Betrayed Page 22

  We rode into town in a Humvee, or Hummer, a wide-bodied military vehicle with its add-on rooftop weaponry. When the US military moved, they took no chances. Such was the respect the Americans had among the Kurds that we were ushered straight in to see the stocky, bald-headed mayor at his office, which was adorned with photos of Mustafa Barzani, the founder of Iraqi Kurdish resistance. We sat around a glass-topped coffee table but before the discussions began I was alarmed to see a man enter with a video camera. He was from a local TV channel and the last thing I wanted was to see my picture on the evening news. My father would see the vision of me sitting among those men and I couldn’t imagine the punishment that would follow. I quickly pointed out my difficulty to the mayor’s assistant and he reached an agreement with the cameraman not to include me in his shots. A simple mistake like that could have cost me dearly.

  I was amazed at the information I was privy to as the Americans asked questions of the mayor and I interpreted. They wanted to know how weapons came into the country from the north, which country supplied them and the routes along which they were delivered to the south. While the meeting lasted less than half an hour, I was glad to leave—it was too high-powered for my liking.

  But I had pleased the Americans and word went around the compound about what they considered to be my efficiency. While I was not going to tell the colonel that I was uneasy attending the meeting I asked him if, whenever it was possible, I could remain in the presence of women. I explained my sensitive position with my father.

  ‘No worries, mate!’ he said, trying to imitate an Australian accent. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  The unit was often invited to barbecues and at first some of the men were a little worried about accepting, asking me if they thought it was safe. ‘Are they likely to ambush us, or poison the food?’ I was asked. I assured them that it was most unlikely and to make sure that things were safe I agreed to accompany them, along with Joyce. I couldn’t help thinking that here was I travelling with a group of tough American soldiers to ensure they didn’t fall into any danger! Of course, I did not tell my father about the barbecue, which was held on the outskirts of town and the hosts were unknown to my family.

  After a week or so I became friendly with one of the lieutenants, who I will call Matt. He was always asking if I was settling in and to let him know if I had any problems. I had no impression at all that he was ‘chatting me up’—he was a straight, honest guy. He was a man I just knew that I could trust. One day, when I was alone in the office typing up a review of a meeting they had had, he stood beside me and said: ‘What’s wrong, pretty girl? I can tell something’s up with you.’

  ‘I’ve got things on my mind. It’s nothing to do with work. It’s a personal thing.’

  ‘Hey, don’t let it boil up. Let it out. Tell me what it is. Maybe I can help.’

  ‘I’m not comfortable about talking about it.’

  ‘Try me—what have you got to lose?’

  He was right. What did I have to lose?

  So I looked up into his face and told him I wasn’t a virgin.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘You’ve got a problem,’ he said, understanding immediately. ‘A real big problem.’

  I didn’t need to be told that, but it helped to hear that someone else appreciated it—and didn’t spit in my face.

  ‘What can I do to help?’ he asked as I went on to describe my father’s very real threat to kill me.

  I told Matt that if there was some way of getting in touch with the Australian Embassy in Iraq, I’d be able to give them my passport details and they would be able to verify my citizenship—and do something to help me escape.

  Matt told me to wait while he wandered off to another office, where there was an internet connection. He returned with a printout of the embassy, its address, email and phone number. Of course, I knew its location because I had driven close to it with my sleazy Baghdad cousin but what I had not possessed was a phone number.

  ‘Why don’t you call them right away?’ he said, nodding towards a telephone.

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. Was it really going to be as simple as that?

  It took time to talk my way past a receptionist and I was then put through to a consular official. I told him that I was an Australian citizen of Kurdish heritage and I was trapped in Dohuk. I knew I was blurting it out and I felt Matt touch my shoulder and whisper: ‘Relax.’

  The official’s next words stunned me. ‘You have to come in to the embassy and explain this to us.’

