The illusion of calmness settled into my days, and Nusa had began to enjoy her new life as an adopted European. Looking over my shoulder had been something I had grown used to over the previous years, so the lingering suspicions and paranoia were at their background levels, which was something I could cope with. We would visit our temporary neighbours and on occasion they would pop round to our house for a cup of coffee and an energetic conversation. With a little imagination, we could make out that life was approaching a suburban idyll, a level of normality that most take for granted. Naturally, I was eager to make plans for the future, of settling down somewhere. I was itching to start a business if at all possible, and I even let myself imagine starting a family.
At some point during this time Nusa had confided in me that she had a daughter, called Tara. She was not conceived in a previous marriage – or even a relationship. Tara’s father was one of her clients in Baghdad (but not Saddam himself, as has been reported in certain newspapers), probably someone from the elite who would not have thought twice about bumping off Nusa and his unborn child rather than suffering the indignity of fathering a child to a prostitute. Nusa had found it necessary to keep the whole thing quiet; Tara lived in Karbala with Nusa’s father. Although Nusa visited her as regularly as possible, because of her Baghdad lifestyle, and because the sprawling city was where she could be guaranteed some sort of income, regular visits were impossible. Still, while in Austria Nusa was suffering feverish pinings for Tara to the point where her mind became occupied only by wondering if she would ever see her again. Eventually, after several nights of desperation, she came out and asked me if there was any way we could bring her daughter over to Austria. How could I ignore this plea for help? Stuck in this strange, cold country, lonely, afraid and without possessions to call our own, Nusa and I undeniably grew closer together. We needed each other, both for comfort and by way of a guarantee – we had both staked our security in our flight, and if either of us had had second thoughts and decided to go back to Iraq, the other would no doubt have harmful consequences to face. Since we were living together, we considered it wise to fabricate the myth that we were married and that we had known one another for a couple of years. Back in Baghdad, the shame that would have been brought on me and my family from any marriage to a prostitute would have been unbearable, but such societal mores were a foreign currency over here. Besides, no one knew that she had been a prostitute. As a survival method it seemed to make sense to claim to be a couple. The authorities in Europe might think twice before dispatching with either of us were they to believe that we had large extended families back home. Moreover, my picture of Nusa was the same as it had been when I agreed to bring her with me – she was a terrified human being, not the lowly whore of the moralists and the extravagant ego-boost of her clients. Although she would in time cause me more heartache and anger than I would ever have thought possible, I find no profit in fretting about my decision to help her out.
At half past nine one morning, about a fortnight into our stay at our home, there was a knock on the door. I was pleased to see that we were being visited by my cousin, ecstatic when I noticed that he wore a smile and had with him a television set for us. It was a portable type; he helped us with the little aerial and we managed to get a decent picture. We had not had a television since we arrived, so the luxury it added to our lives was comparatively regal. The set, with a screen no more than twelve inches across, was like a surround-sound wide-screen home cinema as far as we were concerned, barracked in our home in this foreign land. He also gave us more pocket money – another 300 schillings. I vowed that I would repay him, but he turned my offers down with an affable shake of the head. The television had a grand total of three channels, all of them in German, but all day we sat and gazed at the pictures and listened to this impenetrable language, occasionally picking out the odd word and phrase that had become internationally recognised – Clinton, deutschmarks, OK.
The morning after the television had been delivered, at half past eight, a terrific banging on the front door shook the walls of the house, making the windows rattle. I dragged myself to the door and on opening it was confronted by a six-foot tall blue-eyed fair-haired man and behind him, dressed in suits, were about fifteen other burly men. I could not but be reminded of the Iraqi intelligence services – those respectable, businesslike men who brought with them nothing but nightmares for anyone unfortunate enough to warrant a visit. The man at the front introduced himself as Kessler, head of the Middle Eastern wing of the Austrian intelligence services; he wanted to talk to me. I invited him in. He seemed straightforward enough, businesslike and courteous, albeit in an domineering way.
Accompanied by five officers, he strode into the apartment. As I followed him in, I noticed that there were other agents in the back garden and when I looked through the front window I could see that perhaps five of the original backup team had remained in position, deployed such that the whole vicinity was covered, and communicating into their little microphones. There were also anonymous BMWs hurriedly parked up half on pavements and at disorganised angles – again, just like in Iraq. When you are on a swoop, there is no time for straightening the car up.
We sat down in the lounge, which suddenly seemed very small, dark and cramped with all these muscular men filling it. I offered them coffee but Kessler refused on their behalf.
“We need to know everything about you,” Kessler announced, via an interpreter. “Everything. Who you are, what you were doing in Iraq, why you came here, what your job was. Everything.”
“Let me just get changed,” I replied, trying to be as accommodating as possible. Suddenly becoming red-faced and impatient, he told me to just come with him dressed as I was. I was in neither the mood nor the position to argue. In a column of vehicles I was transported to a police station, and taken up to the third floor where the staff were going about their business dressed in civilian clothing, like secret services or detectives. A room had been prepared for us and we paraded into it and the door was ordered to be closed behind us.
The moment the door crashed shut, Kessler ordered me to strip. I protested – nakedness, embarrassing in Western countries, is much more shameful to Arabs – but Kessler ignored me and told me that one of the men present was a doctor and that he had a few medical tests to perform to check my health. In this place resistance would have been futile, so I stripped, trying to maintain my dignity as best I could. The last time I had been forcibly stripped was by Uday; on that occasion I had also been shaven and dumped naked at my family’s door. A sense of foreboding descended on me, but it was also a sense of captivity, of being the plaything of these people in whom I had no trust, and a great deal of fear. A humiliating, penetrating medical examination ensued. There seemed to be little going on of any medically beneficial nature; the tests were for something else, but I do not know what. They were possibly to get a sample of fresh DNA, but probably simply to belittle me. I had not had a chance to shower that morning.
