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=> Re: Emelian memories in Bet-Nahrain

Re: Emelian memories in Bet-Nahrain
Posted by beezelbub (Guest) - Wednesday, October 26 2005, 17:32:21 (CEST)
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...I was born in Baghdad only because my mother went into labor as she was returning to Iran...my father was in the Iraqi army then...getting ready for the Palestine war...after six days we left him behind and went on to Tehran.

He was kept in the army for 8 years, twice what he was supposed to serve, to repay the government for his medical school degree. They wouldn't let him go...said he was too valuable and it was wartime. he became one of their most decorated officers...even though he was a doctor...his specialty was setting up field hospitals...I have a photo of him atop a gorgeous white Arabian stallion...it was one of those, "no one could ride the beast" stories...they were stationed at a fort up north...fighting the Kurds in their mountains...my father got on the horse and instead of restraining him, had the gates flung open and let the horse have his head...Arabs can run for hours..and that's what this one did...with my father on his back....he led him in gentle circle back to the fort...only the gate was closed....the horse never broke stride...ran right at the mud wall and leaped over and through it...my father stayed on...only then did the horse stop...his mouth bleeding from the pressure of the reins...from that day he had no trouble riding the horse,

He was on that horse when their column was ambushed by the Kurds...the survivors spent ten days hiding behind boulders, trying to avoid Kurd bullets...it was hot...water was running out...wounded men were dying. On a few ocassions my father ran out to drag some back to safety...the soldiers refused to do it.

On the tenth day my father told their commander they'd have to make a run for it or they would all die where they were...he refused. My father led them out and back to safety. Word had already come to my mother that he was killed...then a few days later word came that he was in hospital in Baghdad, but dying. She rushed there to find him smoking in bed, joking with the nurses...the man had a great sense of humor...

When he recovered and returned to camp...the Regent of Iraq paid a visit to bestow medals...my father refused to leave his tent to attend the ceremony...the Regent came to where he was and as he approached called out loudly, "where is this doctor who puts all our officers to shame"? Just what he needed. My father came out and received a slew of medals and citations...asked what he wanted most, my father replied, to go to London as part of the ten man team the government sent each year for advanced study...no Christian had ever been sent...but then my father and three of his brothers were the first Christians allowed to attend medical school...thanks to the heroic jackasses who worked for the Brits as levies..and earned the undying hatred of ever Iraqi for their ingratitude.

Having had to practise surgery many times in the field, my father wanted to study it formally. the Regent granted the request and sure enough my father's name appeared on the list...but it was taken off by the Health Ministry...claiming that the place should not be watsed on a dirty Christian.

This was the final straw for my father...soon after he punched a superior officer...he thought to force a court martial, but they did nothing...with the camp commandant telling him flat out that they knew what he was up to and no way would they relieve him of his duties.

It was then he decided to escape the country. Kuwait was just beginning to roll in wealth and the sheikhs wanted to get the British out...they were looking for qualified people to replace their British "experts" and recruiters were sent out into the Arab world to find professionals willing to live in that barren dessert town...they found him in Basra...where his manservant had overheard a plot by fellow officers to have him killed...they did those kinds of things....to get away my father injected himself with something to induce a high fever...he sent Abu Fakhri to an adjoining camp, to fetch the doctor there to whom my father told everything...this doctor insisted to the muslim officers that my father needed to be hospitalized immediately ..that if they refused to send him to Baghdad, his death would be on their hands...so reluctantly they allowed him to be driven to Baghdad...hoping no doubt he'd die anyway.

Once again news came to my mother that he was at death's door...she found him in his old bed at the hospital, jolly and content...but he'd determined to take his family to Kuwait...to go AWOL for good. At this point, his father, who had many friends in government, went to the head of the army and asked them to let his son go...to save them all the disgrace...and so they did..and we left Kuwait legally...I still remember the dusty drive south to Kuwait, crossing by flat bottomed barge from Basra...when we got within sight of the city, which hadn't changed at all since the 1700s when it had been built as a refuge for pirates...I woke up to gaze at the huge mud walls...the giant wooden gates thrown open for the day...

...to be contnd.



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