SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND THE PERSIAN GULF CRISIS : 6 Return From Iraq but Have Little to Say About Mideast Experiences to Say About Experiences in Nation

Six Southern Californians caught in Iraq when the Persian Gulf crisis broke out returned home on Monday, apparently relieved but reluctant to discuss their ordeal.

“I’m glad that I’m back with my family,” Huda Rafo said in brief comments to reporters when her London flight arrived at Los Angeles International Airport. “I’ll never go back.”

The Garden Grove woman, a newly naturalized U.S. citizen, had gone to her native Iraq to show relatives her 14-month-old daughter, Mary. She was visiting her husband’s family in Baghdad on Aug. 2 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Rafo and her daughter were among a first group of about 200 U.S. citizens to be allowed to leave Iraq since the invasion. On a later flight Monday, four members of a La Mirada family arrived at Los Angeles International, where they eluded reporters and even some waiting relatives.

According to their relatives, Nidhal Anaim and her three children, Donia, 9, Lobna, 5, and Mona, 3, had traveled to Iraq in early July for a three-week visit with her father, who had suffered a stroke. Anaim’s Aug. 1 exit visa was revoked when she attempted to depart.

After the invasion, Jay Anaim had attempted to reach his wife and children without success for nine days.

“There were no phone lines,” he recalled Monday as he waited for their Pan Am flight. Anaim said he called Iraqi relatives he had not contacted in more than 15 years, imploring them to help. He flew “several times” to Washington, attempting to obtain a visa for Jordan, where he planned to meet his family at the border; the request was denied.

When he finally contacted his wife, Anaim learned she was expected their fourth child.

“I started coaching her (to) drink a lot of milk. She said, ‘What milk? They don’t have milk.’ ”

Both the Anaims and Rafos and their relatives offered few complaints about their treatment in Iraq. Rafo’s husband, Joe, declined even to call his family “hostages,” saying they had left when they wanted.

Nonetheless, they appeared weary and happy to be safely home.

“We were scared,” Rafo said. She indicated, however, that fears eased as time wore on. She said the Iraqis treated her and her daughter “normally.” She stayed at her in-laws home and contacted her husband weekly. Their major concern was that war would break out.

“We just hope for peace,” Joe Rafo said. “Everybody hopes for peace.”

The Rafos were surprised by the large contingent of media that greeted the early evening flight. Microphones had been set up for a press conference, but Rafo made her few comments without reaching them and, after being surrounding by a throng of reporters, eventually retreated with her husband and daughter behind guarded doors.

The arrival of the Anaims’ two hour later at the Pan Am terminal was darkly comic, as airport security, the press and even some relatives played a game of cat-and-mouse that involved zig-zag pursuits up and down the concourse. In the end, security officials managed to keep media representatives from obtaining anything more than a glimpse of the arriving family through a window.

“The family just didn’t wish to speak to anybody,” said Sgt. Guy Painter of airport security. Lost in the shuffle, though, were some relatives who had arrived with hand-printed welcome banners and yellow ribbons but were unable to meet the airplane.