EVERETT — Ahmed al-Mahana’s biggest fear when he returned to Iraq for his first visit in 12 years was not falling victim to a terrorist bombing. It was that his 10-year-old son Ali would not like Iraq.
As it turns out, he had nothing to worry about.
Ali enjoyed himself so much that when it was time to return to Everett on Feb. 20, he started crying and held onto the stairway railing in his grandparents’ home, screaming that he didn’t want to leave.
A year ago, al-Mahana was hailing the U.S. bombing of his homeland as the only way to get rid of Saddam Hussein, whose regime he fled in 1991 after participating in an uprising against the dictator.
Today, al-Mahana is preparing to return to his hometown of Najaf for good. He plans to travel to Najaf for another visit this summer — this time with his wife and two daughters as well as Ali — and hopes to move there permanently within a year.
"When I left Iraq, I thought I’d be back in two weeks," said al-Mahana, who like many other Iraqis assumed that the 1991 uprisings would force Hussein from power. "I didn’t think it would be 15 years."
Al-Mahana, 43, ended up in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, where he met his future wife, Sondos al-Tamimi, 30. She gave birth to Ali while still in the camp, and in 1994 when the boy was 6 months old, the three moved to Everett.
Al-Mahana has done well for himself here. He owns a home in south Everett and a trucking company that transports beef and chicken to the Port of Seattle.
But every day he thinks of his parents, eight siblings and others he left behind.
Al-Mahana plans to join his father’s construction business when he returns to Najaf. There’s still a shortage of materials including cement and steel, so he’d rather wait until the economy improves before going.
He isn’t worried about the violence that has plagued some parts of Iraq over the past year. Apart from an August bombing at a Shiite shrine that killed 95 people, Najaf has been calm, he said.
Even so, he realizes terrorist bombings will continue in Iraq at least for the next several years. Hussein’s supporters want to destabilize the country, he said.
"They’re trying to show people there was peace and security with the dictatorship," al-Mahana said. "Their goal is to show people the dictatorship is better than now."
The bombings don’t make him fearful of returning. After all, he said, the United States, Russia and many other countries are also targets of terrorist attacks.
Al-Mahana wants U.S. troops to stay in Iraq until the country stabilizes. He wants the troops to train Iraqis and gradually hand over security to them.
He is optimistic about Iraq’s future. Unlike some of his countrymen, he is patient about the progress the United States has made in returning Iraq to normalcy. Those who say the United States has moved too slowly in constructing roads and sewer systems don’t realize the monumental task of rebuilding the country, he said.
Al-Mahana flew to Amman, Jordan, on Dec. 11 and hired a driver to take him and Ali to Najaf. His mother was the first person to greet him when he arrived. His father and dozens of other relatives and friends were waiting for him at the main entrance of his parents’ home, but he entered through a side gate.
"My mom for some reason was near the side door," al-Mahana said. "Maybe her heart told her. She started to cry and gave me a big hug."
For al-Mahana, the reunion was bittersweet. He was overjoyed to see his mother, but shocked at her physical deterioration. His mother, who was healthy when he left Iraq, is ill with diabetes and an eye disease.
As he sat on the living-room sofa in his south Everett home leafing through an album of photographs from the trip, he stopped at portraits of his 60-year-old mother and 90-year-old grandmother.
"My mother looks older than my grandmother," al-Mahana said.
So much had changed, he thought to himself during reunions with people he hadn’t seen since 1991. Many friends from his hometown were dead, murdered by Hussein’s troops. Siblings and friends who had been children or teenagers when he left were now married with their own families. He didn’t recognize many of them at first. There was so much to catch up on, and two months was not nearly enough time, he said.
"Every day, I couldn’t rest from 8 in the morning until midnight," he said as page after page of his photo album showed him and Ali amid smiling relatives and friends. "Everyone kept coming to visit me."
Since al-Mahana’s return, he has spent hours thumbing through the photos and watching the 15 hours of video he taped during his visit.
In one video, al-Mahana and his friends and relatives are dancing in the street, clapping, laughing and shooting guns in the air to celebrate Hussein’s capture. U.S. troops seized the former dictator the day after al-Mahana arrived in Iraq.
Another image shows hundreds of men and boys in a Najaf mosque striking themselves on the back with metal whips to feel the same type of pain suffered by the seventh-century Shiite martyr Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed.
Ali was one of the faithful. The boy likes living in Everett, but he prefers Najaf. There, he can spend time with his grandparents and other relatives, and he sees more kids who are like him. And he said he feels freer in Iraq.
"It’s like an adventure there," Ali said. "There are trees you can climb there, and you can walk in the street to stores and everything. And they like playing marbles. The only thing I didn’t like there was the pizza. It’s not very good."
Ali is comfortable with both U.S. and Iraqi culture. His friends are a mix of Iraqis and U.S.-born children, he watches Arabic-language variety shows and American cartoons, and he shifts easily from Arabic to English.
But his mother has never been able to adjust to life in Snohomish County.
"What is here for me?" al-Tamimi said in Arabic, with al-Mahana translating to English. "When I go to Top Foods or the mall with my head scarf, I feel strange. People don’t say anything, but they look at me. In Iraq, everyone dresses like me and speaks the same language."
Al-Mahana looks back fondly on his decade in Everett. But he always thought of Everett as a temporary refuge while he waited for Hussein’s overthrow. His recent visit made him even more anxious to return to Najaf, where he can see his parents every day and where he can immerse his three children in the customs he grew up with.
"When I get back to Iraq, I’ll miss America," al-Mahana said. "America will always be in my heart. It gave me shelter, a job, everything. But it’s time to go back. My reason to be here in America is done. Saddam is no more."
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com
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