Men's home a jail for 23 years

By WAFA AMR

BAGHDAD - Two Iraqi brothers made their home a prison for 23 years to escape execution by Saddam Hussein's security forces, seeing daylight only after his fall.

Their mother, Zahra Ibrahim, lived in terror while hiding her sons Saad and Ibrahim. Any mistake would have been fatal.

She endured repeated interrogation and constant surveillance by security men looking for the two boys.

Her husband, pregnant daughter and another son had been executed as suspected members of the Shiite Muslim Daawa Party.

"For 23 years I lived in fear and anxiety. My tears never dried until Saddam was toppled," said Zahra Ibrahim, 67, at her home in a crowded quarter of Baghdad.

She hid her sons in a room inside the house, keeping the secret even from her closest relatives. She managed to convince the security forces they were in Iraqi jails.

In 1989, a bureaucratic slip-up helped her cause: the security forces told her all her detained relatives, including Saad and Ibrahim, had been executed.

Ibrahim showed documents taken from security headquarters after Saddam's overthrow which list them among those executed in 1989 for belonging to the "criminal" Daawa Party.

But the harassment at his mother's house never stopped.

"We never left home. The first time we ventured into the garden at night was in 1996. We were afraid the neighbours would see us and report us to the security forces," Ibrahim said.

The two men, now 45 and 39, whiled away the years reading religious books and talking to their mother and four sisters. Only the five women and a neighbour, a close family friend, were in on the secret.

Saad said: "My sisters' children did not even know our names. They only knew us as uncles. We taught them what to say in case they were interrogated."

Saad decided to go into hiding in 1980 and Ibrahim joined him two years later. They said they had never belonged to the Daawa party. Their family was punished because two uncles were charged with links to it during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The uncles fled to Egypt and Iran in 1980. Iraqi security forces seized their wives and children and deported them to Iran.

The husband of Zahra Ibrahim's daughter Sabiha also fled to Iran. The Iraqis took Sabiha as a hostage. She never returned.

"We discovered years later that she was executed in 1989 in a mass execution. She was four months' pregnant," Zahra Ibrahim said,

Ibrahim was a high school student and Saad a public sector employee when they went into hiding.

"Security men dropped by the house all the time," said Zahra Ibrahim. "They did not search it, but sat in the living room and asked about my sons' whereabouts. I insisted they were in jail along with my husband, son and daughter."

She said she often went to the prison to ask about her detained relatives, always inquiring about her sons, and was frequently summoned for interrogation at security headquarters.

"It was terrorism. They would shout and scream at me. They would show me a picture of [Iran's former spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini and say they had found it in my house. I'm an old woman, I cried a lot," she said.

The brothers finally emerged from hiding a week after Saddam's fall on April 9, when they were sure United States forces had really conquered Iraq.

"Freedom is so very important,"aid Ibrahim. "I can't express the feelings that overwhelmed me when I finally went out on the streets. My old friends were shocked when they saw me."

Saad said his neighbourhood had changed so much he could not find his way home after going on a tour of Baghdad.

"I was so relieved," said Zahra Ibrahim. "It was the first night in 23 years that I had a good night's sleep."

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq