Betrayed Read online

  Hadar took me into central Baghdad the following day and it was such a relief to be able to visit shops without a whole gang of aunties or cousins surrounding me as they had in Dohuk. In one shop I stopped in amazement. On display were a row of small toy koalas. I almost cried out to Hadar: ‘Look, koalas from Australia!’ But I stopped myself just in time. Such an outburst would have drawn immediate attention to me. As it was, I didn’t really like them. They were dark brown and the shape was wrong but then again they were Iraqi koalas!

  The following day Abdullah offered to take me into town with him. In Baghdad it was unlikely that a man travelling with a woman in a hijab and kaftan would attract any attention, for it would be assumed they were man and wife. Abdullah would have been able to explain to any workmates who saw us that I was a relative, which was true. I just had to make sure I kept my mouth shut.

  As we crawled through the traffic towards central Baghdad I worked out a plan. I would slowly bring him around to the fact that I wanted to go to the Australian Embassy—‘just for a look’.

  Whenever we saw anything that symbolised the West, a Pepsi sign and even a company car with English writing, I would make what I hoped would be an innocent comment like: ‘That reminds me so much of Australia.’ I started telling him about Sydney, the bridge, the Opera House, and he started asking me more questions. This was exactly what I wanted—because then I suddenly said: ‘Hey, Abdullah, are we anywhere near the Australian Embassy? I’d so love to see that, too, just to look at the flag because it would remind me so much of where I used to live a long time ago.’ Again, I was trying to subtly distance myself from my home country, yet trying to get close to the Embassy. Would I make a break for it then—jump out of the car and dash to the gates and beg to be let in?

  Abdullah interrupted my thoughts. ‘You just want to look at a flag? That’s stupid. Don’t you know what the flag looks like?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but I also thought that I might even hear some Australian voices. It would make me feel so good to hear them after all this time. Surely there would be no harm in that?’

  He took his eyes off the road for a moment as we sat in yet another traffic jam. ‘So, you’re going to walk up to a security guard sitting on the gate outside the embassy and ask him if you can listen to someone speaking Australian? Are you crazy? For a start, he’s not going to let anyone get anywhere near the people inside unless they have an appointment or a specific reason. And no-one is going to wander out into the street and start talking to a stranger like you. They come and go out of that building in their vehicles. What are you going to do, flag them down and say “Speak to me, speak to me, I want to hear your voice?”’

  He ranted on. ‘There’s also the security guard. If you speak to him, he’s going to know you aren’t an Iraqi. He might not think anything of it, but then again he might just take the number of my car and report us to the secret police. No Latifa, forget all about the Australian Embassy.’

  Another hope had been dashed. He was right. Approaching the Embassy in person out of the blue, me a woman, was fraught with difficulties. Now a new problem lurked. On the way back to the house, Abdullah kept glancing at me. Or rather my breasts. Once or twice his hand brushed against my thigh as he changed gears. I turned my legs as close as I could towards the door. The closest I came to saying anything was: ‘Please be careful’, when he did it again. I didn’t want to distance him too much—I might still need him because I was in Baghdad, away from my father and my grandmother and the closest I had come to ‘freedom’ since my arrival.

  The sexual harassment did not stop. It worsened. Whenever Hadar was at work, or in the kitchen, Abdullah would, without apology, grab my kaftan and jerk it up to look at the lower part of my legs. Every time he looked at me, I could sense him undressing me with his eyes. After a few days of this, I could not take it any more. I was bursting to tell my aunt what was happening, but the thought of being branded a marriage wrecker, or at least someone who had tried to be one, forced me to hold my tongue. I had been so desperate to come to Baghdad and now I found myself longing for the day when I could return to Dohuk, away from my letcherous uncle’s hands.

  As that day finally approached, when it had been arranged with my father for my return, there was bad news.

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ Hadar said. ‘I can’t get the time off for another week. You’ll have to go with Abdullah.’

  The thought of travelling alone with Abdullah for the six hour journey to Dohuk appalled me. I had visions of being driven onto a desert road to some lonely place and being raped. I had no hesitation in thin king that if I were alone with him, that is what would happen and who would believe me when I reported it? Me, the troublemaker. Me, who my grandmother hated so much. Me, for whom my father held so much displeasure. They would all take the side of my uncle—and if that rape did happen, he would find out that I was not a virgin. Then he would have a hold over me for all time. He could demand sex every time the opportunity arose against a threat of spreading the word. I was condemned no matter how I looked at it. How was I to avoid travelling to Dohuk alone with him?

  SEVEN

  Perhaps being surrounded by devout Muslims influenced me, but I found myself silently praying that I wouldn’t have to return to Dohuk with Abdullah. My prayers were answered! My aunt told me that we had to leave for Kurdistan immediately—all of us—because she had received word one of her great aunts was dying. I saw the reaction in Abdullah’s eyes. If I could have read a word in them it would have said, ‘Damn.’