I was allowed to dress, and Kessler and his men then embarked on a series of personal questions, starting with my date of birth and continuing through every aspect of my life. I considered it prudent to maintain that Nusa was my wife; Tara was introduced to them for the first time, and she was from now on to be presented as being my own daughter, Tara Latif Yahia. A wedding date was made up that would give credence to our claims on Tara. I committed it to memory; Nusa would never forgive me if I forgot our anniversary.
The questioning went on for four or five long, dry and hungry hours. Apart from the examination at the start, the meeting was reasonably civilised, with no aggression or violence, although I knew that it would surface the moment I showed the slightest hint of defiance. They had already proved their power over me when they had me undress in front of them and allowed a stranger to prod and examine me. I went through the motions without antagonising them and when I sensed that the interview was coming to a close, asked a question of my own: Could Tara be granted asylum and extracted from Iraq? The reply I got did not surprise me: Yes – if I would tell them all I knew about Uday. I agreed to tell them anything, although the knowledge that they were prepared to prolong the imperilment of this little girl in order to get intelligence (and, no doubt, personal promotion) seethed inside me.
All present agreed that we had done enough for the day, and that we would resume in two days’ time. I was driven home. At my door Kessler gave me an envelope; I opened it and inside was two thousand shillings. I refused the money, for some reason thinking it was from Kessler’s pocket. He laughed and told me that the money was from the Department of Justice and it was for us to feed and clothe ourselves and buy sundry items such as cigarettes. I signed for it, and suddenly felt like a millionaire.
“Get changed,” I announced to Nusa after the throb of Kessler’s engine had faded to silence. “We’re going out!” For two weeks we had not ventured beyond the end of the street, but with the stuffed envelope came an irrepressible wanderlust. I scribbled our address on a piece of paper and put in my back pocket so that if we got lost we could hand it to a taxi driver. Off we went into Vienna’s centre, taking in the sights and buying a few basic items – tee shirts, underwear and such like. It is a beautiful city, dominated by the enormous, ornate cathedral and dozens of grand public and private buildings built during the opulent days of Empire. A feeling of euphoria overcame us when we started to appreciate the modern lifestyle exhibited by the populace over here. There was wealth and poverty just as in Iraq, but opportunity did not, at least on first impressions, appear to be determined by connections to some governing clan. The prosperity and comfort also came from peace. We had known nothing but war, violence, executions and fear, the kind of conditions hardly conducive to inspiring in a country’s people enterprise and optimism. My eyes were opened. Very few police were about, and those that we saw were responding to calls or going about their beats in a casual way, which contrasted visibly with the intimidating, swaggering, trigger-happy manner in which the law enforcers prowl the streets of Baghdad. There were no intelligence services monitoring people’s movements. It was a completely different world.
As planned, two days later Kessler rolled up and knocked on our front door. He said that we had an appointment and took me away again. This time we went to a different place, somewhere outside Vienna. It was a grand, plush restaurant, and the whole room had been booked just for us. We sat down to a luxurious meal, with excellent food and delicious drinks. Conversation was pleasant and felt in no way like an interrogation. In fact, we spoke of my past only a small amount. At the end of the meal, Kessler reminded me of my promise to give information to the Americans, by way of reimbursement for their removing me from Iraq. He informed me that the next time we met we would be accompanied by a US agent. “I am a man of my word,” I replied, and agreed to the meeting.
And that was it for the day’s meeting. I was returned to my apartment, again accompanied by three or four other cars with blue lights flashing, each vehicle full of agents armed with machine guns.
Another two days passed. The knock on the door came, and I greeted Kessler, who was this time accompanied by a short, fair-haired man. He was introduced as being from the American embassy. I invited them in, but again they had made other arrangements and I was whisked away to a beautiful hotel in the centre of Vienna. It turned out to be even more luxurious than the restaurant we had dined at two days earlier. There were four of us – me, Kessler, the American and a translator who was under the employment of the Americans.
Over delicious, expertly prepared starters we discussed Saddam, Uday, the situation in Iraq, and a host of other issues. I held nothing back, telling him all I knew. I had nothing to hide from them. The information might even benefit me if it led to Uday’s capture or assassination. I needed to keep some things back, however. And I occasionally hinted that I knew more than I actually did, just to keep them interested enough to spare me.
After much procrastination, he came to the question of weapons of mass destruction – Saddam’s fabled arsenal of chemical, nuclear, biological and radiological weapons. What they thought I, a virtual prisoner of Uday’s, would know about such things I have no idea. But he asked about them anyway. I suppose he had to. I told him I knew nothing of such things.
“Don’t start lying to us,” he snapped.
“Look, I was not an insider of the regime,” I explained. “Perhaps I have a small amount of information, possibly useless information, but if I were to let any of it out I would be killed for sure. I don’t even know if it is reliable.” There were certain top secret things I had accidentally been privy to, and it would have been obvious where the story had come from had it got back to Iraqi intelligence. They might have come after me with renewed vigour.
“We will look after you,” said the American, with borrowed sincerity. But after six weeks in the country I was becoming accustomed to their conditional hospitality, and considered it likely that I would receive no protection once I had exhausted my most exchangeable currency: my knowledge.
Nevertheless, I decided to play his game. “What guarantees will I receive that I will be looked after?” I asked. “How do I know I won’t give you information and be kicked out of the country and sent back to Iraq? I know how the West supports Saddam and how people have been kidnapped and returned to the regime with European governments’ blessing.”
He faced the table and cleared his throat with an uneasy cough. “So what do you want?” he enquired.
I had my reply ready. “I want my presence in this country, and details of my asylum application, to be put into the national newspapers. And I want assured asylum. Then I will start talking.”
The American looked over at Kessler, then back at me. Kessler said, “And if we give you asylum – how will we know you will help?”
