Woman’s Spirited Escape: ‘We Were, Like, Whoa! So Weird’ : Refugees: San Fernando Valley native braved tanks and table tennis on trek from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia.

The Iraqi army came to Kuwait four days before Michelle Mateljan of Studio City, Calif., was to fly out for a vacation in Spain.

“I was so bummed,” she said Tuesday.

Now safe in Bahrain, Mateljan recounted her ordeal, including a final scare at the last Iraqi checkpoint at the Saudi Arabian border.

“There were six or seven soldiers, and we thought, ‘This is it,’ ” the 22-year-old brunette recalled over a plate of pasta. “So what happens? They gave us a can of beans and some chocolate bars. We were, like, whoa! So weird.”

Mateljan, who went to Agoura High School and Los Angeles Valley College, was traveling with Mohammed al Jeda, an Iraqi-born British national, and two Australians in a two-car convoy. The Iraqi soldiers ordered them into a small recreation room while they considered whether to let them pass.

“The Australian man began playing table tennis with one of the Iraqis, and he was winning,” Mateljan said. “I’m going, ‘No, don’t beat him, for God’s sake.’ ”

But it wasn’t the score that held them up. It was the Baghdad birthplace listed in Jeda’s passport.

“They told us we had to go back, to go back and go out through Jordan,” Mateljan said.

The party turned back but then cut off through the desert and headed again toward the Saudi frontier. Under Saudi law, women cannot drive, so Jeda took the wheel of their off-road Toyota and Mateljan kept him awake by spraying his face with Evian water.

“Great ad, huh?” she said. “On your next escape, don’t leave home without your Evian.”

Fifteen hours later they were in Riyadh, bedraggled but free.

Kuwait had been a dream for Mateljan, who was born in Encino and grew up on the beaches of Zuma and Malibu. She visited a friend in Kuwait, liked it, and moved to the sheikdom in November, 1988. She worked for a time with Kuwait Airways and later as a sales representative for a cargo-container company.

“I thought it was going to be paradise,” she said, “and I was under the illusion that I was going to make a lot of money. But Kuwait meant security, really. Car insurance was nothing, about $100 a year. Phones were cheap. And medical care was free. Anything. One of my friends got a free nose job.”

The dream ended on Aug. 2.

She was living in the suburb of Salmiya, near the coast. The sound of a low-flying jet and explosions woke her at 5 a.m. Figuring that the Kuwaiti army was on an exercise, she went back to sleep for another three hours. Then she drove out to see what was happening.

“A soldier stopped me, an Iraqi in Kuwaiti uniform,” she said. “He told me to go home. I had a rental car, and I didn’t care. He could shoot it up if he wanted. But I thought, ‘I’d better get off the street.’ ”

On the second night, she got messages out to her father, George Mateljan of La Canada, and her mother, Pamela, and stepfather, Nick Sarbu, of Agoura Hills. Then she settled in.

“We all stayed indoors as much as possible,” she said. “I supported the local video club. There was nothing on television but the Iraqi channel. It started showing American movies the second night of the invasion.

“When (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) made that speech about rationing food, I made up my mind to get out. Maybe it was the cigarettes. I mean, no cigarettes? It’s time to go.”

She left her flat and moved into a house with some Britons and other foreigners, including Jeda, the Iraqi-born Briton. The U.S. Embassy was advising against trying to escape.

“Go or just stay tight” were the alternatives, she said. “But stay tight for what?”

Kuwait had become dangerous, and the expatriates were particularly alarmed by reports that the Iraqis might use chemical warfare. So Mateljan and the others sealed the windows with plastic sheeting and filled the cracks with silicone. A friend, a Kuwaiti fireman, sent over masks and canisters of oxygen.

“We did the whole bit,” she said. “We were ready.”

The escape plan jelled when a West German rally driver provided a detailed map of Kuwait that included police checkpoints, desert roads and power lines.

“His name was Otmar, that’s all I knew of him,” Mateljan said. “But he drew out an escape route on the map.”

Their little convoy left the next morning at 5:30 and quickly was blocked by a stalled line of cars and trucks. A Bedouin told them to head off into the desert, follow a power line and they would come back to the road beyond the traffic jam.

At one point, Mateljan said, they rolled through an Iraqi tank position.

“Tanks everywhere,” she said. “We were just praying they wouldn’t shoot. What’s to stop them? I mean, nobody is going to miss us anyway. I mean, like, who cares?”

They got through, and on Aug. 14 crossed into Saudi Arabia.

“I got out with one bag,” Mateljan said. “That was it. My whole life in one bag. We had no money and we needed gas.”

Some guy gave us 100 (Saudi) rials. I go, ‘Oh my God, I’m a beggar now.’ Thank God I had my American credit cards.”

She is already studying to be a real estate agent in Bahrain but would “like to go back to Kuwait to clear out my stuff--I left my briefcase there.”

“It was really a nice country,” she reflected. “It was secure. I felt privileged just to be there. Little did I know.”

Interviewed in Agoura Hills on Tuesday, her stepfather said he was not surprised that she had opted to make a run to across the desert. “She’s an extremely intelligent girl and extremely adventurous,” he said.

Despite his stepdaughter’s brush with disaster, he does not regret her moving there, said Sarbu, 56, a retired international lawyer and opera singer.

“I believe that people, when they are young, they need a lot of experience. They have to be prepared for life,” he said.

“She’s not the afraid type. She’s a very intelligent girl. She understands perfectly what is happening in the world.”

Times staff writer Jack Cheevers, in Los Angeles, contributed to this story.