Free Escape from Saddam by Lewis Alsamari Page A

sweat from my hand. As we approached the checkpoint, the bus slowed down, coming to a halt at a gesture from one of the Red Berets. The doors opened, and a large, unsmiling border guard walked on. His skin was dark—swarthy, almost—and he had a thick and immaculately groomed mustache. Nobody spoke. The Red Berets were vile: often they reminded me of the villagers from Hamam Al-Aleel—vicious and uncaring. Ordinary Iraqis referred to them as
zanabeere
—wasps—because of the way they swarmed threateningly the length and breadth of the country. No good could come of a conversation with a
zanboor.
Slowly he walked the length of the coach, scrutinizing every passenger’s papers carefully before handing them back and moving on. I had no reason to be nervous—all my papers were in order—but somehow the silence in the coach was enough to make even the most law-abiding citizen feel edgy.
    Finally the man reached me. “Papers,” he said curtly, and I handed him my documents. He gave them only the most cursory of glances before putting them in his pocket. “Go down,” he instructed me.
    “Why?” I asked. “I’ve got…”
    “Don’t ask any questions,” he interrupted. “Just go down.”
    I left my bag in my seat—I was confident that I would not be detained—and asked the person sitting next to me to save my seat. But the guard interrupted again. “Take your bag with you,” he told me.
    The side of the road was swarming with people—both guards and ordinary citizens, who sat in the dust eating food or talking animatedly. None of them paid me any notice as I stood by the side of the bus waiting for the guard to finish his checks. Eventually he alighted from the bus and indicated to the driver that he could leave.
    As the bus left, my hope left with it. The guard told me to walk over to a square concrete building. Once there I was led into his office, where he took a seat, leaving me to stand opposite his desk. Another Red Beret sat in the same office, not even bothering to conceal his interest in what was going on.
    “Haven’t I seen you before?” my captor asked.
    “No,” I replied.
    “Yes, I have,” he insisted. “I saw you only last week. You’re forging papers for leave.”
    I shook my head as I felt my stomach twisting. “No,” I assured him, “these are genuine.”
    “Forging papers,” the guard repeated as though he had not heard me. “Very serious.” He looked at me expectantly.
    I could not decide what he wanted me to do. My instinct told me that he was waiting for an offer of a bribe, but I could not be sure, and I did not want to land myself in more trouble by trying to bribe somebody who was not as corrupt as I perceived him to be. Even if I wanted to bribe him, I had no idea how to go about it. What should I say? How should I say it? I had never found myself in this position before; and besides, I didn’t have a great deal of money.
    “I’m going to conduct some inquiries,” he persisted, “make a few phone calls. I know you’re forging papers, so you might as well confess now. If you do, I’ll send you back to your unit for three months’ solitary. If you don’t, you know where you’re going to end up: military tribunal, then Abu Ghraib. You’ll probably be there for fifteen years.”
    “I’m not confessing,” I said weakly. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Then it struck me that maybe I had a trump card to play. “I’m to be transferred soon to Al-Mansour military intelligence compound.”
    The guard scoffed. “You? At Al-Mansour? Don’t make me laugh.” He called through the thin door of his office, and another guard appeared. “Put him in the cell,” he ordered.
    The cell was housed at the other end of the building. The small metal door was opened, and I was pushed inside. I had never been in such a filthy place. In one corner was a communal lavatory—little more than a foul-smelling hole in the ground. There was a flushing mechanism above it that