  ‘I can’t do that!’ I cried. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m way up here in the north. I have no money nor any means of getting to you! I would need a man to drive me to Baghdad and there’s no way that any man would do this without knowing the reason for my description. I can’t tell him that I want to escape. Aren’t you aware of Kurdish culture?’

  On hearing my response on the phone I heard Matt mutter: ‘Doesn’t this guy know there’s a war on? You can’t drive around Iraq like you’re on a darn picnic.’

  I asked the official to take down my old home address in Sydney and my passport details so he could verify who I was. The response I had was: ‘Unless you can come in to the embassy, there’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘Please, please! Even if I could get to you, my family would know I’ve gone missing and they’ll kill me. I wouldn’t even reach you. They’d catch me on the way and that would be the end of me. Please understand. I’m an Australian and I’m begging you to help me.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do unless you come in. Look, I’m busy and cannot continue this conversation. Try to come in.’

  Then he hung up on me.

  I burst into tears. Matt told me that he would relay my precarious position to his superiors, assuring me that it would be treated with the greatest confidence.

  ‘We’ll do what we can to get you out of here,’ he said. But his words had little impact. After the broken promises by David and Zana, after the dismissive tone of the embassy official, I held out little hope of ever leaving Kurdistan before my secret was discovered. Matt had held out a helping hand but I held out little hope of it coming to anything.

  As each day passed I went about my duties, trying to remain happy but crying inside. Joyce was a great friend and in time I revealed my position to her. She was horrified and very concerned. But she assured me that if I had placed my trust in Matt and the other officers, they wouldn’t let me down. Word obviously got around, but not in a gossipy way. The officers in the unit were genuinely interested in helping me and said they were looking at ways and means of doing so. As well as Matt, I was constantly being reassured by Joyce and an officer from Texas who spent all day chewing tobacco (and spitting it into a jar which he carried around).

  Three weeks after I had started with the unit, I heard my aunties talking in the kitchen. Although I was in my bedroom their voices carried over the gap at the top of the dividing wall.

  ‘What is going on with our Australian niece?’ I heard one of them say. ‘She is receiving all these offers from men who have rich families and she is turning them all down. We shall have to do something.’

  Then I heard my grandmother’s voice. ‘We were hoping to marry her off soon after she arrived. She’s become too much for us to handle, sitting around in her bedroom all the time. She’s become a great nuisance to us all.’

  Sitting around in my bedroom! It was my grandmother who had confined me to that room when I wasn’t doing the housework. And she seemed to have overlooked the fact that I was now away each day working for the Americans.

  Then came a comment from my Aunty Whaffa, who had taken me to work at the firm where Diyar had so violently attacked me with his words, a comment that brought a shocking intake of breath: ‘I think it’s time to have her checked before we marry her off.’

  Dear God, they were plotting to drag me off for a medical check. I had heard that there was a hospital in Dohuk where brides-to-be were taken at the insistence o
f the families of some men to ensure that they were virgins. I remembered the gorgeous Pela, the girl from Sweden who had been killed by relatives. She was ‘inspected’ after her death and found to have been killed needlessly. She was still a virgin. Even suspicion was enough to bring about her ‘honour killing’. What a misnomer such deaths were. They were murder, as plain as that.

  ‘Is there someone her father wants her to marry?’ I heard one of the aunties say.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said another. ‘He’s already discussed it with me. He has his eye on Ibrahim’s son, Heval.’ I vaguely knew who they were talking about—my father’s first cousin. But it was worse than that. Much worse. For his father was Etab’s father—the man who had joined in the honour killing of his daughter. Now I recalled all the compliments my father had paid to Heval over the months, vaguely suspecting that they were meant for me, but I had tried to dismiss them, believing that this was another one of those round-about approaches that had been made for my hand.

  ‘We will have her checked and arrange with my son for the marriage within a few months,’ I heard my grandmother say. ‘He wants her married before she is 25 and her birthday is at the end of the year.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why she has been refusing these wonderful men. It is a great embarrassment to us all,’ said a voice, to which another responded: ‘It will not be for much longer.’

