‘Almost every day I wake up wondering if I will live or die’

WHEN US forces invaded Iraq four years ago, I never expected to find myself three weeks later standing guard outside my house with an AK-47 assault rifle to ward off looters.

It was April 9, 2003, the same day a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down live on television. US forces had swept virtually unopposed into the capital. Saddam had fled.

The looters who were ransacking Baghdad made me feel uneasy as they sped past my home, their cars stacked with anything they could lay their hands on.

A few days later, I took out a satellite dish I had kept hidden for five years in a big pigeon cage. Being caught with one meant prison under Saddam. I used a screwdriver to scrawl “Satellite Freedom” into the wall. Those days of hope were short-lived.

I first tasted the sour new reality when American troops arrested my 70-year-old brother-in-law in May 2003 in the city of Samarra, where my wife’s family lives. Saeed Hassan’s family was distraught. We eventually found out he had been taken to the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. I was a lawyer, so I began going there, to find out why he had been arrested.

Hassan spent a year in Abu Ghraib. He was killed in April 2004 when insurgents fired mortar bombs at the jail. An American soldier once told me Hassan had been detained because he was a security risk. I never found out why.

With Iraq turned upside down, I did not return to my job as a lawyer for the Iraqi Customs Office until November 2003. That lasted until September 2005, when I won a large case. The losing party made veiled threats so I decided to quit. I began working for Reuters a month later.

To the outside world, Iraq is synonymous with car bombs, death squads and fear. Electricity blackouts happen every day. Queues for petrol, in a country with the world’s third-largest oil reserves, stretch for hundreds of meters.

Almost every day I wake up, wondering if I will live or die. Last February, a roadside bomb exploded right outside my home. It had apparently been intended for a passing Iraqi army patrol but hit a pick-up truck. It decapitated the driver and blew out the windows of my house, spattering blood and bits of flesh on the walls.

I cannot think of an Iraqi who has not been touched in some way by the violence of the past four years.

When I reflect on what we have been through, I sometimes recall my first encounter with an American soldier.

Three days after US tanks entered Baghdad, I opened my door to find the soldier crouched on the street and holding a pump-action shot gun. I asked him if there was a problem. He looked at me and said: “Sir, we are here to protect you. We are here to liberate you from Saddam’s regime and bring you elections to choose your president freely.”