Barefoot in Baghdad (23 page)

Yusuf went on to share Zainab’s advice, and I sat there shaking my head. I was caught off guard that Yusuf had already put so much thought and planning into approaching me. I suddenly began to piece things together. How Yusuf insisted on introducing me to all his family. How Maysoon and Hussein had insisted on meeting my parents when they were in Amman. Even Fadi’s questions during our long road trips became suspicious.

“So all this was planned?” I asked.

“Not really. None of it was planned. I would never intentionally chose to marry a Palestinian Sunni woman whose last name is Omar,” he teased. (Omar is a highly contested figure in Shia political history.)

I laughed. When I first met Yusuf, he had strong anti-Palestinian feelings, and we would spend hours arguing about his discrimination toward Palestinians. During our trips to Najaf and Karbala, Yusuf would always introduce me as Manal Omarey, to avoid using my last name.

“Not to mention that I am older than you,” I added.

He nodded. I could feel his eyes on me, imploring me to say more. All I could come up with was, “I cannot believe you spoke to my boss before you spoke to me.”

Yusuf smiled. Yet again I noticed something new about his smile. He was a handsome man, and his soft brown eyes and round face gave him a teddy bear appearance. But his upper lip was crooked, which was further emphasized when he smiled. This gave Yusuf an almost gangster air, betraying the hardcore character hidden beneath the cuddly exterior.

“Well, Zainab is not the only person I spoke with. I also spoke with your aunts.”

“What? When?” I asked.

Yusuf explained that during my time in the hospital for my back surgery, he had become very close to my cousins and aunts. Over time, he began to confide in them and explained that he intended to ask for my hand in marriage. He wanted to get a sense of my family’s response before he approached my father.

“It was not planned,” he quickly reassured me. “But your aunts are not fools. It was easy for them to figure out how much I cared for you.”

“What did they say?” I asked.

Yusuf smiled triumphantly. “They said your family would be lucky to have me as a son-in-law.”

I smiled. Yusuf’s smile was contagious, and I felt a small tug deep inside. A part of me wanted to reassure him that indeed we would be lucky. He was a great man, and I could see him fitting in easily with my family. Yet there was a stronger feeling that this was happening too fast, and so I simply sat there and smiled at him. Fortunately, Yusuf always understood my cues and knew not to push further.

We sat in a comfortable silence for what seemed like forever, and without a word we made our way back to the hotel.

***

There was no doubt in my mind that our relationship had probably begun before Yusuf made this verbal commitment. The more I reviewed our past several months together, the more I recognized the unspoken intimacy that flourished between us.

Yusuf did not approach me directly after our conversation at the Dead Sea; Hussein became our primary intermediary. Once more, I realized it had not been a coincidence last summer that Maysoon and Hussein had insisted on meeting my family. Hussein was able to speak with confidence to the fact that, not only did Yusuf and I make a great match, but our families would merge perfectly together.

In the Islamic culture, dating is often frowned upon. The only proper way for a man and a woman to get to know each other is through an official engagement. Although I knew that to be true, I also knew my parents would want more of an assurance that I was committed to Yusuf than simply a desire to test the waters.

Hussein spent a lot of time pointing out the common ground between us, and he served as Yusuf’s and my confidante as we decided the next step. Hussein pointed out that we had been fortunate to work side by side together, but without a proper engagement, we would never be able to take our relationship to the next level. Over time, I realized the wisdom of Hussein’s words.

There was no doubt in my mind that I had feelings for Yusuf. The months in Jordan proved our feelings went beyond our work in Iraq. There was a personal connection. I knew that to truly discover the depths of my feelings I would need one-on-one time with Yusuf. I knew that could only happen if he were to approach my parents for permission.

The moment I gave a green light to Hussein for Yusuf’s family to approach my parents, they shifted into gear. As I expected, my parents initially disapproved. They were so excited to have me out of Iraq, but they were not eager to have anything tie me to the war-torn country. Yusuf ’s persistence, however, succeeded, and eventually my parents were won over.

