War Is a Painful Memory for Released Iraqi Soldier

The former combat tank driver seemed out of place selling bras and panties in an indoor bazaar.

He was slightly more drawn than when he left for war six years ago, friends said, but he was still brawny enough to haul big sacks of clothing as if they were weightless, and his thick hands made the flimsy wares he sold look like dolls’ clothing.

He was content, he said, haggling over prices with his customers and patiently tugging at elastic bands to show off the quality.

“After prison in Iran, this is a kind of peace,” he told a visitor. “I am as happy as can be.”

Ali--not his real name--came home to Baghdad in mid-August, a freed prisoner of war. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, the government of Saddam Hussein made a quick peace with its archenemy Iran and brought to a full close an eight-year war that had been suspended by a cease-fire in 1988.

The peace--Iraq withdrew from Iranian territory it had fought long and hard to hold--made it possible for Hussein to reduce the military threat from the east and concentrate his forces on the defense of annexed Kuwait.

An exchange of thousands of prisoners from each side was part of the deal, and the homecomings have brought joy in hard times to families throughout Iraq. But in a perverse way, the return of haggard men from war is also a reminder of the pain of the long conflict and a caution about the future.

The subject is apparently sensitive enough that no account of life in captivity from a returning POW has been published in Iraqi newspapers or broadcast on the airwaves. Iraqis appear to be tired of war. Even as many express agreement that Kuwait is part of Iraq, visions of more dead, more wounded and more captured only two years after the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq bloodshed has tempered enthusiasm for the new conquest.

It is a dangerous issue to bring up, especially in a crowded market where ears are tuned not only to pick up the chant of bargain prices but also the murmur of dissenting voices. “I have seen many things,” said Ali as he was pressed for an opinion on the wisdom of fighting for Kuwait. “Lots of things.”

Ali was captured in 1986 during the bloody struggle over Al Faw, an Iraqi port on a spit of land at the mouth of the Shatt al Arab, the confluence of Iraq’s main rivers at the head of the Persian Gulf. For 42 days, Iran poured artillery fire onto the town, ravaged the marshy landscape, eventually crossed the river and took the devastated peninsula.

Iraq would recapture it two years later. From 1980 to 1988, more than 50,000 Iraqis and 120,000 Iranians died in the battles over Al Faw, the Iraqi government says. In official parlance, Al Faw is now called the City of Sacrifice and Gateway for Great Victory.

“I was surrounded,” Ali tersely recalled his capture under fire. “We had to surrender.”

His capture began a difficult odyssey. He spent two weeks on a truck crammed with other prisoners traversing the rough terrain of Iran before being taken to a prisoner of war camp called El Khark. Later he was transferred to a camp called El Haswatiyah, and finally to a stockade in Tehran.

In detention, he was sometimes jammed into a room with 20 prisoners, sometimes only four. Bread was the mainstay of the diet, and meat was served three or four times a week. Letters from home came infrequently, sometimes months, even a year, after they were sent.

“I prayed a lot,” Ali said as he held up a pink Slim Line panty for a veiled customer. “Praying is one thing we were allowed to do.”

Ali is a devout Shiite Muslim, and Shiite-ruled Iran pinned part of its hopes of defeating Iraq on getting enemy Shiites to rebel against the secular rule of Hussein. In prison, Iranian wardens preached the virtues of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and handed out literature extolling his rule and desire for peace.

“I don’t think he wanted peace so much,” Ali remarked dryly.

The pro-Khomeini lectures were complemented by anti-Hussein harangues. A prisoner who declared himself opposed to the Baghdad regime would be given more reading materials and favors, such as occasional excursions outside the prison walls.

Intrigue blackened the atmosphere. Guards asked prisoners to inform on their comrades: Who was pro-Hussein, who not? Little bits of information might be rewarded by the sudden arrival of a letter from home or trips to a mosque or, for Christians, to a church.

Visits from the Red Cross or the Red Crescent Society, the Islamic relief organization, were times of intense if hypocritical activity. New bed coverings were brought in and rations were increased. Prisoners were ordered to clean their cells. When the visitors left, the old, ragged blankets were returned.

Occasionally an Iranian official would come to inspect, and the clean-up chores began again. “If we didn’t make things spotless, the guards would beat us,” Ali said.

Labor--tasks like weaving rugs or construction and repair of buildings--was encouraged. The pay was minimal, enough to buy a pack of cigarettes or soap.

Everyone aged rapidly. Ali lost seven front teeth and began to walk with a stoop though he was not yet 30 years old.

Then, in early August, word came over the prison radio that Iran and Iraq had made peace. Iran trumpeted a great victory; Iraqi troops were pulling back.

Ali was among the first to be bused to the border and then into Iraq, to Baghdad, where each night on television the freed prisoners were shown stepping into the sunlight, sometimes raising a clenched fist, but more often impassively carrying a little bag of belongings as they rushed off screen past a large portrait of Hussein.

Ali, now 31, was greeted by relatives with a modest feast of lamb and rice and a gift of false teeth. He has fattened up quite a bit since returning home and now walks erect.

A cousin set him up in the underwear business and he rented space in the bazaar. From the government, he gets 97 Iraqi dinars a month pension; by the official exchange rate, that is almost $300, but on the black market, it is less than $20. Rental for a small apartment is about 200 dinars.

“Now, I work like everyone else,” said Ali. The family arranged an engagement to a young woman of 21, a distant relative in his large clan. Perhaps in four months, they will be married.

The other day, as Ali delicately arranged a display of mascara and face cream, new items for sale at his stall, word filtered from the street near the mosque that a military bus had pulled into the square. Army police wearing red berets were checking the papers of male passers-by to see if they were evading the draft. The government had just announced a quick call-up of 33-year-olds, extending by a year the liability for military service.

“War is not good,” Ali remarked suddenly. A woman fingering stockings nodded slowly and her two children looked up attentively.

“My brother-in-law is still in prison in Iran. He was captured at Nahr Jassem. At least a friend of his told us. This friend was shot in the head, but he can still speak,” he said. The woman held a pair of black panty hose in front of her face for close inspection.

“You know, every night, my family looks at the television to see if my brother-in-law has come back,” Ali continued.

“I have seen many things. I have seen men killed in front of me. My cousin was killed in Al Faw.” The woman lost interest in the hose, clutched her two children and trundled them down the arcade.

“Lots of things. I have stepped on the bodies of dead Iranians, there were so many of them. I’ll never forget that,” Ali concluded quietly.

Outside the arcade, a few young men were ushered on board the military bus, settling rigidly into seats behind smoked glass. They had a confused look; some carried plastic shopping bags and seemed to have been intercepted while buying bread. The red berets stood by the bus door, clapping their nightsticks into the palms of their hands and scanning the crowds for likely faces.

Ali eyed the scene impassively as he stuffed the panty hose back into its plastic wrapper and noted that the bus that brought him to Baghdad from the Iranian border was like the one outside the arcade, only older.