Pining for His Homeland and Beset by Doubt

Mosadek al Attar was a teenager when he was compelled to leave Iraq in the 1970s to start a new life in the United States, getting out just weeks before Baath Party secret police knocked at his parents’ door looking for him.

The exit of the rest of his family was not as well timed. His older brother and uncle were scooped up by authorities a few years later and deposited at the Iranian border, where they walked six days to a refugee camp.

His father was refused reentry to Iraq after a brief visit to the U.S. Upon hearing the news, Attar’s mother and sister jumped into a car and raced to the Jordanian border, leaving behind the family’s furniture, artwork, photos and a beloved five-bedroom dream house they had spent two years designing and building.

More than two decades later, as U.S. troops marched toward Baghdad, Attar, 49, lay awake in his Upland home, pondering a nagging question: whether he should reclaim the family home and resettle in Baghdad with his wife and two children, ages 12 and 14.

Though he relished his new U.S. citizenship, Attar, a Shiite Muslim, says he never fully adapted to life in America. He’s director of an Islamic private school in Pomona, which he cofounded in part to help provide his children with a more religious environment.

“Iraq is my home,” Attar said. “I have a lot of memories here.”

Attar arrived in June in his old neighborhood along the Tigris River to repair the family’s abandoned house, which, like much of his native country, was in shambles.

He has spent the summer sorting through years of debris and coping with a flood of memories and emotions. Despite all the work, he’s having serious doubts about returning, in light of the car bombings, rising crime and lack of reliable phone service and electricity since the U.S.-led invasion in late March.

“I had a beautiful life here,” he said. “I think my kids could too, but maybe it’s too soon.”

For the Attar family, 1968 was a landmark year. It was the year the Baath Party seized control of the government in Iraq. But more important in their household, that was the year they moved into the custom-built, two-story home that quickly became the talk of the neighborhood.

The mid-century-modern home stood out in the capital for its low-pitched, tapered roof and a wall with geometric windows stained in bright reds, greens and blues. The second level extended over the frontyard, supported by columns, an architectural element seldom seen in Baghdad at the time.

In the entry hall, lovebirds nested in an atrium designed by Attar’s mother. Mosaic tile portraits of Greek ports decorated the kitchen and bathroom walls. Up the marble staircase was a terrace large enough to hold beds for the entire family on hot summer nights.

“This house was really the highlight of my mother’s life,” Attar said.

He said the family lived a charmed life for several years. Slumber parties. Neighborhood soccer matches in the frontyard. Meanwhile, his father’s fabric import business thrived, serving the wives of high-ranking members of the Baath Party.

But when he was in high school, pressure mounted on Attar to join the party’s youth group.

“Getting to the youth was a big thing back then,” he said. “People didn’t worry at first about the older people, figuring you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. They wanted the young.”

Those who joined the group received special privileges, including spots on sports teams and test questions in advance.

Attar and his brother resisted. He said his Muslim beliefs made it impossible for him to pledge the kind of allegiance the party demanded. But mostly he attributed his stance to simple teenage rebelliousness, not political activism.

“Looking back, it was probably pretty foolish,” he said. When friends encouraged him to join the youth group, Attar loudly dismissed the Baath Party. “It created a huge gap with my friends,” he said.

For a while, his father’s wealth seemed to protect the family, but eventually the Attars became social outcasts, suspected of supporting the Islamic Dawa Party, a Shiite-dominated opposition group. Later the family was the target of anti-Iranian sentiment because of their name, even though their ancestors had lived in Iraq for generations.

The soccer team disbanded. Friends no longer visited. The family watched anxiously as others who refused to support the government simply disappeared. “One day they’d be in class, the next they were gone,” Attar recalled.

His father began making plans to sneak Attar and his brother out of the country. “My father was always telling us to be quiet, but we were always showing off. We had big mouths.”

After high school, Attar agreed to leave. “I thought I would never be coming back,” he said. “It turned out that the secret police came looking for me shortly after I left.”

Six years later, with the Iraq-Iran war imminent, Attar’s father visited California, where Attar was beginning a career as an electrical engineer.

As soon as Attar’s father had left the country, government officials lured Attar’s eldest brother and an uncle -- who had temporarily taken charge of the family business -- to a meeting with the promise of giving them the new import license they sought. Upon arrival, the men, along with 500 other business owners, were bused to the Iranian border and left in a minefield, Attar said.

Fearing imminent arrest, his mother and sister fled, with the family eventually resettling in Northern California.

The government seized the family’s business, auctioned off their belongings and leased the house to a series of government offices, including the Iraqi Dental Assn.

“For eight years we still talked about it every day,” Attar said. “It was particularly hard on my mother.”

In 2002, Attar decided to return to Baghdad with his wife, who had left Iraq when she was 2, and their children. For years, he feared being arrested if he returned. But when he saw that some friends were able to reenter without problems, Attar planned a trip. “I wanted my kids to see Iraq and see what their parents had seen,” he said.

“He really missed his country,” Attar’s wife, Janan, said in a telephone interview. “He decided if he didn’t go then, he might never go.”

Driving to Baghdad from Syria, they found the family home locked and abandoned. A faded wooden sign for the dental association stood in the yard. Attar wanted to jump the fence and break in through a window, but his wife begged him to leave. Soon neighbors were peering out their windows and the police arrived to check things out.

“I pulled out my U.S. passport,” Attar said. “It was great. I felt on top of the world. I knew they couldn’t touch me with an American passport. But we left. I didn’t want to stir the pot.”

Barely a year later, Attar headed back on his own as soon as the war ended and his Islamic school, City of Knowledge, had closed for the summer. This time he broke through the locks and reclaimed the house.

The rooms were littered with abandoned files and office furniture. The stained-glass windows were broken. But still hanging in the upstairs hallway were the heavy dark-green and gold curtains made from his father’s imported fabric.

Working every day in temperatures often topping 120 degrees, Attar says, he has put about $60,000 in renovations into the house, which he believes is now worth nearly $1 million.

For several weeks, he looked around the country for the same type of bricks his father used on the facade, until one day he found a stash in a back closet, exactly where his father had left them 35 years ago.

To his delight, he discovered that the government never formally sold the property, which is still in his father’s name.

But his summer in Baghdad has made him wary of moving back with his family. Despite signs of a return to normality, such as the new trash pickup service and a recent sighting of a Federal Express truck, electricity and phone service are spotty.

“I want to give my children a good impression,” he said. “But now I think this is not the right time.”

His wife is also lobbying against a return. “I told him I can’t right now,” she said. “If things improve and it becomes more civilized, then maybe. But right now it’s unsafe. I think the kids would have a hard time.”

So Attar is postponing the homecoming. When he finishes the renovations at the end of the month, he’s planning to return to Southern California, at least for a while. He might rent out the house temporarily, asking a relative who lives nearby to keep an eye on the property.

“Someday I want to move back,” Attar said. “But the mentality has to change. People here have learned to live in a jungle. They’ve done what they need to do to survive each day. But it’s not a jungle anymore. People need to see that and start thinking about the future.”

Sanders was recently on assignment in Baghdad.