The more time Yusuf and I spent together in Amman, the clearer it became that we were right for each other. Within a short period of time I was able to admit what I had always known deep down: Yusuf and I were perfect together.

The next few weeks were pure bliss. Yusuf and I set a wedding date. He had returned to Iraq while I continued work through the Amman office. We planned to marry at the end of August in Amman. The situation in Iraq was still precarious, but we firmly held on to the belief that the summer after the elections would be a turning point for Iraq. Things would have to improve. We planned to get married, then I would return with him to Baghdad.

Perhaps it was the euphoria of love that blinded our vision. In reality, the situation in Iraq was continuing to deteriorate, and the violence was reaching deep into the homes of every Iraqi family. With the withdrawal of all international aid workers, the primary target of the insurgency became Iraqi civil society itself. Yet the stories seemed far away, and Yusuf and I continued to focus on the small signs of improvement.

Late one April night in Amman, I received the dreaded phone call all of my Iraqi friends got sooner or later. The news was shared with me very matter-of-factly: our dear friend Salah, who had also been one of my drivers, had vanished.

I couldn’t believe that Salah had simply disappeared. This happened to other people, other organizations. We had taken every precaution and avoided all unnecessary risks. Yusuf was in Baghdad, and as soon as I heard the news, I called him to verify the information. The moment he answered the phone, I knew it was true. His voice was filled with sorrow and panic.

“I was just on the phone with him. He called me and said he was coming over,” Yusuf repeated over and over.

We tried to recall the last moments we had heard from Salah. It became clear that his last phone call had been in the evening from an Internet café. Salah had called Yusuf to tell him he was coming over with some urgent news. Salah had insisted he could not give the details over the phone. Yusuf had waited for hours. He finally decided to call Nagham, Salah’s wife. She had not heard anything from her husband since the morning. Yusuf instantly called the other team members and drove to the Internet café where Salah had last been seen. They confirmed he had been there. After that there was nothing.

For the next few days the search for Salah led to communiqués with everyone from the U.S. military and the infamous Ministry of the Interior to various militia groups. All the clues led to a dead end.

Over the next six months, we were sent on numerous wild-goose chases. At one point, the U.S. military confirmed that Salah had been picked up by the Ministry of the Interior. We demanded to see him. At the very least I wanted to provide Nagham with some verification that her husband was still alive. The more we pushed, the less information we received. Finally, both the U.S. military and the contacts we had in the Iraqi government came back with the same message: stop looking for Salah.

This was unacceptable. I continued to push, but by this time nobody would return my calls. A few weeks after Salah disappeared, armed gunmen came to Yusuf’s parents home and asked for Yusuf. Fortunately, he was not home. The next day Yusuf’s car windows were broken and his tires were slashed. A death threat was found on the driver’s seat.

Fear and panic shot through all the staff at the organization. Salah’s phone had been programmed with all their names and phone numbers. If he had been taken by a terrorist group, it was not unimaginable that they would try to extract the names of other Iraqi employees of a U.S.-based organization.

All of our offices were closed, and staff members began to work from home. Yusuf, Mais, and Fadi all left their parents’ homes and stayed with extended family. They realized they would most likely be the next targets.

To this day, no trace of Salah, his car, or any of his belongings have been discovered. One of my thousand and one regrets of my time in Iraq is that I never called Nagham. I arranged for money to be sent through the staff to support her and her children while the search for Salah continued. But I could never personally call her; I did not know what to say. My reluctance initially started with a desire to call her only when I had good news to share. That day never came.

I used every connection I had in Iraq to pinpoint the smallest news on Salah. I begged Yusuf to continue the search. I believed that some news would emerge. If I could find any information of Salah, that was when I would call Nagham. But the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into years. There was no news of Salah.

The last time Yusuf visited Nagham was in the spring of 2007. It had been two years since Salah’s disappearance. Yusuf described how Nagham was packing all of Salah’s winter clothes and taking out his spring wardrobe.

When he asked what she was doing, Nagham responded, “Everything must be in place when Salah returns.”

It is hard to believe that there are thousands like Salah in Iraq. The trauma of their disappearance is only intensified by the family’s lack of closure. Until there are revelations of the final, devastating truth, the lives of those left behind by the vanished are consumed with unrequited expectation and prayer.

***

My wedding day was the worst day of my life. I cannot remember any time that I had felt so fragile. The slightest incident easily pushed me over the edge. My heart was filled with a deep sense of horrible loss and sorrow.

The only day that could possibly compete with this awful day was the day our wedding was initially scheduled to take place, one week earlier.

The eve of our planned wedding day had been spent running errands and making the final preparations. My family had arrived from the United States weeks before, and Yusuf’s family had flown in from Iraq. We had finally found a dabke (traditional dance) troop that specialized in popular Palestinian and Iraqi styles. My wedding dress had arrived from the United States, and my sister and I held a dress rehearsal to ensure there was no need for alterations. The dress fit perfectly.

We were planning to have the religious and civil ceremony in my parents’ summer home, and the reception would follow three days later when the rest of Yusuf’s extended family would arrive from Baghdad. Among the invitees still in Baghdad were his father and brother and Hussein, and they were scheduled to arrive the next morning. Yusuf and I were up late making the final arrangements when we received a phone call.

Hussein had been kidnapped.

That was the first bit of news we received. Yusuf and I immediately drove over to his family’s apartment. Everyone was gathered around Maysoon and her children as she mechanically packed her things. She was returning by road to Baghdad at dawn. She wanted to ensure that no money or effort was spared during the ransom negotiations. And Maysoon was determined to be there when Hussein was released.

Yusuf began to pack his things too, planning to go with Maysoon. Hussein was his mentor, and he felt indebted to him for his years of support. In the last few weeks Hussein had been calling us every day with a countdown for the wedding, teasing Yusuf that he had a big surprise for our wedding day.

But Yusuf’s family refused his plan to accompany his sister. The death threats that Yusuf had received were still fresh in everyone’s mind.

During this time, the kidnappings of Iraqis had become an eerie norm. Just last year, we all keenly remembered, Hussein’s father had been kidnapped and released. Several of Yusuf’s, Mais’s, and Fadi’s extended families had experienced a similar fate. There was no reason to believe Hussein’s kidnapping would be different. Foolishly, I promised Yusuf that everything would be fine. By the end of the week, Hussein would be sharing the traumatic events firsthand.

“Do you really believe we will ever see Hussein again?” Yusuf solemnly asked.

“
Ifaalo bel Khair, tajidoo
(Hope for good, and you will find it),” I said, quoting an Islamic proverb.

What I did not know at the time was that Hussein had already been brutally murdered. His family had misled us to believe he had been kidnapped because they did not want to panic Maysoon. They also feared that if the truth were known, Maysoon would not return. Under Iraqi law, upon Hussein’s death, his children and his inheritance would revert to his family. If Maysoon were to stay in Jordan, Hussein’s family would not be able to claim their grandchildren.

It was not until the next morning that Yusuf’s family discovered the truth. Yusuf called me with the news.

The shock of Hussein’s death was superseded by the reality that we had sent Maysoon and her children into Baghdad alone. Her mother, sister, aunts, and all the direct female relatives who traditionally would be by her side to comfort her were in Amman. I could think of nothing else except the moment when Maysoon would hear the news. I visualized her searching for us and finding no one.

The flowers that were delivered that day for the wedding were used for an impromptu mourning service in Amman. The food delivered was used to feed the guests who came to the house to offer their condolences and prayers. My perfect wedding dress remained hanging in my mother’s closet in Jordan.

