At a Safehouse in Iraq: Holiday and Heartache

A few highs and many lows have passed in the more than three months that Americans have been held hostage in Iraq, and Wednesday, the eve of Thanksgiving, was a time for reflection.

At a diplomatic compound near the Tigris River, where an undisclosed number of American men have taken shelter, the mood was somber. Their thoughts were concentrated on their families and more than 100 of their compatriots held captive at potential military targets under Iraqi guard.

Today, the Baghdad hostages will share a turkey dinner around a refectory table in the dining room and on the veranda. The U.S. Embassy supplied the bird, a reporter brought in the makings for pumpkin pie, and other traditional side dishes have been procured by the resourceful detainees.

A television crew has delivered a videotape of this month’s UCLA-Washington football game. The hostages have all the trappings, but it’s not home.

“We want to thank our countrymen for their great and undying support for those of us that are in this miserable predicament,” said Roland Bergheer, 62, a Los Angeles-reared consultant who speaks as the press liaison for the group.

Bergheer, a tall, white-bearded man wearing an open-necked dress shirt and jaunty green-checked slacks, was sitting beside a swimming pool with two visiting reporters. His fellow hostages remained indoors. The strain of the last few months has led them to let Bergheer handle the press. He figured that most of them would agree with his words although he said he was speaking for himself.

“This,” he said of captivity without any bars--except the ultimate cage, denial of the right to leave Iraq--”is the most degrading experience I’ve ever been through. I’m being held at someone else’s whim. I never expected this.

“It strips a man of his dignity. I really don’t like to be a pawn for someone to play with.”

Bergheer scanned the house, the pool and the comfortable grounds, overlooked by the homes of a high-ranking Iraqi military officer and a prominent eye surgeon, and said:

“It really doesn’t matter that we can walk around, smell the roses, take a swim. We’re suffering.”

At this safehouse, most of the Americans are from the South, the Midwest and the Pacific Coast states. The average age is about 40. A number of the men, including Bergheer, were working on a big petrochemical project when the Iraqis closed the door on them in the weeks following the Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

Bergheer was living at the Sheraton Hotel when the call came from the embassy urging him to seek diplomatic sanctuary. “I just started packing,” he recalled.

At first, some of the men brought their wives and children into the compound for safety. When Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was persuaded to let the dependents leave, it became an all-male sanctuary--about 50 initially, fewer now that some have been permitted to leave on medical or humanitarian grounds.

Departures are difficult moments. “We have a brotherhood here,” said Bergheer. “When someone gets out, a lot of hands help with the packing. For a day or so afterward, many of the men tend to stay in the rooms, taking a little private space.”

He and other Americans figure they will be the last to leave if Hussein holds to his pledge to free all foreign hostages over a three-month period beginning Christmas Day.

In the meantime, they pass their days reading, watching videos and keeping up the house and grounds. “Boring,” said a hostage passer-by at the interview.

News comes via the Voice of America and the British Broadcasting Corp. Old magazines, even newspapers, brought in by visitors to Baghdad are scoured. The embassy has instituted a newsletter for the men with sports scores, news capsules and a crossword puzzle.

Household duties are performed according to a rotating roster, and all decisions concerning the operation of the safehouse are made collegially at daily meetings.

Bergheer, who delivers the latest news from the embassy, says there is no command structure among the men. But, senior in age, he clearly has stature and seems comfortable speaking for the hostages.

He has led an adventuresome life--merchant sailor at 16 during World War II, the Air Force during the Korean War, then back to the merchant marine as an officer and on to private life with steamship companies in San Francisco and Portland, Ore. After a brief retirement, he felt the itch to go abroad again and worked in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates before taking the job here, piling up nearly a decade of service in the Middle East.

Now divorced with four children and five grandchildren, Bergheer attended Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles as a young refugee from Nazi Germany. His brother, Karl, is a developer and lives in Newport Beach.

Bergheer is a key contact between the embassy and his fellow hostages, attending the news briefings given by U.S. Charge d’Affaires Joseph C. Wilson IV. There is a mutual respect between the two men.

“I’m extremely fond of Joe Wilson,” said Bergheer. “He’s the type of American that simply does not like to get pushed around.”

Wilson, in a rare on-the-record interview for Thanksgiving, detailed the embassy efforts on behalf of the hostages, particularly those to force their release.

“We trying to get the Iraqis to behave according to international conventions,” he explained, saying he is in regular touch with the Iraqi Foreign Ministry “from the highest level” to press his case.

“We have pointed out repeatedly that these people should be released” and should never have been held in the first place, he said.

Each case presents a problem. Wilson said the wife of one of the Americans held at strategic sites had died and, forbidden direct access to the so-called “special guests,” he could not get word to the husband. He wrote a letter and gave it to the Foreign Ministry to deliver. “I have no idea whether my letter has reached the man,” Wilson said, underlining the isolation of the hostages.

There is evidence that living conditions are improving slightly at the sites, he said. Some of the hostages have been permitted to call their families.

Meanwhile, the embassy personnel have begun a pen-pal program with the the so-called human shields, writing to them via the Iraqis and “trying to develop a personal rapport,” said Wilson. Those ties are important to America’s ranking diplomat here, who will spend his Thanksgiving over turkey with the young single men of the embassy staff, primarily the Marine guards.

An easygoing man with a sharp wit and a tart tongue, Wilson, who has headed the embassy since the invasion, has won a few victories. More than one has taken place at Saddam International Airport, with Wilson and Iraqi officials going toe-to-toe over what categories of American-connected women and children seeking refuge from Kuwait should be allowed to leave for the States.

“It was like two attorneys in a lawsuit, in the litigation phase before a trial,” he recalled. “When I have to be tough, I have not shied away from some pretty strong language.”

Generally, he said, his relations with Iraqi officials are “good, considering we’re sort of sworn enemies.”

The hostages are his main concern. While crediting them with being “very self-reliant,” the embassy keeps a diplomat at the compound “24 hours a day, with a diplomatic passport if there’s a need to deal with any outside problem.” Wilson himself attends the compound meetings once a week.

And the hostages respond.

“There are a lot of technical experts out there,” he said. “I asked one of them to put a new stereo in the ambassador’s car so I can listen to Waylon Jennings on my way to the Foreign Ministry.

“They provide me with a hell of a lot of personal support.”

Wilson and Bergheer say they are working toward the same goal with no intentions of making any deals along the way.

“When I walk out of here, I want to walk out ramrod straight,” the hostage said. “My pride intact, my honor as an American.”