Vigil for Wife, Daughters Ends With a Call From State Dept.

Buoyed by endless cups of strong coffee, Jay Anaim has been glued to his television for the past four weeks searching for clues about when and if his wife and three young daughters would be allowed to leave Iraq.

The anxious vigil ended Sunday morning when U.S. State Department officials called the La Mirada man to say his family had landed safely in Frankfurt, West Germany, and is due to arrive in Los Angeles tonight.

They also provided Anaim, 31, with the telephone number of the Frankfurt hotel where his wife and daughters were staying overnight.

Moments later, Anaim stabbed the buttons of the telephone that would connect him with his wife, who had been in the Iraqi port city of Basra visiting her ailing father when Iraqi troops invaded nearby.

“There is a lot of emotion over here,” Nidhal Anaim told her husband on the phone from Frankfurt. “At one point, we were boarding the plane when Iraqi officials said the flight had been canceled--we began to wonder if we would ever get out.”

Eventually, the Lufthansa flight carrying 311 people--including Americans, Spaniards, Swedes and other European nationals--was allowed to leave Baghdad.

Through all the uncertainty, Anaim’s 9-year-old daughter, Donia, was worried about one thing--missing her first day of school.

“Dad, when does school start?” she blurted over the telephone Sunday.

“In about a week, darling,” he answered.

“Well, I can’t be late for the first day of school,” said Donia, a 4th-grade student at La Pluma Elementary School in La Mirada. “Will you see us at the airport when we get home?”

“You bet!” he exclaimed.

After a warm goodby, Anaim wiped his brow and said, “I was born in Jerusalem and have seen one war after another over there. But this has been the longest month of my life. All I could see in my mind were images of Kurdish children killed by poison gas.”

Until the Aug. 2 invasion, Anaim’s life had focused on passing a final examination in chiropractor’s school.

“I think I flunked that test,” said Anaim, who took it four days after the Iraqis marched into Kuwait. “There was just too much on my mind at the time.”

Now, “It’s over,” Anaim said. “Thank God, it’s over.”