Yusuf’s family desperately rushed to arrange transport back to Baghdad to attend the funeral with Maysoon. His mother begged Yusuf to stay behind. The word in Baghdad was that Hussein had known his killers, and it had been a well-orchestrated, targeted murder. Yusuf’s neighborhood was filled with whispers about Yusuf’s marriage to an American, and his mother pleaded for him not to return until it was safe.

My heart was torn. The selfish side of me wanted Yusuf to stay in Amman. The other side, the side that knew Yusuf, knew there was nothing more painful for him than being exiled from his homeland. The idea of Yusuf’s being denied the opportunity to pay his respects to his beloved Hussein by attending his funeral was too abhorrent. Yusuf insisted on returning. I would not stand in his way.

In the end I did not have to. His mother’s wailing made the final decision. She flung herself at his feet and swore she would not make it back to Baghdad alive if Yusuf would return. So Yusuf stayed.

The next morning Yusuf’s entire family left Amman for Iraq. I sat across the room and watched Yusuf crouch by the empty stroller of Hussein’s six-month-old son.

I could not bear the idea of Yusuf’s being completely alone, but our moral beliefs did not allow me to be with him alone until after the official marriage ceremony. My cousin Tariq volunteered to stay with him until we made a decision about the wedding. To this day I feel a strong sense of debt mingled with envy toward Tariq for being by Yusuf’s side at this time.

Every morning after dawn I would head out to meet them, and I would stay with Yusuf until after midnight, with my male cousin as our chaperone. Those hours of sleeping under a different roof might have just as well been decades. It felt unnatural to be far away. I desperately wanted to be by Yusuf’s side.

As a result, we decided to get married at the end of the week, even though my parents wanted me to postpone the wedding indefinitely. They pointed out that we should wait for a time when we would feel like celebrating our union. But I could not bear the idea of a postponement. True, I had no desire to celebrate. At the same time, I could not bear the thought of being apart from Yusuf during this time. I wanted to be by his side 24/7. For two years Yusuf had been my rock. Now it was my turn.

The day of our wedding I sobbed from sunrise to sunset. A beautician patiently reapplied my makeup over and over. Although we had canceled the wedding reception, my parents insisted on having a dinner. Under Islamic customs, a wedding should be publicly announced. So my father invited a small number of our relatives in Jordan to a dinner to announce the wedding. To pretend to be happy in the midst of so much grief was torture for me.

It pained me that Yusuf was to be married without his family present. Every day his family called to make sure he would not return to Iraq. The word on the street was that he had married an American, and death threats were circulating as well. In the midst of her mourning, Maysoon called repeatedly, begging her brother not to return. She had lost her husband, she argued, and she could not bear the thought of losing her brother. Yusuf agreed to stay, but at great personal pain. He also reluctantly agreed to the dinner.

When Tariq and Yusuf came to pick me up from my parent’s home, Yusuf was dressed in a suit with a smile plastered on his face. I rushed to the bathroom for my last flood of tears. I thought about all the days spent planning our wedding, the excitement, and our foolish persistence to be happy in the midst of all the chaos.

From the beginning of our planning for the wedding, his family had counseled us to avoid the evil eye and marry on the sly.

“Hide your love for one another! It is not a time for Iraqis to boast of anything good in their lives,” his mother warned.

Yusuf and I had laughed at his mother’s superstitiousness. We had made arrangements for our reception at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jordan and had invited our friends from across the globe. We deserved to be happy, we argued. But I could not shake off a strong feeling of guilt. If only we had listened, perhaps things would have turned out differently. Yusuf and I had stubbornly challenged fate. We had survived two years in the midst of war. We should have been grateful just to find each other. What had possessed us to flaunt it? My mind could not grasp the thought that Yusuf and I, with our optimism and perfect hope in our future, now had suffered a tragedy that had made our lives parallel to some of the women we had worked so hard to help.