  ‘And perhaps we should do something about what she is wearing to work, or have that employment stopped altogether. Have you noticed how she is dressing? You can see her shape in those clothes.’

  I could hear that Jamilla, my stepmother, was in the kitchen with them, but she said nothing in my defence. She had no authority over the other women. She was the newcomer, even though, as the wife of the owner, she was officially the ‘lady of the house.’

  I was now well aware that I was in a race against time—receiving help to escape from the Americans or being forced to have a medical check-up at the ‘virgin hospital’. That night, I felt so sick about my precarious position that I could not face the evening meal.

  The following day, red eyed from lack of sleep and tears, Matt was quick to pick up that something dramatic had happened. When I told him of the conversations I had heard he cried: ‘Oh shit. It’s full speed ahead for us, then.’

  Matt went off and pulled strings with his superiors. It was arranged that I should be taken to the office of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The headquarters was housed in a building adjoining one of the city’s big hotels and it was there I was introduced to one of the senior co-ordinators, who I will call Rob, for security reasons. A tall man in his 40s with steely grey hair, he was dressed in civvies as he held out his hand. He had already been briefed about my case, but brought out a yellow note pad and jotted down all my details—full name, passport number, background in Australia, when I left, when I arrived in Kurdistan. He also noted at my request—I wanted this to be made clear to anyone prepared to help me—that I was not a virgin. And that my father had slapped and beaten me and had threatened to kill me if I brought any shame to the family. I began to tell him through my tears about honour killings, but he interrupted. ‘Yes, I’m well aware of them,’ he said. ‘Yours is indeed a very serious case and rest assured, we will get you out.’

  ‘But please do it as soon as you can,’ I urged. ‘I know my time is getting short. They are already talking about taking me for a medical check-up and then all will be lost. I might not even make it out of the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll get onto the Australian Embassy immediately.’

  When I told him of the reaction I had received previously, he shook his head in dismay. ‘Hanging up on you without trying to seek a solution? That should never have happened,’ he said.

  The days rolled by. I tried my best to keep away from my aunties. I looked into my father’s face, seeking a clue to his thoughts. He had remained silent about Heval and I wondered if that was because a wedding was being quietly arranged behind my back. I didn’t even know Heval apart from his name. Each night I repeated the same prayer: ‘Please God, help the Americans to help me. Help them to get me out of here.’

  Then one day as I was translating a document from Arabic to English, despite my still relatively limited knowledge of Arabic, one of the officers, Daniel, said quietly: ‘Start making preparations. You’re getting out. Begin by putting your important belongings in a bag and bringing them in, a bit at a time so you don’t raise any suspicion at home.’

  I spun around. ‘Do you really mean it? Am I really going to be leaving?’

  He grinned. ‘You betcha!’

  So the next morning I sorted through my belongings in my bedroom, placing pieces of my jewellery, photos, my music and some light clothing that I could squeeze up into a shoulder bag without raising the suspicion of my watchful grandmother or the taxi-driver cousin who was still calling to collect me each morning. My hands shook with excitement as I packed in the bright red top I had owned since I was 17 and which I had been forbidden to wear in Kurdistan for it was the sign of a loose woman. I was careful not to put in too much for I knew I would have several more days to sneak things out.

  The next day, I told myself, I would smuggle out more of my jewellery and my diary, which contained so many truths about my grandmother and my aunties. I didn’t want to leave the diary at the military unit overnight because, even though I trusted all around me, I was still worried that it might fall into the wrong hands. So I locked it away in the closet, planning to remove it some time in the coming days. I stared at the shoes and the clothes my aunties had bought for me. They could definitely stay behind!

  As my cousin drove me to the headquarters that morning, the bag with my belongings at my feet in the back seat of the taxi, I kept telling myself to remain calm—and to be prepared for another disappointment. If another let-down came, though, I knew it would be disaster for me. Time had run out.

