In fleeing fear, an Iraqi risks all

Malmo, Sweden —  WHEN we finally reached the Swedish border, the officer at the checkpoint climbed onto our bus and headed toward me, my wife and my daughter all the way in the back.

Our complexions were obviously Middle Eastern, suspicious. My heart jittered. I reminded myself that we had legal passports with legal visas from a European country. But my fears didn’t subside. I’d sunk everything I owned into getting me and my family out of Iraq, and I was terrified we’d be sent back.

It was nighttime. The policeman began searching our faces with a flashlight. When he reached me, he stopped.

“Are you alone?” he asked, first in Swedish, then in English.

“No,” I answered. “We are a group.”

He continued to stare at us. I thought to myself, “That’s it, we are finished.”

If anyone had asked me a year ago whether I wanted to leave Iraq for good, I might have said yes, but with little enthusiasm. I had a good job as a translator for the Los Angeles Times, my own home, a car, a family and more than enough money.

But since then, violence had become part of my life, just like the darkness that shrouded Baghdad because of the electricity shortage. I walked by bodies that had been left in the streets. I passed burned-out or blown-up cars. I heard explosions and ferocious bursts of gunfire piercing the night, every night.

After the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, I could see the writing on the wall. In glaring red letters it said, “SECTARIAN WAR.” A Christian, I had no part in that war.

I had relatives and friends who had fled Iraq, and some of their stories made me hesitate. I heard tales of being lost at sea, walking for days in the mountains to cross borders or being abandoned by smugglers in a no man’s land only to be caught and returned to Iraq.

I casually started asking around among friends, distant relatives and even online about escape routes.

It wasn’t easy. No one was willing to talk in detail. Every path had its advantages and disadvantages, and you needed to pay a smuggler to lead you in your journey to the unknown.

I contacted a lot of shady people. Some promised me a visa within 14 days for $4,000. But who would assure me that the visa was genuine? I didn’t know what a legitimate visa looked like. Who could assure me that I wouldn’t be caught and sent back to Iraq?

The questions kept turning over and over in my mind whenever I spoke to smugglers. Despite their reassurances, I knew that their main goals were getting ahold of my money and saving their own skins. I knew they’d abandon us anywhere and anytime.

My anxieties grew. The violence was swelling. Clashes between Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods increased. Men in uniform or in street clothes appeared at phony checkpoints, stopping cars and buses, taking away people of the wrong sect to be tortured and killed.

My Iraqi friends at work noticed my restlessness. I admitted I was trying to get out of the country. They understood. They all had the same misgivings about staying.

When my boss found out I was trying to leave, he was not at all upset. “I don’t want to lose any more members of the staff,” he said. “But I don’t blame you for trying to get out of here.”

After months of searching, worrying and running into dead ends, I had a breakthrough. My brother, who has lived for years in Sweden, ran into two distant relatives who had just arrived from Iraq. They had paid a smuggler $8,000 each. Their trip was smooth and they got European visas from an embassy in Jordan.

I got the smuggler’s contact number and met the guy. He said he could get visas and transportation to a European country for me, my wife and my daughter. Let’s call it Country X, because I’ve promised not to mention its name. I’d get a legitimate visa for some kind of European training program as an employee of an Iraqi government ministry. From there, because of the borderless European Union, I could go to Sweden and apply for asylum.

The price tag was steep: $25,000 for all of us. But I told him I’d do it. He said he needed a little time to make sure we weren’t on any terrorist watch lists.

Ten days later he told me to be ready to go to Amman in two weeks to wait for my visas. He also demanded cash upfront.

Here I faced a problem. I didn’t have all the money. I needed more time, maybe a few more months. But I also knew that if I scrapped the deal, another chance like this might not come along.

So I started selling our stuff -- my wife’s jewelry, our furniture, appliances, car. I borrowed some cash from relatives abroad. I didn’t dream of selling our house, only because if word spread that a sale had gone through, armed men might kidnap me and demand ransom. Instead I found a family to stay in my home and guard it, rent-free.

Even under Saddam Hussein’s rule, I never thought things could go so bad. After the Americans came, I always managed to convince myself that the warring factions would at some point use their common sense to stop killing each other and use Iraq’s oil revenues and international aid to rebuild the country. As I scoured a devastated city looking for people to buy my couches and washing machine, I realized how deluded I had been.