I told him he could trust me, and that I was no friend of Uday’s. Right on cue – in fact, as though we had been observed by the kitchen – the main courses arrived. Just as had been the case during the previous meal, once the main meal arrived our official business was not discussed at all. We made small talk about the weather, about sport, about travel. Again I was escorted back home in a convoy and given two thousand schillings by Kessler. I took it without question this time; I needed food, cigarettes and clothes. A week later, Kessler arrived with an envelope, this time containing not money but my asylum approval certificates. I was granted political, not humanitarian, asylum. This was a rare thing in Austria. The people with whom I was living at Traiskirchen would all have been humanitarian cases. The forms were in German; I shrugged my shoulders and Kessler indicated to me that the two back pages were in Arabic. I took in the words for a few moments. Kessler then told me that we were going to be taken to the Department of Justice where I would present my letter and receive full asylum, plus identification and travel documentation. Nusa and I were beside ourselves with joy and relief at this development. We would now be able to make a real start and, more important, particularly for Nusa, we would be free to attempt to get Tara out of Iraq to Europe, where she would undoubtedly be safer and have a brighter future .That day we were officially granted political asylum. At the Department of Justice we received our documents, and registered Tara as our daughter, with the name I had given at the first interview with Kessler.
We then went to the passport office. Nusa was immediately given a passport, but there did not seem to be one waiting for me. When I asked why, I was told that it was because the passports were allocated on an alphabetical basis, and that since N came before Y in the alphabet, mine would necessarily come long after hers. I found this explanation very hard to believe, yet there was little I could do about it. Nevertheless, as an officially recognised asylum seeker I knew I had at least a degree of protection, however small.
At around this time the house we had been promised became available, and we were moved there as soon as it had been cleared. It was much more of a homely dwelling, and a step closer to the airy, spacious quarters I had become accustomed to in Baghdad – not that I expected or wanted that again.
Every few days, Kessler would visit. He would take Nusa and I out for a meal and we would talk about anything but Saddam, Iraq, Uday or chemical weapons. Instead he would show concern as to how we were, what we were up to and whether everything was working properly. He was, in his transparent way, trying to gain our trust. I never got the impression that we would ever become friends, and conversation was often awkward and wooden.
One morning, my cousin arrived, accompanied by the secretary of the minister of justice for the Middle East, Mr Zadeh. My cousin told me that he was a close friend of his. They were both affiliated with the ministry, my cousin in the capacity as a spokesman for Jalal Talabani (a Kurdish separatist leader, later to become president of the post-Saddam Iraqi government). It was a part-time position for my cousin, which he filled when his medical duties allowed.
The purpose of their visit was not social. They had been sent to me to request that I did not appear in the media, did not tell anyone who I was and generally to keep a low profile. Their reasons were clear; as soon as a journalist got so much as a sniff of the fact that I, Uday’s fiday, was in Austria, my face and my story would be on the front page of every newspaper. Were that to happen, there could be no guarantees on my safety, for one reason more than all others: the Iraqi secret service was remarkably active in Austria and the two governments had a special relationship. (At the time, with Saddam flouting his UN-imposed surrender conditions, very few countries had an Iraqi embassy. Austria and Switzerland were the only two European nations to maintain diplomatic links with Iraq. These were links which ran much deeper than the thread of communication required to be information conduits, however, and guaranteed commerce, security and intelligence matters could go on as normal, although neither country’s government would openly admit it. It is these illicit, opportunistic relationships that have kept many a vile dictatorship propped up long beyond what was natural.) I was also told to avoid travelling to the city centre, as this was where the embassy was situated and agents and informers were rife and had a degree of immunity, thanks to a central Austrian government who would turn a blind eye to any transgressions. The problem is that the embassy in Vienna is located rather like Iraq is situated in the Middle East – it is almost impossible to avoid passing its sphere when travelling from place to place; avoiding it would in fact mean avoiding the city itself. My guests also suggested that I should shave off my beard – looking like Uday would be something of a giveaway – and to try other ways of altering my appearance. While grateful for the intentions of such advice, I regarded the proposed measures as a sort of defeat. I was supposed to have escaped all that, and if I had to live out my days in fear and suspicion, I would have been better off staying in Baghdad. My face was my face after all, and I did not want to change it. What is more, I had by then visited central Vienna on several occasions without turning heads or feeling suspicious of anything. As far as the media were concerned, I had no plans to make any major appearances, although my desire to be mentioned in the press without fanfare still remained.
We became more settled, and apart from the outstanding matter of Tara, began to grow happier, and less regretful of leaving Iraq. The number of acquaintances we had slowly grew, and through my American and Austrian contacts I would occasionally communicate with notables as they dropped into the city. The Kuwaitis and Saudis, like most nations in the diplomatic sphere, liked to celebrate national days and such like with invitations to the business world’s local expatriates or other Middle Easterners. It was a means of social networking and little more. I was invited to several such events, and at one I met the leading Austrian statesman Kurt Waldheim, who had been president of Austria and then Secretary General of the UN in the early 1970s. In what was a very brief encounter I asked him why the Iraqi embassy was allowed to flourish in his country when the rest of the world had chosen to reject such links and thereby limit Saddam’s reach and air of respectability. “Business is business,” he said to me, with a playful pat on the shoulder and moving on to patronise another guest.
These ambassadorial events became more regular as time went on. At each event, business cards would be given to every ambassador and minister, and the card would be one’s guarantee of invitation to their own gatherings. I found the meetings rather tiresome; the same conversations would be had countless times, and everyone seemed to be probing for information or business contacts with which to further their own standings. But I continued to attend nevertheless, as I could also occasionally get snippets of information from people connected with Iraq, talk of which was always keenly listened to. Many of the things I heard I did not believe, but some of it was useful. No two diplomats really seemed to trust each other. Everything for them was a game, but one that had to be learnt.