  At the office, I dropped the bag at my feet while I waited for the opportunity to ask where I could store it.

  ‘You have your stuff? Great!’ It was Daniel! ‘You’ll be leaving in five minutes.’

  It took a second or two for his words to sink in. Then I was hit by a flash of doubt. Leaving for where? Was I being sacked? Were they going to take me home because I was, as I’d heard my aunties say so often in the past, ‘too much trouble’? And why so soon, when they had told me that it would be a week or so before anything could be done? Surely, something had gone terribly wrong.

  Before I could say anything, he added: ‘There’s a vehicle waiting for you. You’re going to be taken to Mosul and from there to Baghdad and then—home, baby!’

  He read the delight in my eyes and my intention, as I pushed back the chair, to throw my arms around him with thanks. He backed away slightly. ‘Hey girl, don’t make it too obvious! There’s only a handful of us who know what’s happening. Your case has been top secret—and I mean top secret.’

  ‘Except from me,’ said a new voice. It was Matt, who had come into the office, grinning. ‘Back to kangaroo land for you,’ he said, throwing me a wink. ‘Told ya we’d be getting you out.’

  Then they gave me my instructions. A very careful plan had been mapped out to ensure there were no leaks back to my father. They would be using a Kurdish driver employed by the military to take me to what I would tell him was the home of a make-believe aunty and from there I would be transferred to another vehicle. I would not be giving the driver the address, though.

  ‘How will I know where it is, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll give you instructions with my finger,’ said Daniel. ‘When you see which way I point as we travel, you tell the driver to go that way.’

  I had just enough time to hurry into an adjoining dormitory to say goodbye to another staff member, Trevor, who had been most friendly and helpful to me. I asked if it was in order for him to know I was going and was told to be quick. So I ran into the dormitory and gave Trevor a hug and a kiss and told him this was g
oodbye. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘They told me a short time ago.’

  We were both in tears. Then he reached into his backpack and pulled out a small package. ‘You might need this. It’s the best I can do.’

  As we headed away from the villa in a white coloured, unmarked, four-wheel drive, I opened the gift. It was $US300, Trevor’s monthly allowance for food and other expenses. He also gave me his email address. These people are just incredible, I thought, as we headed through the streets. Daniel was in the front seat and every now and then he would casually lift his hand to his face and use his thumb to indicate a right turn and a finger to indicate a left, instructions I then passed to the driver who assumed I knew exactly where I was going. I glanced back occasionally, terrified that we were being followed, but there were no suspicious vehicles behind us.

  When Daniel dropped his hand quickly, it was the signal for us to stop. Then, according to my instructions, I told the driver to let me out and to take Daniel on to another military compound. I wanted to kiss Daniel’s neck in thanks but of course that couldn’t be done. It was just a ‘thanks and see you,’ kind of goodbye, with a discreet touch of my hand on his shoulder.

  As the car disappeared, I found myself standing alone in the street with my own small bag and another that the military and CPA had given to me. There were houses beside me, but there was no-one in sight. What should I do? Was this a sick joke? Despite my belief in the Americans, I had been betrayed so many times that the thought came over me. I couldn’t bear to imagine what my punishment would be I if was eventually brought back to my father’s door by a good Samaritan Kurd who had found me wandering the streets. But suddenly I found myself surrounded by three American men, not soldiers, but armed to the teeth. They were dressed in flak jackets and had weapons in holsters on their legs and their belts. I knew who they were, having had them pointed out to me on previous trips into town with men from the unit. They were freelancers from the Blackwater security firm, a mainstay of support for the US army. They bundled me into one of three black four-wheel drivers that had driven up behind me and had parked in such a way that they blocked the street off from any vehicle that might have managed to follow me here. I recalled vaguely seeing them parked in a side street as I was driven to this spot. I was indeed at the centre of a grand escape operation.