  While he and Hadar were in Dohuk visiting Hadar’s great aunt, I was working out ways of trying to use Abdullah to my advantage. He had a car. He was lusting after me. Car and lust. Use them, girl! I had accepted that while I remained in Kurdistan, far away from the Australian Embassy in Baghdad, escaping across the relatively close border into Turkey or Iran would be impossible without very serious help, but what still remained open to me was getting a phone call through to Ojo in Germany. Hearing his voice would be like a tonic and he would be able to do something to get me out of my predicament. I’d be able to ask him to call every Australian embassy in the world, the Australian Government—anybody he could think of. Then I’d be free and the death sentence I knew was hovering would be removed. While there was no phone in my father’s house, there were two telephone exchanges—one in the city itself and the other a short drive out to the outskirts—from which international calls could be made. There was only one problem. I thought I remembered his number, but couldn’t be 100 per cent sure.

  I had learned about the telephone exchanges one day when I stood at the open gate—when the boys from next door were not on the roof—and got into a conversation with a girl who lived directly opposite across the narrow road. She was younger than me, but had two older sisters who I also met in time. They were warm, friendly girls, amazed that I was from Australia yet still ‘one of them’. In time, our friendship grew to the point that my father would even allow me to slip across the road and visit them for brief periods.

  When my father was at work, for he was employed at an engineering factory, and Hadar was with her great aunt, Abdullah dropped by at dusk with the excuse of checking that I was all right. My grandmother happened to have gone off to the shops, for she was still a sprightly woman, and perhaps Abdullah had learned I was alone somehow. But if he had any evil thoughts, I was ready for him.

  ‘Can you do me a favour?’ I asked, knowing that he would be more than willing to do anything for me if there was a sexual reward at the end.

  ‘I’m craving for some ice-cream. Can you drive me somewhere to get some?’

  We drove downtown and bought ice-creams and then I asked, almost as an afterthought, if he wouldn’t mind dropping me off quickly at one of the telephone exchanges so I could make a quick call. The exchange in the city was closed so he shrugged and said he’d have to take me to the second place, located on a hill overlooking the city.

  ‘I’m not allowed to do this, y
ou know,’ he said. ‘But I’ll do it for you as a special favour. It will be our secret.’ Some secret. If only he knew about mine. The exchange, as I had expected, was full of men and smoke. I had to ask Abdullah if he wouldn’t mind lending me the money for the call I needed to make and he asked me not to insult him. Of course he would pay—the men would never allow a woman to pay for a phone call, although how many times would a woman be allowed to make a call anyway? I had to wait a short time before I was directed to a booth to take the call that I had asked the man at the desk to place for me. I had given him the international code for Germany—49—but I’d struggled with the rest of Ojo’s number and had to give the clerk three alternatives. He was not happy about that but I begged him to help, hoping, too that Abdullah, who was sitting on a nearby bench, could not pick up my anxiety. The first two attempts failed, but on the third I heard the phone ringing.

  ‘Tag—hello?’

  It was him!

  ‘Ojo, it’s me at last! I miss you so much!’

  ‘Hello… hello…?’

  ‘Ojo, can you hear me? Ojo?’

  ‘Hello? Hello?’

  I wanted to scream with frustration. I could hear him, but he couldn’t hear me!

  He must have known someone was trying to reach him because he kept saying hello, but then I heard the ‘pip’ of the phone as he hung up. His lovely voice; I’d heard it but as far as he was concerned I hadn’t called him as promised. Or perhaps he thought that was me trying to get through and might be sitting there by the phone waiting for the call to come through again.

  ‘We have to go,’ said Abdullah. ‘We can’t be away this long.’

  Before we left, I asked one of the phone assistants why my call had failed.

  ‘Oh, this is always a bad time to make an international call,’ he said. ‘It’s always difficult to get through at this time. You need to wait a couple of hours.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you tell me that?’ I asked angrily, but Abdullah was already leading me away, his hand on my arm. I pushed it away. I wasn’t going to let him touch me there in front of all those men in the exchange or in any other location for that matter.

  As we drove back through quiet streets that were now dark he asked who I was calling. I simply told him that I hadn’t got through, but he must have suspected it was an overseas call because the fee was higher than for a local connection. He put his question again in a different way, asking if I’d called a friend.

  ‘Abdullah, just because you have made yourself very familiar with me doesn’t mean that you own me or have a right to question me.’

  He suddenly threw his arm up and grabbed my breast. ‘Familiar like this you mean?’

  I returned the compliment—by lashing out and striking him across the face. He was stunned but at least he didn’t lose control of the car. Within a minute or so I saw in the street lights that his lip had swollen and there was a trickle of blood. I told him he should wipe his face or his wife would have questions to ask. How I wished I could tell her what her husband was up to but I couldn’t risk destroying their relationship—and add to the dislike so many members of the family appeared to hold for me.

  But I began to ask myself whether it really was dislike, or simply a demonstration of their frustration at not being able to make me one of them. If only I could reach out to someone, by phone, out there in the big wide world and just hear some reassuring words that they would get me out of my predicament, but the only number I knew was my mother’s. I thought about calling her but then I remembered her final words to me that I could throw myself from a roof for all she cared, I would not be leaving Kurdistan.

