Twelve Red Herrings

Once his six empty cases had been checked in, Hamid disappeared into the terminal and made his way to the Turkish Airlines desk. As he took the same flight twice a year, he didn’t need to ask the girl at the ticket counter for directions.

After he had checked in and been presented with his boarding pass, Hamid still had an hour to wait before they would call his flight. He began the slow trek to Gate B27. It was always the same—the Turkish Airlines plane would be parked halfway back to Manhattan. As he passed the Pan Am check-in desk on B5, he observed that they would be taking off an hour earlier than him, a privilege for those who were willing to pay an extra sixty-three dollars.

When he reached the check-in area, a Turkish Airline

s stewardess was slipping the sign for Flight 014, New York-London-Istanbul, onto a board. Estimated time of departure, 10:10.

The seats were beginning to fill up with the usual cosmopolitan group of passengers: Turks going home to visit their families, those Americans taking a holiday who cared about saving sixty-three dollars, and businessmen whose bottom line was closely watched by tight-fisted accountants.

Hamid strolled over to the restaurant bar and ordered coffee and two eggs sunnyside up, with a side order of hash browns. It was the little things that reminded him daily of his newfound freedom and of just how much he owed to America.

“Would those passengers traveling to Istanbul with young children please board the plane now,” said the stewardess over the loudspeaker.

Hamid swallowed the last mouthful of his hash browns—he hadn’t yet become accustomed to the American habit of covering everything in ketchup—and took a final swig of the weak, tasteless coffee. He couldn’t wait to be reunited with the thick Turkish coffee served in small bone china cups. But that was a tiny sacrifice when weighed against the privilege of living in a free land. He settled his bill and left a dollar in the little tin tray.

“Would those passengers seated in rows 35 to 41 please board the aircraft now.”

Hamid picked up his briefcase and headed for the passageway that led to Flight 014. An official from Turkish Airlines checked his boarding pass and ushered him through.

He had been allocated an aisle seat near the back of economy. Ten more trips, he told himself, and he would fly Pan Am business class. By then he would be able to afford it.

Whenever the wheels of his plane left the ground, Hamid would look out of the little window and watch his adopted country as it disappeared out of sight, the same thoughts always going through his mind.

It had been nearly five years since Saddam Hussein had dismissed him from the Iraqi cabinet, after he had held the post of minister of agriculture for only two years. The wheat crops had been poor that autumn, and after the People’s Army had taken their share, and the middlemen their cut, the Iraqi people ended up with short rations. Someone had to take the blame, and the obvious scapegoat was the minister of agriculture. Hamid’s father, a carpet dealer, had always wanted him to join the family business, and had even warned him before he died not to accept agriculture, the last three holders of that office having first been sacked then later disappeared—and everyone in Iraq knew what “disappeared” meant. But Hamid did accept the post. The first year’s crop had been abundant, and after all, he convinced himself, agriculture was only a stepping stone to greater things. In any case, had not Saddam described him in front of the whole Revolutionary Command Council as “my good and close friend”? At thirty-two you still believe you are immortal.

Hamid’s father was proved right, and Hamid’s only real friend—friends melted away like snow in the morning sun when this particular president sacked you—helped him to escape.

The only precaution Hamid had taken during his days as a cabinet minister was to withdraw from his bank account each week a little more cash than he actually needed. He would then change the extra money into American dollars with a street trader, using a different dealer each time, and never exchanging enough to arouse suspicion. In Iraq everyone is a spy.

The day he was sacked, he checked how much was hidden under his mattress. It amounted to eleven thousand two hundred and twenty-one American dollars.

The following Thursday, the day on which the weekend begins in Baghdad, he and his pregnant wife took the bus to Erbil. He left his Mercedes conspicuously parked in the front driveway of his large home in the suburbs, and they carried no luggage with them—just two passports, the roll of dollars secreted in his wife’s baggy clothing, and some Iraqi dinars to get them as far as the border.

No one would be looking for them on a bus to Erbil.

Once they arrived in Erbil, Hamid and his wife took a taxi to Sulaimania, using most of the remaining dinars to pay the driver. They spent the night in a small hotel far from the city center. Neither slept as they waited for the morning sun to come shining through the curtainless window.

The next day, another bus took them high into the hills of Kurdistan, arriving in Zakho in the early evening.

The final part of the journey was the slowest of all. They were taken up through the hills on mules, at a cost of two hundred dollars—the young Kurdish smuggler showed no interest in Iraqi dinars. He delivered the former cabinet minister and his wife safely over the border in the early hours of the morning, leaving them to make their way on foot to the nearest village on Turkish soil. They reached Kirmizi Renga that evening, and spent another sleepless night at the local station, waiting for the first train for Istanbul.

Hamid and Shereen slept all the way through the long train journey to the Turkish capital and woke up the following morning as refugees. The first visit Hamid made in the city was to the Iz Bank, where he deposited ten thousand eight hundred dollars. The next was to the American embassy, where he produced his diplomatic passport and requested political asylum. His father had once told him that a recently sacked cabinet minister from Iraq was always a good catch for the Americans.

The embassy arranged accommodation for Hamid and his wife in a first-class hotel, and immediately informed Washington of their little coup. They promised Hamid that they would get back to him as quickly as possible, but gave him no clue as to how long that might take. He decided to use the time to visit the carpet bazaars on the south side of the city so often frequented by his father.

Many of the dealers remembered Hamid’s father—an honest man who liked to bargain and drink gallons of coffee, and who had often talked about his son going into politics. They were pleased to make his acquaintance, especially when they learned of what he planned to do once he had settled in the States.

The Zebaris were granted American visas within the week and flown to Washington at the government’s expense, which included a charge for excess baggage of twenty-three Turkish carpets.

After five days of intensive questioning by the CIA, Hamid was thanked for his cooperation and the useful information he had supplied. He was then released to begin his new life in America. He, his pregnant wife and the twenty-three carpets boarded a train for New York.

It took Hamid six weeks to find the right shop, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, from which to sell his carpets. Once he had signed the five-year lease, Shereen immediately set about painting their new Americanized name above the door.

Hamid didn’t sell his first carpet for nearly three months, by which time his meager savings had all but disappeared. But by the end of the first year, sixteen of the twenty-three carpets had been sold, and he realized he would soon have to travel back to Istanbul to buy more stock.

Four years had passed since then, and the Zebaris had recently moved to a larger establishment on the West Side, with a small apartment above the shop. Hamid kept telling his wife that this was only the beginning, that anything was possible in the United States. He now considered himself a full-fledged American citizen, and not just because of the treasured blue passport that confirmed his status. He accepted that he could never return to his birthplace while Saddam remained its ruler. His home and possessions had long ago been requisitioned by the Iraqi state, and the death sentence had been passed on him in his absence. He doubted if he would ever see Baghdad again.

After the stopover in London, the plane landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport a few minutes ahead of schedule. Hamid booked into his usual small hotel, and planned how best to allocate his time over the next two weeks. He was happy to be back amid the hustle and bustle of the Turkish capital.