He is tall and thin with a thatch of gray hair atop his head. He has a warm smile and an easy confidence. He looks the part of a principal, the job he held at a middle school in a poor area of northern Baghdad during the time of the U.S. invasion.
THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION ordered us to dismiss classes the day the war started. I did but stayed at the school in order to watch over the campus. I was alone in my house, which was very near the school. I had sent my wife and five children to stay in Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, before things started. But I had many students still with me at the school each day. A lot had volunteered to remain with me to keep an eye on the place. About 850 students normally attended the school, ranging in age from 12 to 15. After we dismissed classes, there were probably about 150 various people, students and others, who came to the school each day during the bombardment.
One morning very early two fuel tankers were passing through our neighborhood, probably going to Kirkuk. The Americans I think targeted them, suspecting they were full of chemical weapons or something. But they were not. They just had fuel for cars in them. The trucks were moving down a road about 500 meters away from the school when they exploded, sending fire everywhere. I was inside the school with some others when the blast went off. We all went running at the sound, maybe thirty of us. The scene was unforgettable. Fire covered the whole of the street. The heat was unbelievable. The two tankers with two people in them each were totally destroyed. A number of other cars on the street were ablaze as well, two pickups and a minibus. I saw people inside alive trying to get out but unable to because the blast had crunched their doors shut. At least two people who had been standing on the street were dead as well. The fire was so intense that the ambulances and the fire trucks couldn’t even approach the street for some time. There must have been fifteen, twenty people dead. This is what liberators do? The Republican Guard came to my school some time after that, and I left the place to them and joined my family in Khalis and waited out the fall of Baghdad there like a lot of other families.
I’ll never forget coming back to the city a few weeks later. I was born in Baghdad and lived my whole life there. To me, the city had always been like a beautiful bride. What I saw of the city after the invasion made it look like an old widow. The destruction was everywhere. Charred military vehicles were all over the streets. Everybody was at home behind locked doors. My school had been looted, of course. I had been in charge of that facility for six years. I had even brought some of my own furniture there to try and make it a little homier for the students. Everything was gone. The looters even took the doors off their hinges. The only things left were the bricks in the walls and some of the files. At least the looters had not burned the place like they did several other schools in the area.
My house was very old and did not do well amid all the bombing. A water pipe had broken and flooded the whole place. We lived in water up to our ankles as we tried to settle back in. It stayed like this until I got my first threat only a few weeks after returning to Baghdad.
The first threat I got was not a letter. Someone simply tossed a grenade into my yard. Fortunately it did not explode. It was a dud. I did not see anyone throw it. My son found it in the yard one morning when I sent him out for bread. It was just sitting there with the pin out. I have no idea who threw it. The most likely suspects are the students I failed in years past. Or it could have been someone from the neighborhood who was jealous of me and my position. My neighborhood was a semislum. I was a rich person by the standards of many of my neighbors. Most were laborers. I was one of the only professionals from the area. And I was a Ba’ath party member. I had to be because I also coached the women’s national handball team in addition to working as a principal. Only party members could get visas for traveling as we needed to for competitions. I was poor, to be sure. But I had some privileges, and some saw me I guess as one of Saddam’s men.
Many of my neighbors tried to put me at ease over the incident, telling me it was probably just some sick joke by kids in the neighborhood. But I didn’t believe that. I was afraid. Assassins seemed to be everywhere in the city then. There was no government. I believed someone was after me. I hardly left the house after that. I didn’t even go to the market. If we needed anything, my wife or my children went.
About a month after the grenade appeared I got a threat letter. Of course I was out of work then with the schools still closed. So my wife and I made a little shop in our house, selling cigarettes and candy and other small things out a window. It was just a little something to make money day to day so we could get by. We hardly even opened it, actually. Mostly neighbors would come by and knock on the window if they needed something, and we would sell it to them. One day I was napping in the afternoon. My daughter woke me up and said she had found a piece of paper in the shop. Atop the note was a drawing of a sword and some Islamic quotations. The letter itself accused me and my family of being unbelievers and said we would die.
I immediately called some of my former students, young men I remained friends with who were now college age. I showed the letter to them, and they did a little investigation. They found out that some children in the neighborhood had been told to put the letter through the window, but the children could not say who ordered them to do so. Again, people told me it was child’s play, a bullshit prank, and not to worry. But I felt it was serious, and I decided to leave.
I had coached handball in Yemen for a year back in 1997 and had an invitation to return. It seemed like a good time to go. I didn’t have enough money to relocate my whole family, however, so I would have to go alone. I didn’t even have enough money to get myself there actually. I had to sell my car, a 1986 white Volkswagen Passat, which I had bought with the money I earned coaching in Yemen, ironically. I had always been poor. The house I was living in was not mine. I inherited it from my mother. I had never owned a car before. Finally I was able to afford one after going to Yemen, and I took very good care of it. I loved that car, and I hated to sell it. Even then I still didn’t have enough money. I had to sell all my wife’s jewelry too before I could raise enough to get out of the country. I was gone by the end of May 2003.
Abdul Hadi Isma’il was in Yemen for only three months. He had a falling out with his employers and was forced to return to Baghdad, where he settled on the western side of the city away from his family home to remain safe. He eventually found work as an educator again.