  From time to time I was allowed to visit my maternal grandfather’s home, a cousin, Vasheen driving around to pick me up. The main reason for my visits there were to watch documentaries or the news channels—CNN and the BBC—because, unlike the televisions in my father’s house, which could only pick up boring local channels, my grandfather had a satellite connection. However, even the satellite TV was censored. No entertainment, no films or music videos, just the news and documentaries. It was evening and I was watching a history channel with some of my cousins, aware that I would be taken back to my father’s home shortly, when one of my uncles burst into the room and told us to quickly switch to the Al Jazeera Arab TV station.

  When we flicked it on, the screen showed a tall building with smoke pouring from it. Then I saw an airplane flying towards another building and disappearing behind it. But that was just an illusion—it had slammed right into it. I was watching, with little understanding, the attack on America on the morning of 9/11.

  ‘Those sons of whores,’ my uncle cried. ‘I can’t believe they’ve done this.’

  He would not have been aware of who was responsible, but he had guessed correctly that Arab terrorists had carried out the attack. Men from next door, people from the street, came to the house, one of the few in the area that had satellite TV. As the vision was replayed time and again, more people poured in through the door and the room was a crush. It didn’t matter any more that I, a woman, was a stranger among men. An older sister of my mother, the aunt who had wrapped my arm in a towel when I had stabbed myself, was crying. I had come to feel sorry for her as the weeks had gone by because I learned that she had been forced into marriage at the age of 16 and then her husband had been killed in a tribal dispute and she was never allowed to marry again. Remarrying after a husband’s death shows great disrespect and any widow who does it is despised.

  What did these terrifying scenes mean for the Arab world? The discussion among the men in that crowded room was spot on. They predicted that George W Bush would strike back, but opinions varied on which country would be hit. They hoped it would be Iraq on the southern side of the mountains because it would mean the Americans would be doing the Kurds’ work for them. It would certainly mean the end of oppression by Saddam Hussein, they all agreed, but these were wishful thoughts at that time.

  When I arrived home I found that my father had already heard the news. ‘As a result of this,’ he said, ‘there’ll be another war in Iraq and I will pray every day that it will bring about the end of Saddam Hussein.’ In a reference to the Gulf War which had ended in 1991 after six months, he added: ‘Next time they had better make sure they get rid of Saddam. There is always the threat that he’ll strike out at our people again. He’s probably still got chemicals stored away somewhere.’

  The events of 9/11 were on everyone’s lips and yet I was still trapped in my own personal crisis. Unless America bombed Iraq and all borders opened I couldn’t see any way of escaping. I had worried as each day passed that my father would tell me that a suitable cousin had been found for me to marry. My heart sank when my father asked me one morning to sit down to talk about my future. This was it, I thought. He and his relatives had found a future husband. Relief swept over me when he said he had been thinking about my education and he believed I should start a course at the University of Dohuk. I greeted the suggestion with mixed emotions—a university course would certainly get me out of the house but it would also expose me to a world of male university students who would view me as a future bride. I was now well versed in how the system worked—a man who saw a ‘free’ young woman at any function, usually a wedding, would send his mother around to the woman’s home to ask for her hand. This was what had happened to me in Germany with Mikael. University, I learned from my occasional chats with the girls in the house across the street, was a breeding ground for marriage. I avoided my father’s suggestion, telling him I’d think about what kind of course I might be interested in taking up.

  My hesitation resulted in my ‘grounding’. There were to be no more visits to my materal grandfather’s home to watch television—they were hardly frequent events in any case—and I was once again trapped in the house. While I could venture into the garden even when the boys next door were not around, I couldn’t get any exercise. It just wasn’t big enough. Even hardened prisoners in the jails I�
�d seen in movies had far more space for recreation than I had. There was no-one to talk to during the day when my father was at work. Just my grandmother and she and I could not find a word to pass between us unless it was her asking me to clean this or wash that. Even those chores were a break from the utter boredom. In the garden I learned to recognise every lizard that ran around the wall. I knew which holes various ones lived in and I even found myself saying things like: ‘Oh, there’s Lizzy. Hello Lizzy.’

  ‘You’re losing your mind!’ I told myself one day and that evening I informed my father that I was ready to take up a university course.

  An introductory visit was arranged and with me suitably attired in a hijab and long skirt, my father and I were shown to a law professor’s room. There were two other students in there, both males. They remained while my father discussed a suitable time when I might be able to start, explaining that I had received an excellent education in both Australia and Germany. There was no question that I would be enrolled but the professor needed to speak to the principal to arrange for a starting date. As we were leaving, the boys who had also been present followed us out into a corridor. One of them said that he recognised my father, but Khalid told the boy that if that was the case he couldn’t recall where they had met before. The boy’s eyes were all over me. I had to smile to myself: here we go again. He asked us to come for a drink in the café with him and my father agreed, but the idle chatter between him and my father over a cup of tea was just an excuse for the student, I assessed. Every few seconds his eyes would dart back to me. Right there and then I decided that university was far too dangerous for me. I was a Kurdish girl with a Western education and I was free—free in their sense but certainly not free in mine.