Ahmed asked the man about finding a taxi to go to Baghdad. The man told him that it would be difficult for him to reach the city before the 10pm curfew.
“Why is there a curfew?” Ahmed asked. The old man was surprised to meet someone who was not aware of the safety measures regarding COVID-19.
Arriving in Baghdad by taxi late that night was difficult because of all the roadblocks. When Ahmed reached his apartment building, the whole neighborhood gathered around. He was exhausted and confused, and did not know how to reply to all the questions that he was asked by his family and neighbours. He was also scared to speak.
After his return, he sought medical help for the pain in his shoulders and upper arms, caused by the long hours he spent hanging in his cell.
Ahmed decided he would work enough to gather the money that will allow him to leave Baghdad and most probably Iraq.
His old job was denied to him, and his former colleagues and collaborators were distant, as though they were avoiding him. Ahmed quickly realized that nobody trusted him anymore – being released alive by militias was too suspicious. He reached out to media and political figures close to the government for help but no one returned his calls.
He received no support from the state after his release, neither for his physical injuries nor for the deep psychological wounds he is carrying with him.
‘Pain, suffering, agony’
At the end of that summer, Ahmed left for Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the borders, he was asked to provide some documentation to justify his travel as COVID-19 measures allowed only essential travel. He tried to explain to the border officers, who did not speak Arabic, that he was escaping from the militias and tell them what had happened to him.
He was eventually allowed to enter and found a place in an apartment building.
Soon after, his doorbell rang. Looking through the peephole, he saw a dozen men dressed in black suits. They grabbed his mobile phone, took him to a car and drove him into a massive building and interrogated him for a whole day, asking about his relationship to the militias who abducted him. Ahmed panicked. “Have I been kidnapped once again?! My life is a nightmare.”
The Kurdish officials asked Ahmed to work for them, and he was forced to accept. He was paid but kept under very tight surveillance; he could not use his phone, nor leave the city. After a few months, he started receiving threats from Baghdad. The militias who had kidnapped him heard that he is now working for the Kurds. It was too much for him.
Soon after, he was let go and managed to escape to Turkey. He firmly decided to leave his country behind for good. “What did this country give us? Pain, suffering, agony. Iraq took my family, brought me back to zero so many times. There’s no hope. Now I just want to live my life, a normal, quiet life.”
But leaving everything behind is not so easy. “Of course, I think about what happened to me, every hour of the day, it’s with me all the time.”
Print
Zahra Ali | Radio Free (2021-02-24T23:00:00+00:00) The influencer who lost his family and survived torture in Iraq’s secret prisons. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/02/24/the-influencer-who-lost-his-family-and-survived-torture-in-iraqs-secret-prisons/
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