Koran by heart and would recite surahs every now and again He was a stern man who you wouldn’t want to cross, but we had interesting chats. He taught me some Kurdish and I taught him some English. He was very generous with his cigarettes and looked out for me too. I was screamed at more than once by him for pissing standing up which is apparently very un-Islamic one time I ended up screaming him I am not a Muslim; your fucking rules don't apply to me so you can all just fuck off. Unfortunately this didn't go down too well and I sat in silence for the remainder of the day.
Rewar, Dervish and Farhad, a friendly trio of smiley Kurdish moustachioed men who sat in the corner and were also very generous with their cigarettes. Samian, nice guy, terrible teeth. The guy who would shout at us to hurry up in the toilets every day. He was a village postman and a boxing coach back in his real life. One day he and Naif tried to instigate an aerobics program to that we wouldn’t all waste away in that cell. It was a dismal failure. Mahmoud from Syria had been caught in Greece where he had told the Greek police that he was Iraqi so that they might feel sorry for him and not send him to a war zone. They deported him back to Iraq. Khaled Sudani lived in Mosul for eight years. One day he went out to see a friend and was stopped in the street and arrested for being foreign. Yousef Iran was very quiet but when he did speak he could do it in English and French. Another Yousef from Iran was mental. He would have long, loud and very vocal conversations on an imaginary phone with his mother on a weekly basis. He was also the heaviest sleeper I have ever met. Even in our inhuman conditions it would require two people simultaneously kicking and shouting at him to wake. Amaar had studied a psychology degree at Baghdad University so his English was pretty good and he often acted as a translator for me. Mohammed Libya was a proper terrorist. No doubt about it. Everyone in the room agreed. He had been caught in the desert near the Jordanian border without any papers and refused to tell anyone why he was in Iraq. He was fundamental in his beliefs; he returned the towel and the toothbrush given to him by the Red Cross as he didn’t want to accept gifts from Christians. He spent most of the day in silent prayer or reading the Koran. I made an effort to talk to him after a few weeks and He was a genuinely nice guy, I was almost disappointed. Had we met under different circumstance things may well have been different. He had a very soft voice and spoke with a slight stammer. I still think of him sometimes and wonder what became of him.
During my last few days the whole atmosphere of the place became much more serious. Days went by without really talking to anyone and more people came in to the cell further cramping the conditions. One of the new guys came limping in one evening nursing a broken ankle and broken elbow. Neither of these breaks had been set nor put into a cast so he was always in a great deal of pain. His first night in our cell was his 150th in police custody and he had obviously been tortured quite a bit during that time. His inability to bend his leg and arm meant that he took up more room than normal so some people were understandably a little pissed off with him so it fell to me to help him hobble to the toilet as nobody else seemed willing to risk the beating from the guards. One night he showed us his legs which were striped from top to bottom with thick black bruises where he had been hit repeatedly with a metal bar of some kind. He was by no means the most injured person I met.
As the door closed for the night after our final toilet break of the day and people began to perform evening namaz the door was reopened and a badly burnt guy who I will not easily forget was forced inside, and for the first time we were all warned not to speak with him. Every new arrival in to the cell had to go through a sort of ritual as they stood up there by the door. After the salaams Naif would ask them if they were Kurdish or Arab. This being Kurdistan, their answer to this question would determine their social standing in the cell for the duration of their stay. Once their ethnicity had been established Naif would decide where they would sit and who they would share with. This newest member of the room was an Arab so he was given a shitty little space near me which gave me an opportunity to see him up close. Sporting a mullet to rival that of a certain Geordie footballer and a red and yellow shell suit that made him look like he had just been plucked from any Liverpool pub, he was the most unusual character I met in my whole stay in that jail. The most disturbing thing about him was his burns. Both hands were badly scarred as if he was wearing a pair of burn gloves. The line around his wrist where healthy skin met burnt skin was perfect. Beneath his fantastic tracksuit I could see that his chest was also burnt. His ears, one of which was almost completely missing, were burnt beyond recognition as was much of the side of his face, but again there was a near perfect line where burn met normal skin. At first I though that perhaps he had been making a bomb which had prematurely exploded, burning him. Everyone in the cell was whispering arharbi, terrorist, so, along with the threats from the guards, I just assumed that they were right. But the precision of his burns suggested something much more sinister. It looked like he’d had his face held down on a hot plate and his hands forced in to a chip fryer. Maybe as a means of extracting information from him or just as a punishment. Whatever had happened there is no doubt that his injuries were no accident.
We exchanged a long look, him probably as curious about me as I was of him, and I offered him a stale piece of bread from a little stash that I had hidden away. His eyes betrayed a broken man. I saw a lot of very scared people in Iraq but none more so than him.
He was only with us for about ten hours after which he was taken away to face whatever awful fate awaited him.
On Monday 11th April 2005 I felt like I had entered the eighteenth layer of hell. The pain in my un-stretched joints, the constant itching and scratching and the intense lack of sleep were all making me a little delirious. I had given up wearing my glasses a few days previously as I slowly retreated into myself and I had been having these fitted dreams where I would be at home only to wake up back in the same cell.
I had only been in Iraq for 19 days, in this cell for 17 of them, but it felt like half a lifetime. With the lights always on and no window it was only the prayer routine that gave me any real sense of the passing of time. So this morning the situation got the better of me and for the first time since my arrest I broke down and cried. I hid my head under my t-shirt and sobbed uncontrollably. I felt so foolish and helpless. The Red Cross were never coming back and the embassy had done nothing despite knowing for nearly two weeks. There was a strong possibility that I would remain in this hellhole for months if not longer. I remained under the t-shirt until lunch after which I was summoned to the office. Inside I saw that Zim was also there. Neither of us were having a good day and we barely said more than a few words to each other. It turned out that the policemen simply wanted to know our full names which really pissed me off. You have our fucking passports you cunt. I muttered as I methodically spelt out my name on the page in front of me. Nearly three weeks and they didn’t even know our names, this was doing nothing to make me feel any better. The spark of hope had been snuffed out.
A few tedious hours later we were both yanked out again and found ourselves in the same office. Go get your stuff. These four beautiful words were enough for me to crack a smile and I ran back to the cell. No matter where they were sending me it would get me out of here
Salaam Aleikum, I’m leaving. I hastily grabbed my stuff and started to say goodbye. Suddenly there were so many people to speak to that for the first time I found myself wanting to have just a little more time in there. I did my best to say goodbye to my closest friends and Naif and Ma Talat. Then the door was bolted with me on the other side and that was the last I ever saw of them.
A few minutes later Zim found me searching through the mountain of sodden, odd shoes for a pair that might fit me, carrying my actual shoes. I hid them after our first day so that they wouldn’t get stolen. Good man.
We were walked, without an armed escort for the first time, through the police station, on to the second floor and into a huge office. Behind the desk, which seemed miles away, flanked on either side by the Iraqi and Kurdish flags was an important looking man with a big moustache. I looked around the room and sitting on a sofa on the opposite side of the room was a young looking man sitting next to a similarly aged woman. They were both in combat uniforms and sitting proudly on each of their shoulders were thirteen red bars and fifty white stars. It pains me to say it but…God bless America.
I knew then that we had been rescued but I was still acutely aware that we might not be free. A man from the CIA in plainclothes called Ed let us know that we were free and in his custody but he kept emphasising that we were free to go if we wished. We told him that we would stay with him. While the Americans and the Kurds got to work signing papers, the guards left to retrieve our baggage leaving me and Zim to catch up for a few minutes. We were both understandably in high spirits. Our nightmare had just turned in to an incredible adventure. This morning I had despaired and now I was about to go on a jolly with the army in the middle of a war zone.
Our bags were returned to us along with my axe that I had been using for camping in turkey. I was incredibly surprised they hadn’t confiscated it and we all had a bit of a chuckle has they handed it back to me.
And so we got up to leave. Thanking the governor of the prison and apologising to him left a bitter taste in my mouth but it was worth it to walk out of the door. As we had been brought in the back entrance we had never seen the front and were quite surprised to see the levels of security for the building. We couldn’t decide if it was to stop people getting in or to stop us getting out.
In the car park we were taken to an armoured Chevy Suburban and issued bullet proof vests and helmets and I struggled to clamber into the car with the extra kilos of steel I was now wearing.
The driver was stereotypical uniformed soldier from Texas with his weapon resting in the foot well for easy access.
A few words on the walkie talkie later and we were in a street filled with traffic and people. Ed was in the front assessing the potential threat of nearly every vehicle or person that we passed and passing that information to the other car. It was strange to see them working and seeing everything as a threat, planning escape routes and evasion tactics. Even something as mundane as driving through the city was a military operation. Zim and I took the opportunity to have a look at the city that we had spent so long in. The windows were tinted and two inches thick so it was hard to see clearly but it was all we were going to get so we made the most of it.
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