Hidden Nook

Almusowi’s father knew a lot about Saddam Hussein and he didn’t hide his feelings about the former dictator. Weeks before the first Gulf War in 1991, he and several other men attempted to overthrow Hussein’s regime and end the decade of tyranny his people had endured. Saddam’s Republican Guard discovered the general’s plan and a judge sentenced Almusowi’s father to death. “The judge told my father that he would do him a favor by hanging him while he was young, so he wouldn’t sit in prison for the rest of his life,” Almusowi said. On day one of the Gulf War, the United States bombed Iraqi military facilities in Samawi and the prisoners escaped during the chaos. Almusowi was scheduled to be hung on the day he walked out of prison, but he would not see his wife, three boys and two girls for another five months.

As the bombing continued in the first days of the war, Almusowi could feel the impact of bombs and could see the billowing clouds of smoke from the window of his room.
“I was just a kid,” he remembers. “I was too young to know what was going on and too young to be scared.” Escaping the bombs, large groups of Iraqis, mostly women and children, fled to Saudi Arabia, where they hoped to find safety at a refugee camp. Almusowi remembers the journey as if it were yesterday.

“We hitchhiked and walked all the way across the desert,” he said. “We camped out in the desert of southern Iraq and in the desert you can’t see anything at night. I remember finding a star and didn’t know what it was.” When Almusowi awoke, he still had the metal insignia of a star in his hand. The morning light revealed the horror of their surroundings. “There were dead soldiers all around us and the star was an officer’s rank,” he said. “We spent the next day burying them and then we continued to move toward the border.” Once they reached Saudi Arabia, the group was lost. “All we saw was desert, but we kept moving, hoping we’d find somebody or one of the camps.”