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By Root 2297 0

from the Iraqi cabinet, after he had held the post of minister of agriculture for only two years. The wheat crops had been poor that autumn, and after the People’s Army had taken its share, and the middlemen their cut, the Iraqi people ended up with short rations. Someone had to take the blame, and the obvious scapegoat was the minister of agriculture. Hamid’s father, a carpet dealer, had always wanted him to join the family business, and had even warned him before he died not to accept agriculture—the last three holders of that office, having first been fired, later disappeared—and everyone in Iraq knew what “disappeared” meant. But Hamid did accept the job. The first year’s crop had been abundant, and after all, he convinced himself, agriculture was only a stepping stone to greater things. In any case, had not Saddam described him in front of the whole Revolutionary Command Council as “my good and close friend”? At thirty-two you still believe you are immortal.

Hamid’s father was proved right, and Hamid’s only real friend—friends melted away like snow in the morning sun when this particular president fired you—helped him to escape.

The only precaution Hamid had taken during his days as a cabinet minister was to withdraw from his bank account each week a little more cash than he actually needed. He would then change the extra money into American dollars with a street trader, using a different dealer each time, and never exchanging enough to arouse suspicion. In Iraq everyone is a spy.

The day he was fired, he checked how much was hidden under his mattress. It amounted to $11,221.

The following Thursday, the day on which the weekend begins in Baghdad, he and his pregnant wife took the bus to. Erbil. He left his Mercedes conspicuously parked in the front drive of his large home in the suburbs, and they carried no luggage with them—just two passports, the roll of dollars secreted in his wife’s baggy clothing, and some Iraqi dinars to get them as far as the border.

No one would be looking for them on a bus to Erbil.

Once they arrived in Erbil, Hamid and his wife took a taxi to Sulaimania, using most of the remaining dinars to pay the driver. They spent the night in a small hotel far from the city center. Neither slept as they waited for the morning sun to come shining through the curtainless window.

The next day, another bus took them high into the hills of Kurdistan, arriving in Zakho in the early evening.

The final part of the journey was the slowest of all. They were taken up through the hills on mules, at a cost of two hundred dollars—the young Kurdish smuggler showed no interest in Iraqi dinars. He delivered the former cabinet minister and his wife safely over the border in the early hours of the morning, leaving them to make their way on foot to the nearest village on Turkish soil. They reached Kirmizi Renga that evening and spent another sleepless night at the local station, waiting for the first train for Istanbul.

Hamid and Shereen slept all the way through the long train journey to the Turkish capital, and woke up the following morning as refugees. The first visit Hamid made in the city was to the Iz Bank, where he deposited $10,800. The next was to the American Embassy, where he produced his diplomatic passport and requested political asylum. His father had once told him that a recently fired cabinet minister from Iraq was always a good catch for the Americans.

The embassy arranged accommodation for Hamid and his wife in a first-class hotel, and immediately informed Washington of their little coup. They promised Hamid that they would get back to him as quickly as possible, but gave him no clue as to how long that might take. He decided to use the time to visit the carpet bazaars on the south side of the city, so often frequented by his father.

Many of the dealers remembered Hamid’s father—an honest man who liked to bargain and drink gallons of coffee, and who had often talked about his son going into politics. They were pleased to make his acquaintance, especially when they learned what he planned to do