Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs (5 page)

But I was calm, too. I was not going to be beaten in this.

I gathered up some friends and relatives and went to pay Soheila’s family a visit. As Soheila remembers it, a few of us had had something to drink before we came over. She also remembers that I had a pistol.

My memory is vague on both counts.

“Hey,” I told her mother as soon as I saw her outside the house. “I will marry Soheila. No one can touch her. I am her cousin.”

(The claim about our being cousins may sound strange to Americans. In Iraqi culture, cousins have what might be called the right of first refusal—they can say that they have the right to marry a girl and no one else can object.)

Technically, I was not her cousin. Our families were close, and at times the women used words like
aunt
and
cousin
to signify this. But there was no actual blood relation, and my claiming there was wouldn’t make it so.

But all is fair in love and war, yes? I may not have fought in the war that had just passed, but this was an entirely different matter.

“I’m her cousin, and I will marry her!”

“You are not her cousin!” her mother screamed back. “You don’t have that right.”

“I am!” I insisted. “I have this right, and no one else will marry her but me. If anyone gets close to Soheila or tries to take her, I will kill them. She is mine. Nobody can take her.”

By now, I had created quite a scene, both inside and outside the house. Neighbors came over and tried to calm me down. Even my own friends were concerned. I stayed for five hours, arguing my case and letting other people do so. Finally no one had any energy left even to talk. I went home, still determined that I was going to win.

Soheila’s cousin heard what had happened and soon changed his mind about wanting to marry her. But Soheila’s mother was still reluctant to give Soheila permission to marry me.

I kept working on Soheila. It was clear that she loved me—she was writing me love poems regularly. The words went straight from her pen to my heart, kisses that could penetrate all the way to my soul. Our love burned so deeply that every day I could not be with her was like living in hell.

One day, I convinced the brother-in-law I worked for to speak to the family for me. He and some of his friends went to Soheila’s house and spoke to her mother, trying to convince her that we loved each other and should be allowed to marry.

He was a respected man, well off and influential, but even his pleas didn’t move her.

A short time later, Soheila came down with a mysterious illness that kept her in bed for days. Maybe it was the flu; she certainly had all the symptoms. But as Soheila tells the story, it was something else: lovesickness. According to her version, her mother’s refusal to let us marry had caused her illness.

I think I like her version best.

Whatever the cause of her fever, her mother’s sister found her in bed one day and had a long talk with her. Soheila poured out her heart, confessing her deep love for me—which by then was no secret to her aunt.

“I will talk to your mother,” her aunt said finally. “You are getting married. And in the meantime, you will get better.”

Soheila’s aunt and some of her cousins went to her mother. They succeeded where I and an army of my friends had not: her mother finally gave in and gave her approval for us to wed.

It wasn’t the heartiest endorsement: “If it is her choice, I will not block it.”

She added that if Soheila changed her mind, that would be fine with her. But that was all we needed. I knew Soheila wouldn’t change her mind, and I wouldn’t either.

Soheila also had to get the approval from her father, who was down in Basra. That was easy—he told her he only wanted her to be happy, and it didn’t take much for him to see what I meant to her.

We were married in the summer of 1993: August 2, to be exact.

It seemed like we had waited forever, though in Iraq and certainly at that time, a wait of several years was not considered unusual. Our ceremony was traditional and stretched over two days—and then further with our honeymoon.

Traditional Iraqi engagements and weddings consist of several different parts. The first is the Mashaya, where customarily the leader of the groom’s family goes to the bride’s family and discusses things such as what presents will be given to the bride and her family, and what sort of prospects the groom and his family have. This is done completely among the men; our society is extremely male oriented. Assuming that all find the match satisfactory, there are special drinks and rounds of celebration. The day before the ceremony, the bride’s family holds an elaborate party known as Nishan. Tradition calls for the bride to change her dress seven times, with each color she wears signifying something different, from innocence to sophistication, from happiness to mystery.

The actual ceremony is even more elaborate. There is a section where the imam questions the bride about whether she really wants to marry the man. This can be somewhat humorous, as the bride has the option of extending the process as long as she wants—though it’s a bad sign if it goes on too long.

Fortunately, Soheila took pity on me and did not drag this part out.

I’d saved up money from my job to pay for as much food and drink as I could. I bought Soheila many presents—jewelry, clothes, furniture. We rented two large halls and had two different parties: one for men and one for women. Some Iraqi families follow the strict tradition of separation of the genders, and we had to accommodate them and make them feel welcome. Hospitality is important to Iraqis in general, and certainly to me. I want my guests always to feel like they are my guests, honored, and having a good time. If you are in my house, you are the king. There is nothing I cannot do for you.

The halls were quite a distance from each other. Following Iraqi tradition, Soheila stayed with the women and I stayed with the men.

That night—it was probably the next day by then—many of our friends took their cars and escorted us to a tourist spot in the northwestern part of the country, complete with a lake and a private villa. This wasn’t a small procession; Soheila counted thirty-five cars in the line behind us. But they left soon after our arrival: just like Americans, Iraqis like to start their married lives with private time, so they can get to know each other.

Soheila and I got to know each other many times in those three days. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. And then it was back to reality.

WHEN WE RETURNED
to Mosul, we went to live with my mother and two brothers, one of whom was married and had two children. It was a medium-sized house by our standards, with six rooms. Soheila and I took one of the rooms downstairs, which gave us a little privacy.

By this time, the country was straining. It was difficult to make a living, and even harder to dream. With both my brother and myself working, our family was one of the luckier ones, able to depend on each other and pull together. Many Iraqis were poorer, without skills or the cleverness one needs to survive in hard times.