During this period, and continuing well into my future, I was visiting a psychiatrist, Dr Wolfgang, who was attempting to counsel me and help me to come to terms with what everyone but I knew was a traumatic experience that would without treatment come back to haunt me. He was a good listener, as they say, and put me sufficiently at my ease truly to open up to him and talk like I previously did not know how about my time in Iraq. Indeed, back home the idea of visiting a psychiatrist is tainted by the belief that it is a last-resort attempt to avert the onset of madness, or to pacify the already condemned. Counselling as such was seen as a quaint and unnecessary measure, partly because in times of trouble the society one belongs to is meant to offer support, and partly because one is supposed to simply get on with life. Iraq is teeming with traumatised souls, the legacy of three major wars and a brutal, uncaring leadership. Maybe feelings will change in time, and some help might be extended to them. I cannot begin to say how much Dr Wolfgang’s counselling helped me, and dread to think what kind of person I would be today were it not for his professionalism and expertise.
As I have mentioned, one of the first things I had done when I arrived in Austria was to get hold of a gun. It felt completely natural to me – in Iraq, almost everyone has a gun, and it is considered strange not to own one, even if it is left at home. Quite apart from the danger I knew I was in, I felt somehow incomplete without one. Ownership of a gun is a sign of manhood, of responsibility and of a readiness to protect one’s society in most Arabic regions; in Iraq it was a virtual necessity, thanks to the lawlessness that was rife in certain areas. So it came as something of a culture shock to be told that gun ownership in Austria, indeed over much of Europe, was itself something of an oddity, restricted to enthusiasts, farmers, gangsters and psychopaths, and the continent had many individual laws to protect against proliferation. This is a good thing only if there is strong protection given to the populace by the police and by the law. An unarmed population can be much more easily manipulated by powerful regimes, although it can also create a violent culture of its own, a jungle mentality. A well-armed population never saved Iraq from oppression, of course.
I had some very rational reasons for wanting to keep hold of a firearm of some sort, reasons that would need some serious dislodging. I was still a hunted man and I simply could not know when I would need it. Dr Wolfgang, with enormous skill and patience, managed to talk me round to a state where both my Iraqi mindset and my personal anxieties were erased to the point where I felt I could safely disarm. It is difficult to express how large a step this was for me, but I knew I had to leave behind the brutality that was the norm in my homeland if I was to successfully take on a new life as a European.
At first, my psychiatric sessions took place once a week; I was nervous and mistrustful, and could not see how they could be of benefit. Dr Wolfgang was incredible. I started to accept his help more often, which would raise eyebrows were it not for the fact that after a couple of weeks he refused to take any payment from me. Our relationship changed from a professional one to a strong friendship which continues to this day.
* * *
Vienna is famed for its coffee houses where afternoons can be wasted sipping the stimulating drink and sampling the array of savoury and sugar-coated cakes and pastries served apparently everywhere. Such places are impossible to miss, and at times it seemed like there was a coffee house for every inhabitant. We reasoned that it would have been a shame to come all this way without sampling the city’s fare – that would be like going to New York and not visiting a sushi bar. So with a small amount of cash in our possession, we headed one day into the city centre, as excited as children before a birthday, only in our case at the prospect of tasting pastry! We were struck by the cleanliness of the place The locals were rightfully proud of their striking city, and it was not uncommon to see a passer-by picking up a piece of litter – almost certainly dropped by an outsider or blown in from another town – and putting it in a bin. I continue to feel an affection for the beauty of Vienna, if not for its motherland’s flawed and often prejudiced psyche.
We made our way into to a cosy looking coffee house and sat down to eat and drink. I started talking to Nusa in Arabic, and when the waitress heard us she leant over and said, in a muted, surprised voice, “You are Iraqi?” She must have recognised our accent. Her eyes were wide open and seemed welcoming, but there could have been a hint of surprise, or even fear, in them.
“I am,” I replied.
“So am I!” she responded, with a friendly smile. Then her tone changed, almost to an apologetic one. “You know, when I first saw you from over there, I thought Uday Saddam Hussein had walked in.”
My body tensed and I said nothing. I had not practised a way of volleying back such comments. I simply did not know how to react, and probably looked quite uncomfortable in my attempts to look unemotional and blasé. Of course, the waitress’s observation was not as unbelievable as it might have sounded. Uday would spend time in Europe, on business or simply for entertainment, although it must be said that it is quite unlikely that he would walk around a city like Vienna without some form of personal protection.
The waitress quickly changed the subject, and started to ask about how long we had been in Vienna, where we were staying and how long we would be staying, and such things. I told her we had been there a few months, and we did not know what we were going to do next. I could not trust even her, so limited my answers to the minimum of information and peppered them with exaggerations, understatements and plain untruths.
Her name was Juliette. We exchanged addresses and over the coming weeks became friends, although I tried to keep her at arm’s length. She seemed to ask rather a lot of questions that had little to do with the conversation we were having. Nevertheless, it was refreshing for Nusa to have some female company, but I too was glad just to have another person to communicate with.
(It was only later that I discovered that during our friendship with Juliette, the Austrian intelligence services had been monitoring Nusa and me very closely. I was at one point advised by an agent to break off our friendship with her, because they had information that she was working for Iraqi intelligence. I also found out another explanation for her closeness to Nusa: by day she worked in a café and by night she was a dancer and a prostitute. Whether they knew each other’s background or whether there was an instinctive bond between them I do not know. She was a Christian and her dream was to go and live in America, but somehow she had got stuck in Vienna and was almost certainly forced by circumstance into her various underground activities.) Juliette took us to an Egyptian nightclub, the owner of which I also got to know quite well. It was reassuring to see that someone from that general area could overcome prejudice and steer a business towards being reasonably successful. Once again my Arabic-speaking circle of friends had expanded a little, and I was beginning to become more settled.
On one of her visits, Juliette brought with her another Egyptian friend, William, who was a photographer for an Austrian tabloid newspaper. Like me he was about thirty and we got on well. But Juliette seemed to have a specific reason for bringing us together. She said that she had an instinctive feeling that I had a story but that she did not know for sure what it was. There was something about me, she believed, but confessed that she could not put her finger on it. I must have given something away, I suppose. How else is it possible to tell that someone has a story? It is not easy to keep one’s guard up constantly. Or perhaps it was simply the fact that we had been housed in this particular part of Vienna, rather than in the kinds of places reserved for typical refugees. She let me know that if I wanted to air my “story”, William could help me. He had connections in the press, she said, and could act as a go-between in any dealings. It was an offer I was interested in, but I considered it a little early just yet. I declined, but took his contact details just in case.