*

WE went early to the airport. It would have been cheaper to take the road, but far less safe. Our heavy luggage made it obvious we were leaving Iraq for good, so we had to pay the customs officer a bribe.

In Amman we booked a motel and waited. I phoned our contact in Baghdad, but he kept putting us off. I decided to rent a small flat, which turned out to be smart because we wound up staying in Amman for 10 weeks, getting the runaround.

There were five others in our group. The head of the smuggling ring, a man we never saw who called himself the Doctor over the phone, gave excuses for the delay: a name was misspelled or a passport number was wrong or his man in the embassy was on holiday.

But we could do nothing. We had paid in advance.

At long last, the Doctor gave us the green light to go to the embassy to apply for the visas. He faxed us documents saying we were Iraqi government employees going to Europe for training. The Doctor instructed us to go to the embassy of Country X well dressed, “as if you are going to a wedding.”

The men went to the embassy in suits and ties. One hadn’t brought a suit with him from Baghdad, so he bought a new one and went to the embassy with the price tag still attached. We took it off for him, and then we submitted our applications.

The visas came two weeks later. I was relieved, but still nervous. We bought round-trip tickets for Country X.

The Doctor and a man who called himself Mohammed were waiting at the airport in Country X. I wanted to head to Scandinavia, to join my brother, the next day, but the Doctor demanded our passports, and shook us down for more cash. I argued, but even my wife told me to not to rock the boat. I was confused and angry but complied.

Five days later, Mohammed gave us back our passports and advised us to head to Scandinavia by bus. He escorted us to the station to make sure we boarded the bus. The Doctor’s main concern, it turned out, was that we might try to seek asylum in Country X.

On the bus at the Swedish frontier, the officer with the flashlight moved on. I relaxed a bit. But my heart jolted again when another guard came on board.

In my confusion, I didn’t notice that the second guard had a dog. It began stepping on my feet, sniffing me and my bags.

Later, I learned the guard was a customs officer and far more interested in halting alcohol and drugs than illegal immigrants.

We were in!

*

MY first impression of Sweden was a bad one -- a bus station in the south after midnight. There was no one there except us and drunks and homeless people seeking warmth until daybreak. What had I gotten myself into?

But on the bus ride the next morning to Stockholm, I discovered the real Sweden. The landscape was fabulous, studded with trees and covered in green meadows. Lakes spread across the land. Even though I was tired, I couldn’t take my eyes off the window. It wasn’t even very cold, although it was winter. After a lifetime in steamy Iraq, I found the morning chill refreshing.

“I think I’m going to love this country,” I thought.

When I saw my brother and other relatives waiting for us in Stockholm, it was like a mountain had lifted off my chest.

My brother took us to the cavernous hall of the main immigration office the next morning. We took a number and waited for our turn. There were a few people ahead of us, but others started coming. I estimated of the 100 or so people who came in that day, more than half were from Iraq. Many were Christians like me, wearing crosses on their chests.

When our turn came, they took our names, addresses, heights, weights, fingerprints and photos. They gave each of us a piece of paper with our name and photo saying we had reported to the immigration office.

A few weeks later, we were told to report to the immigration office again. They read us our rights as asylum seekers. We were given special IDs and a per diem of about $9 for food.

Now we are attending classes to learn Swedish. There are many words similar to English, but they always change a letter or two and pronounce it a different way. Nine of the 12 students in my class are Iraqis.

It’s cold, and life is hard. We were practically rich in Iraq, and our living standards have plummeted here. I have worked for private companies and owned my own businesses in Iraq, so it’s painful for me to be a ward of the state, hoping to receive asylum just so I can start looking for any little job.

The other day, my wife, daughter and I were walking back to the apartment under our first snowy sky ever.

“It’s much better to walk beneath the snow here,” my wife said, “than walk among car bombs and roadside bombs.”

In this northern land, we are living without a lot of things: the warmth of the Iraqi sun, money, friends and family. But we are also living without fear.

*

In September, Aziz wrote anonymously about the toll that the violence was taking on him and his family. He described how he and others watched a man dying on a Baghdad street, but did nothing to help.

To read Aziz’s first-person account of life in Baghdad, go to

latimes.com/aziz.