My older brother, Hamid, was a car mechanic, and while his work often didn’t pay much, he was generally employed. I continued working for my brother-in-law, though we started to have small squabbles and conflicts. His business was starting to dry up, though by comparison with others he was still doing well.

I soon had every incentive to work as hard and as often as I could. My first daughter was born in May 1994; two years later, my first son was born. Another daughter followed a few years after that, and eventually another son. (I am not naming them, to preserve their privacy as they grow older.)

The problems of the country inevitably strained the family. Then one of my sisters ran into debt; to help her, we decided we had to sell the house. The place we rented was smaller, but the sale gave us breathing room financially.

Things became even more difficult for us when Hamid, my older brother, was jailed because of a dispute with a member of the Fedayeen Saddam, the paramilitary organization headed by Saddam’s son Uday Saddam Hussein and then his younger brother Qusay Saddam.

Years later, after Saddam was pushed out, the Fedayeen Saddam became one of the focal points of the insurgency attacking Iraqis and Americans. Before the war it was more like an informal militia or paramilitary group along the lines of the Black Shirts under Mussolini during the fascist regime in prewar Italy. It was said that the Fedayeen were responsible for smuggling and other crimes; they were also said to threaten and even attack political opponents of the regime. Tangling with its members was like tangling with mobsters. If you went against them, you invited all kinds of problems.

My brother’s difficulties began when a member of the organization tried to take money from him. Like me, my brother didn’t appreciate being pushed around, let alone robbed—so he beat the man up. In revenge, the man and his friends trumped up charges against him and had him put in Badush, the notorious regional prison. He was sentenced to five years.

Not only did we now have one less wage earner in the family, we had the added expense of trying to feed my brother, who would have starved on the rations they gave out at the jail. My mother and his wife visited as often as they could; it was never a pleasant experience. Even in America, I would imagine, prisons are not hospitable places, but those in the States are probably like hotels compared to the desolate, cramped, and filthy places in Iraq. It is one thing to keep common criminals locked up in such hellholes, and another to keep political prisoners and people like my brother, whose only offense was to stand up for himself against bullies. He was kept there for a year and half, until a general amnesty and his own good behavior won his release.

I didn’t help by having a conflict with my brother-in-law. I’d been chafing at some of his directions, disagreeing with the jobs he gave me, and feeling that I could do better on my own. I felt he was taking advantage of me, not paying me what I was worth or what my family needed to survive. Finally one day I had enough and told him, “I’m done.”

I walked out and started working for myself as a truck driver, driving loads of goods from Mosul to the south, and from the south back north. At first I did very well, or at least better than I had been doing working for my brother-in-law.

The hours were long; I would usually go from five in the morning until five or six at night. Most times I would come home so exhausted I just shut everything else out. What was happening in the wide world outside of Iraq made no difference to me. I was lucky just to get a shower, eat a bit, and go to sleep.

As time went on, the amount of money people were willing to pay to ship items became less and less. They just didn’t have it. Once I transported some sheep from Mosul to Basra. I made the equivalent of forty dollars. It took me a day and half to get down to the city and back, partly because of the poor roads and partly because the truck I’d leased was old and slow. Once I got to Basra, I had to wait to find a load to take north, another long ordeal. Even after finding a somewhat steady gig transporting chlorine south and fertilizer north, I made only seventy dollars a round-trip after expenses.

Besides legitimate costs for fuel, there were also bribes that had to be paid. These didn’t amount to much individually—the equivalent of a dollar could get you very far with a policeman. But the idea of having to participate in the corruption was galling.

The struggle to keep working and feed my family wore me down. I felt like a donkey, with more and more weight piled on my back. My spirit certainly sagged. If I’d ever felt any loyalty to Iraq as a whole, it was gone.

As time went on, I came to believe I would do anything to feed my family. Anything: if someone gave me money to kill someone, I would take the money and do it, without hesitating.

I look back in horror. It’s a terrible thing to have thought. But it is what I thought.

A terrible truth.

Desperation robs a man of his soul as well as his best intentions. How can a person live in misery and be happy about the place where he lives? How can a person be optimistic for the future? How can he dream in the face of bleakness?

Strapped for money, we moved from the house to a small apartment. There were only three rooms for all of us—myself, my wife, and our children; my brother, his wife, and their two children; and my mom. Soheila was often sad, worried sick about the children’s future as well as ours. It was as if we inhabited a graveyard, without hope for the future.

In 1997, I was called back to army duty for two months. It at least brought a little pay without much work. Since I was a heavy-machine operator, my skills were in demand. I volunteered to grade the airport, an important job—but one that only took a single day.

They were so happy they gave me a month off.

When I reported back, my superiors told me that they wanted me to “volunteer” to represent the unit in a large track-and-field competition. They knew I’d been a high jumper when I was younger and thought I might do well.

Naturally, I accepted. That earned me another month’s vacation. A strange way to run an army, but it worked for me.

I actually won the military competition, with a jump around 1.65 meters. Not bad for a heavy-machine operator who hadn’t competed in years.

IRAQ MIGHT HAVE
continued on that downward slide for many more years before hitting the absolute rock bottom. Or maybe not. Maybe Saddam would have come to his senses as pressure increased. Maybe there would have been a revolt that overthrew him, an uprising similar to the so-called Arab Spring. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

If any of those impossible scenarios had occurred, my life would have been radically different. What exactly I would have done I cannot say, but surely you wouldn’t know of me. My life would have remained mostly ordinary and not of interest to anyone in America. My dreams would have been irrelevant to the wider world, and maybe even to me.

But fate stepped in.

I WAS HOME
in Mosul on September 11, 2001. It was the afternoon. I’d come home from driving my truck and was relaxing, when suddenly someone said to turn on the TV.