Nusa’s pain at being separated from her daughter was acutely affecting her at this time. She wanted to hold her more than ever, to see her growing up and to free her from the drudgery of Iraq and introduce her to a new life like the one she herself was growing used to in Europe. She would cry every night, and before long she started to blame me for bringing her out of the country. I considered this unfair – she had begged me to take her with me – but I had no difficulty understanding what she was going through. I was missing my family too, and remembered how much I had missed them when I was ensconced in Uday’s palaces; but perhaps I lacked somebody to blame, and she had me to act as her emotional punch-bag. Nevertheless, her constantly placing responsibility for every ill at my door, and her attempts to pin on me her own sense of guilt, caused me to snap and on one occasion a blazing row ensued. We had the kind of tumultuous row that can only take place between two deeply frustrated people. We screamed and shouted at each other just to be heard, but my tone must have terrified her, because after a particularly heart-felt scolding of mine she went straight to the phone and called the police.
Within minutes a policeman and a policewoman were banging on the door, and I was arrested and taken away to spent the night in a cell, purportedly for Nusa’s safety. I passed the long night on a hard bench-like bed, barely sleeping, just lying there becoming progressively more infuriated at Nusa’s overreaction. I was released the next day without charge, but was unable to contain my fury with Nusa. When I got back home I exploded, shouting, “We need to stop seeing each other today! You’re just a whore. I don’t want to see you again. I could kill you. I’d bury you in the garden and nobody would miss you …” Even I did not know whether I meant it. I was shaking.
She phoned the police again.
This time I spent two nights in the cell. I received a stern warning: next time, I would go to prison. I realised I needed a break from Nusa. And, I dare say, she needed some time away from me. What we had in common – our similar recent pasts – was not sufficient to hold together a relationship, and had we been in Iraq I doubt if our friendship would have had much mileage even if she had not been a prostitute.
In a way, I could blame my simmering rage on the state of frustration and helplessness I was suffering from. A day never passed when dreams of home – my birthplace – did not stop me in my tracks and force me to choose between the impossible and the undesirable. My stay in this country was never meant to be anything but temporary, although I always knew I had to stay here through lack of other viable options. My dreams would carry me away; in them I would be floating down the Tigris, my friends waving and calling me to come ashore, where we would talk about nothing until the orange setting sun would illuminate their faces ¬– then we would go on talking some more, until it rose again. We would often talk like this, throughout the night. But I had to snap out of this fantasy a hundred times. I am the absconded double of one of the world’s most ruthless and depraved men. Returning to Iraq would mean death. Probably not just for me, but for my family, too. My being here was keeping them alive – human shields, bargaining chips, call them what you will. Baghdad must remain a dream, at least for the time being. Every week or so Kessler would turn up at my door and give me an envelope full of spending money. He had also given me a mobile phone, the number for which was to remain a secret known only to me and his agency. Under no circumstances was I to use it for social reasons, but in an emergency I could be contacted by – or make contact with – Kessler. It was rarely used.
One day, in June 1992, the phone did ring. I answered it and a man introduced himself with his name and said he was from the American embassy. Before he could make his point I hung up and got in touch with Kessler; he said he was expecting someone to call and that I should talk to them. About two hours later the embassy called again. The man said that he would send a car for me which would take me to the embassy where they wanted to talk to me. I could see no harm in doing so.
A few hours later I was in the embassy with the American ambassador to Austria and several representatives of the CIA. They were asking me the same old questions – chemical weapons … Saddam’s hideouts … weak spots … personal security … et cetera, et cetera. I reasserted to them the fact that I knew nothing, that I was never part of the inner circle, that I was merely the bullet-catcher of a dictator’s playboy son, and that I had told them all I knew. I do not think they believed a word I was saying.
Eventually they changed the subject. They reminded me of the agreement we had made as a condition of my being plucked from the north of Iraq – that I would assist them with anti-Saddam activities. They had an additional request, something I might be interested in but that would, I was told, be of great assistance to the people of Iraq.
It transpired that in a few days’ time an important conference was to take place in Vienna. It was to be a meeting of all the Iraqi opposition groups – a gathering of regional, political and religious concerns – and they would use the conference to find their common ground, assess their levels of support, plot a means of overthrowing Saddam and to make arrangements for taking over the reins of power once he was gone. It was effectively an unelected government in exile, made up of often self-appointed figureheads who happened to have the right blend of military and financial back-up. None of them had any popular support in Iraq, which was no surprise considering the fact that any opposition manifesto would become a suicide note, but there was an arrogance and presumptuousness in the current crop’s invented, self-imposed status. I was invited to attend the conference and to choose which party I would be allying myself with.
“I don’t want to get involved,” I told them. “I want nothing to do with politics.”
It was not the response they had expected. With surprise on her face, the ambassador said to me, “You know all about Jalal Talabani, don’t you?” I replied that I had only heard of him, that I had never met him. This was not strictly true. I had met him, although he might not be so sure that he had ever met me, Latif Yahia. In fact, when we did meet in 1990, he was under the impression that he was meeting Uday, and thought that the 25-million-dinar donation – then approximately 25 million pounds – was a fitting gift for whatever services he had rendered. I did not need to know the specifics – I was not Uday. This was a man who the West thought was strongly opposed to Saddam, but who would gladly do favours for him and for the regime. Did the donation go straight back into anti-Saddam party funds? Somehow, I doubt it. He had a lifestyle to maintain.
“You met him in Baghdad,” she said, rousing me from my reverie. My mind flashed back to the present. “And you’re going to meet him again at the conference. We will send a car to pick you up every day of the conference and you will attend. Your presence will boost the general morale of the conference. You survived the regime.” She then handed me an envelope. I did not have to open it to understand that it contained money.
