Shaking with fear, family flees Baghdad

They did not say a word as they barrelled down the deserted, crater-pocked road at 110mph. For eight hours, their lips moved with verses from the Koran, but no sound emerged.

They prayed to the roar of their battered car, and to the scream of the desert wind. They prayed to the whine of the imam, reciting from the cassette player.

They gaped at crushed buses, burned-out cars and teetering bridges. But they stopped only twice, hurrying to fill their petrol tank.

When the family of six finally emerged from Iraq yesterday and stopped for thick coffee at a roadside restaurant in this outpost 50 miles from the Iraqi border, their faces lit up with smiles for the first time in seven days.

“This smile is because I am here and I am safe. But my heart is very sad,” said Ashwa, 21. “I left in Baghdad my friends, my family, my cousins - everybody. If I go back after the war, will they still be alive?”

Sadeq, a loyal member of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, has done well for himself despite 13 years of UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq.

He built an import-export business that ran grocery stock and car parts between Baghdad and Amman. He built a luxurious house in northern Baghdad and rented a comfortable apartment in the Jordanian capital.

The children attended private schools and learned fluent English. Ashwa enrolled in college to become a civil engineer.

None of that made any difference when the first cruise missiles slammed into Baghdad on March 20.

The family – speaking on condition that their last name not be used – was thrust into the same hell as Baghdad’s five million other residents.

Schools closed, phone lines fell and many shops were shuttered. As night-time air raid sirens wailed, the family huddled together in terror.

“Every night, my daughter would shake like somebody who has Parkinson’s,” Sadeq said.

“It was terrible,” Ashwa, the daughter in question, confessed quietly. “Especially at night, when I heard the sound of the bombs.”

“We didn’t want to go,” added Sadeq’s wife, Sahira, her voice breaking. “We had everything there – friends, relatives, our things.”

The family was conflicted: Sadeq wanted to take up arms to defend his country. Sahira worried about her girls.

“I have three daughters. The Americans were coming, and they are beasts,” Sahira said. “I had to protect them.”

And so on Tuesday, the sixth day of punishing air strikes, the family reached a decision: They would flee.

Sadeq called a taxi driver who had taken him to Amman many times. The normal fee for the trip, 200 dollars (€186) in US notes, had risen to €1,800 as it became ever more dangerous, but Sadeq appealed to the men’s long relationship.

The road was not safe, the driver said, but he agreed to make the run for €422. If the family made it, he would be out as well.

The family packed and prepared to leave first thing on Wednesday morning. But they awoke to a city shrouded in dust in one of the worst sandstorms in memory. The driver decided they would have to wait.

“Last night I held my sisters and said, ‘There they come,”’ said Zeynab, 12. “The planes came and the nightmare started again.”

Sahira had told the children not to worry because the planes were not targeting civilians. But on Wednesday night, she said, she could not repeat those assurances after an explosion in a Baghdad marketplace, killing 14 people.

“How can they kill people who haven’t done anything to them?” Sahira asked.

The family weathered the night, and at 8:15am yesterday, they hit the road.

Sadeq had heard the rumours: US helicopters were hunting for fleeing Iraqi officers, armed tribesmen waited to ambush passing cars, a US military checkpoint was firing on oncoming vehicles.

“We were worried that any helicopter would shoot us, because they are killing everybody,” he said. “I was looking left, right, looking for a helicopter.”

“There was no talking,” Ashwa said. “We just prayed. Nothing else.”

The family reported passing three bombed buses, four charred cars, two destroyed bridges. They held their breath as they hugged the shoulder of one bridge – the only part still standing.

They passed three moving cars during the entire trip, all of them tearing across the desert in the other direction, towards Baghdad. They didn’t dare to stop them and ask about the road ahead.

“The whole way I looked up at the sky,” Sahira said. “I stuck my face against the window and looked up. I was ready to jump out and run at any moment.”

“We listened to the Koran and prayed to God to arrive at the border safely,” Sadeq said.

After eight hours, their prayers were answered: There had been no American helicopters, no armed tribesmen, no checkpoints. They were at the border.

Big smiles spread on the women’s faces when they arrived at the Abu Sayyef restaurant in the border outpost of Al-Ruweishid for a cup of coffee before continuing onto Amman, three hours to the west.

As a television in the restaurant flashed images of Baghdad, smoke rising from the buildings, Sahira pointed excitedly and called to Zeynab.

“Look, look! Images from home!” she yelled.

The little girl turned away, hiding her eyes in her hands.