“I’m already getting money from the Austrian government,” I said, sliding he envelope back to he “We know; this is extra. This is a gift from the American government.” She slid it back my way.
“I’m sorry,” I insisted. “I don’t want any money. I have money.” There was no such thing as a gift in my life at the time. There were only purchases and bribes. And a gift from the Americans was to be suspected more than any other. I knew about things their satellites, spy planes and secret agents did not. But I had no plans to sell my knowledge. I did not want any more bombs and cruise missiles careering through the Baghdad skies. I would gladly give away information to people I could trust with it, but sell it? That was official opposition territory. I pushed the envelope back to the ambassador.
“Just open it,” she said. I refused. “Well I’ll open it for you,” she sighed. She opened it up and counted the money in front of me. One hundred thousand schillings.
“So what?” I said, with studied nonchalance. I would have been able to put that much money to good use; our regular contributions hardly kept us in luxury. I just knew that they were trying to buy me, and it would have been the start of something I would not be able to get out of. Had I taken the money I would have been under their control until they had finished with me. Every one of the groups gathered at the conference would have been financially sustained by various interested countries. By way of recompense, I gave a tentative agreement to at least attend – although not necessarily to contribute to – the conference, even though I considered it nothing more than the coalition of the billing.
Two days later the car arrived as planned and I was driven to the conference, which was taking place in one of Vienna’s luxurious hotels overlooking the Danube. My efforts to keep a low profile proved pointless – on entering the hall heads started to turn in my direction. Gathered there were all the big players in what the West thought were the anti-Saddam organisations, including Ahmed al-Chalabi, who was for a while America’s great hope for post-Saddam rule, despite his criminal past (in a way echoing Saddam’s own rise). Present also were representatives of various Islamic groups, of Kurdish parties and of a variety of smaller interests, each with one goal – to get rid of Saddam and to start ruling themselves. As the day progressed, I was courted by members of virtually every group present; they saw me as a potential asset, as someone with inside knowledge of the clan, someone who would lend extra weight to their campaigns, boost the donations made to them and give them a greater share of power once it was redistributed by whoever overthrew Saddam (i.e., America).
The gathered hopefuls each had a paper-thin claim to power. The factions had little in common with each other, which would not necessarily be a bad thing in a nationally representative, post-dictatorship government, but the one desire they shared – to overthrow the regime – was enough to get them all in the same hotel for a couple of days. Each party would receive funding, usually from a sole sponsor state, which they would use to publicise their cause and, where appropriate, to improve themselves militarily. The amount of funding, and the importance of the state which chose to support them, would usually rest upon the numbers of loyal supporters they would claim to have in Iraq. In truth, support for all the gathered parties was negligible, which was as much because of Saddam’s grip as because the characters involved were pretty unremarkable and generally untrustworthy. So they would make up the figures. They would claim a thousand supporters here, a couple of hundred there, and impress potential sponsors with their fantasy power bases which would pay dividends once Saddam was overthrown and rebuilding contracts were being drafted. It was impossible to check up on their claims, as nobody in Iraq would admit to affiliation with any anti-Ba’athist faction. In the meantime, the donations that were meant to be propping up grass-roots support within Iraq simply vanished, no doubt hidden away in secret accounts, ready to be accessed once a liberated Iraq had been bled dry. We are not talking thousands of dollars here, more like hundreds of millions.
So where would I fit into this arrangement? I had a definite position. I was avowedly anti-Saddam, and had, to a degree, a certain publicity value because of my past and my extraordinary access to the regime’s workings. In short, I could be worth a few million dollars extra to the party, just as signing a well-known striker will add a few pennies to a publicly-owned football club’s value. I was also an information bank who could be used to make useful and timely withdrawals, not to benefit any cause, but to give sponsors the impression that the party’s spies were active and productive, even though there were no spies. (One example of their ignorance was later to emerge concerning the presence of the second wife of Saddam Hussein. Not a single party even knew she existed until my first book was published, after which her name would crop up with regularity in party statements.)
Al-Chalabi himself kept in the distance, but eventually approached me. I suppose he had been expecting me to make the first move towards someone of his imagined stature. He had two girls with him, which made him look more like a departmental manager at an office Christmas party. At length he asked me to join his group and work for him and the Iraqi National Congress, a group apparently modelling itself on Nelson Mandela’s African predecessor, in ignorance of the fact that the average person in Palestinian Street would know nothing of their existence, let alone proudly wear their colours and pray for the day when they would take power. They were another fantasy opposition party, but they existed only in their own minds and on the payrolls of their sponsors.
“Good day, Mr. Yahia,” he said, holding out his hand. “At last we have a chance to talk.”
I took a long look at al-Chalabi and said aloofly, “Sorry, I don’t know you.”
“You must have heard of me,” he said, glancing awkwardly at the girls at his sides. “I am Ahmed al-Chalabi!”
“Yes,” I shrugged, “Okay. I’ve heard of you. I’ve never met you, though.”
“It’s good that we have met, don’t you think? We could do with someone like you fighting for us.”
He must have sensed my reluctance to get involved, and it unsettled him. He was the centre of this particular universe and everyone knew they had to get close to him if they were to consider themselves entitled to a slice of the Iraqi pie. Were things to go his way he would be my president in several years’ time, so it must have irked him to see my indifference to his advances.
“So?” he at last ventured. “What do you say?”
“I say no,” I replied, with a shake of the head and a bored glance around the room.
(I was later to find out that the pimp who sorted out his girls got himself a place in the post-Saddam interim government, a fact that served to demonstrate just how far Iraq had progressed after the dictator’s fall.)
Next to shake my hand was Jalal Talabani of the Kurdish Democratic Party. At least this one had done his homework. “Latif, you have Kurdish blood,” he informed me. “We knew your grandfather, and he was a good man. Our cause is the one you must naturally follow.”
I told him I would think about it. I would also think about what my lineage had to do with my political views. My cousin, the doctor, was present at the conference in his position as Talabani’s spokesman, so maybe there was something in my genes that told me to follow this guy. Then again, there was something in my genes that made me look like Uday, so perhaps my genes and I could agree to differ on one or two issues.
I attended every day of the conference, during which my bullshit detectors almost became habituated to the background stimulus. The third day was set aside for deciding on an interim opposition parliament in exile – a prime minister, a president, governmental posts and such like – which would assume control after Saddam’s fall and thereby maintain law and order and set in motion the arrangement of free and fair elections. It was all pretty pointless, and served only to give the sponsors the impression that there was a degree of unity among the groups. The intention was to have all ethnic, tribal and religious groups equitably represented. Each delegate was given a voting form on which he or she (but probably a he) would vote for who should fill the assorted phantom vacancies.
The voting slips were collected. When the results were announced it immediately became obvious to me that the makeup of the opposition was not the one we had voted for. If this was not the case, then practically everyone I had spoken to must have been lying about their political leanings. I had in my mind a good impression of the political centre of gravity but the results all seemed too perfect, too West-friendly. The CIA had, it turned out, been monitoring the whole conference (which was meant to be confidential) from other rooms in the building and it is obvious that they had pre-planned the composition of the opposition long before any meaningless vote had taken place. And in a secret ballot, who could challenge the result? I felt like I had wasted three days.
“This is bullshit!” I screamed, proving that my detectors had some use left in them. The room went quiet except for the receding echo of my yell. Everyone looked at me. I would have felt like Spartacus had a single other person voiced agreement. But I had no allies here; nobody was paying me to take a certain position. “We are here to depose Saddam Hussein and replace him with another dictatorship, are we? Fuck the CIA! They picked these names. I don’t want to work for the CIA. I don’t want to spy against my country!”
People standing close to me started to calm me down, reminding me that the conference was being funded by America.
“Well fuck America!” I shouted, and stormed out of the conference.
The next day I was paid a visit by someone from the CIA.
“Latif,” the anonymous man said, “what do you want from life?”
“I just want to go back to my country after Saddam has gone,” I replied.
“But you’re not prepared to help get rid of him? Let me tell you, with your help, and the help of good Iraqi citizens like you, we want to kick Saddam Hussein from power. You alone can’t do that.” His tone was patronising, as though he were telling a child why not having a bar of chocolate today would be good for his teeth in years to come.
“I know that,” I replied, “I’m not Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can’t jump from place to place and confront Saddam, and then just kick his ass.” I thought it might get through to him if I were to speak his language.
“Yes,” he laughed. “One hand can’t clap.” He paused for a few moments. “Look, we need each other. We can supply you with whatever you want – money, weapons, protection, anything. We can have you installed in the country to start forming opposition, and when all the groups coordinate, we can easily crush the regime.”
“But I have no connections in Iraq,” I told him. “Just like all the others at the conference.”
“We’re aware of that,” he said. “But we give them money, and when you have money you can buy connections – and support.” I was not sure how much this awareness was exaggerated. I am sure he thought that the parties had at least a degree of support on which to build, when in fact they would be starting from scratch.
“So you want me to be your agent,” I concluded.
“Why do you put it that way?” he asked. “Why don’t you say, ‘You want me to help my country and overthrow Saddam’?”
“I don’t believe you have ever wanted Saddam gone,” I replied. “You know as well as I do that you supplied him and you supported him. Now you want him gone you’re just going to pay someone to get rid of him, just like you did in Egypt.” Everyone has seen the film of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 when the former was President Reagan’s special envoy, and the US was officially neutral. It is generally understood that America backed, and tacitly instigated, Iraq in its war with Iran, mainly in order to prevent an enormous Shia bloc spreading across the oil-rich region of the Middle East; were this region dominated by Ayatollah Khomeini and his like, it would not have served the West’s economic or strategic purposes. Another fact, which the world learnt about more recently, was that at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991 (which left Saddam in power), America had promised support to any group that would create an uprising to overthrow the wounded regime. An uprising was indeed sparked after such promises, and it came almost exclusively from Shia militias; America reneged on its word, and allowed Saddam’s Republican Guard and Fedayeen to suppress the attempted coup. Retribution was harsh; in three days, 45,000 rebels and suspected rebels were killed by the regime, and never again was such an attempt at overthrowing Saddam made. It also left a vile taste in the mouths of anti-Saddam Iraqis. Once the nature of those rebelling was looked into, and it was found to be too close to Iran and too left-wing, the Americans simply left them to their fate. The US would only support a rebellion which would result in a “friendly” regime coming to power, so Saddam won the day. Better the devil you know. Perhaps the man from the CIA was thinking along the same lines. “That was the past,” he sighed. “The world is different now. We have a plan that will return power to the Iraqi people. You can be part of it.”
“And I still don’t trust you,” I snapped, “and I don’t want to work for you or do anything for you. It goes against my nature. I never asked to become Uday’s fiday. I always wanted a normal life. Saddam and Uday stole the chance from me and I am not about to voluntarily become part of a movement that will make such demands on me. Don’t you think I have suffered enough? And I will not hurt the people of Iraq – only the regime.”
“Just think about it,” he suggested, as though my entrenched views were negotiable.
“I won’t work for you,” I asserted.
He started to get impatient and angry. His face turned red. “Latif, just as we got you out of Iraq, we could take you back there. Maybe that will persuade you.”
“Fuck you,” I said, calmly. “And get out of my house. We’ll see how you go about sending me back to Iraq.”
The threats had started. I was to become used to them.
As seems to be a tiring and repetitive aspect of my life, I found myself needing a way of saving my skin, of assuring that I could not be simply spirited away without anyone noticing. America’s covert power is as potent as its B52s and aircraft carriers – and almost as subtle. They could do with me as they desired and we both knew it.
Nusa and I sat down for an important talk. I put it to her that now was the best time to get in touch with Juliette’s photographer friend, William. If my story were to be printed in his newspaper, the world would know where I was and my disappearance would not go unnoticed. The Austrian government would be held accountable should anything unfortunate happen. For sure, it carried with it the risk that Iraqi intelligence, knowing precisely where I was, could more easily neutralise me. I was not being driven by a hunger for fame and fortune, either; my anonymity was useful, even vital, to me. And besides, back then I had no idea of the sums of money that could be involved in a scoop such as the one reposing in my head. I did have an idea that any publicity could help to get Nusa’s daughter brought over here, and as we discussed all the pros and cons, the only possible conclusion surfaced.
A meeting was arranged with Juliette and William.
The four of us met a few days later and got settled around a table at our house in a room with coffee on tap, in preparation for a long, revealing day.
After the formalities were over, and when I had made sure that all present swore never to reveal what was about to be said, I got to the point: “I was Uday Saddam Hussein’s double, and I want to have my story published.” William was dumbfounded while he took in the implications of my admission. Tellingly, Juliette seemed to take the announcement calmly, which at the time confirmed to me what I had always suspected – that she already knew. She had done a reasonable job of hiding her knowledge from me, but she could never take back the look she gave me when we first met in the café where she worked.
“Please, Latif,” William said, “do not tell this story to anyone. But if you will allow me, I would like to talk about this with my girlfriend.” His “girlfriend” was not just anyone – she was the editor of a newspaper, and she employed him as a photographer despite his possessing no obvious talent in the field ¬– I guess I can only assume this; it’s just that I never once saw him with a camera, which would be like a journalist going about without a notepad and pen.
“Okay,” I said. “Ring her.”
He phoned his girlfriend/editor and about an hour later she arrived at our house, slightly dishevelled, as though she had been doing something else when her phone rang. I was surprised to see that she was about sixty years old, although I must admit it never crossed my mind that to be the editor of a large newspaper does require a certain maturity. William must have had a thing for the older woman – or Austrian citizenship. It is not for me to say.
“May I introduce Senta to you,” said William. We shook hands.
Over the next few hours I gave Senta a summary of my life, and watched her shift between strained concentration and disbelief as its meandering path was laid down. She must have heard a thousand intriguing stories in her time, so I was gratified to see that mine must have ranked among them. It was important, since Nusa’s child was in danger, that her story, indeed her very existence in my life, was left out completely; however, we felt we had to let Senta know what was going on, in the understanding that nothing of Nusa’s life would be made public. When I at last finished, silence descended on the room; we all looked at one another and tried to remain businesslike, although we each hid a little excitement at what was going on. Senta became deep in thought as she let the story resonate around her mind, and wondered what she could do with it. She at last looked up at me and said, “Latif, I don’t think we can publish this story. Please, just leave this story alone, at least for now.” This was not the reaction Nusa had been expecting; she burst into tears, wailing about this being the only chance of getting to see her daughter again.
I was taken to one side by Senta. “Look,” she said, “here in the West, nothing comes for free. I’m not sure if I could do your story justice with our newspaper’s budget. And that’s the truth. You have a great story, and I’m sure someone would pay good money for it.”
I asked what she meant. At that time I knew very little about publishing, and nothing about the sums of money that could change hands. As far as I knew, things like that did not go on in Iraq, where the state owned the press and competition between newspapers was not such a big deal.
She continued, “We could come to an arrangement. I could act as your agent, and we could try to sell your story to a major newspaper. With the money you could make moves towards getting your daughter out of Iraq.”
The meeting ended and Senta promised to get working on my story straight away. She and William left us at the doorway.
For two week we heard nothing. I started to think she had forgotten about the story, or that she had changed her mind. I trusted her enough to assume that she had not simply sold my story. Besides, I had kept back several key parts, so she would not have got the whole story. I could not imagine her betraying me to the authorities. I could not imagine a Western journalist doing this, especially with what now seemed to be a big story in her possession. More worryingly, however, was the fact that I was still officially invisible. Every passing day was another opportunity for someone with power to make me disappear, and few people would be aware that I had even been here in the first place.
At the end of the fortnight’s wait, however, we were greeted with what appeared to be good news; Senta had found a journalist willing to take the job on. Moreover, the newspaper he wrote for was about to launch a new magazine called News, and the editor wanted to put my story in the first edition.
“Would you be prepared to meet the journalist?” she asked. “Of course,” I replied.
The meeting took place the next day; Senta, the journalist and I were present. It was my first meeting with Karl Wendl, a tall, professional man with a deal to talk about.
“I am very interested in your story,” he announced, “ and I want to buy it from you.”
“Buy … paying … payment,” I admitted, shaking my head. “These are things I know nothing about.”
Senta stepped in. “Let me deal with all that. I’m your agent, don’t forget. I’ll sort out a good deal for all of us.”
Karl put his cards on the table: “I want to pay a hundred thousand schillings,” he said. This was a large amount ¬to me – about half the value of a house in Austria at the time, or one standard bribe from the US embassy. I had had no idea my story was this valuable. Naturally I agreed. It was an amount with which I could pull enough strings to get Tara removed from Karbala.
Two days later Karl returned with a contract. The story was to be serialised over the first three weeks of the News’s existence. I cared little for such details. All I wanted was for the story to be made public. “Run it for a day, run it for three weeks – I don’t care. Just pay me the money and do what you want to do with the story.” Karl must have been pleased to hear this. In my artless way I was displaying a lack of understanding of the publishing industry, of journalism and of contract-making that I would later regret.
The wheels were in motion, and I would soon become a recognisable face in the crowd, for better or for worse. Latif Yahia was on the verge of a kind of fame unlike the curious anonymous distinction that I had endured in Uday’s employ.
I hoped desperately that the advantages would make the disadvantages worthwhile.
But I was committed now. The consequences could be dire or hugely beneficial. I was rolling a ball into a roulette wheel with no idea of the outcome.
