Iraqi man hid 22 years in a wall

[MrSnowman]

Iraqi man hides in a wall for 20 years

From the British Broadcasting Corporation Wesbite

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2938998.stm

"Iraqi man ends 20 years in hiding


After two decades in hiding, an Iraqi man has finally emerged back into the real world - squinting at the unaccustomed light.
Twenty-one years ago, Saddam Hussein placed an execution order on Jawad Amir for supporting an outspoken Shia cleric.

Mr Amir escaped - not into a far-off town or neighbouring country, but into a space sandwiched between two walls in his parents' home.

He said for the whole of his hiding he never left that small, dark space and had only a tiny peephole to view the outside world.

Few possessions

"When I felt the danger I escaped to my parents' house, then I prepared my hiding place to keep away from the people so no one could ever report me to the regime," he explained.

"In this place I prepared everything I needed to survive."

The narrow space contains few possessions - a radio, teeth he lost while in hiding and pictures of his younger self.


Jawad passed the time listening to the radio
He said he listened to the BBC's Arabic Service and read the Koran to pass the time. He drank river water from a small well.

Only his closest family members knew he was there. Even the neighbours in his tiny village of Jobah thought he had disappeared.

But after Saddam Hussein's statue fell in Baghdad, Mr Amir - now 49 - finally felt it safe to leave his hiding place.

His mother, Ramsya Haddi, was elated.

"I feel as if I had just given birth to him again," she said.

Mr Amir said he feels well and is optimistic about the future."

As someone who is mildly claustrophobic, I'm feeling rather ill.
:eek!!!!:

 

[elvissa]

I remember other similar stories in FT about Bosnians and such who hid in attics for years. Terrifying.

 

[Anonymous]

SHAMMAR, Iraq — For 22 years, Jawad Amer Sayed was a dead man.

HE WAS on the run from Saddam Hussein’s police in 1981, and instead of fleeing into exile, he decided to stay at home and hide.
Inside a false wall he built between two rooms.
For as long as it would take.
It took 22 years.
But on April 10, the day after Hussein fell from power, Sayed emerged from his hideaway to the amazement of relatives and friends. Only his mother, younger brother and two sisters knew from the beginning what had happened to him. An aunt learned later by mistake but had kept quiet.
Everybody else thought he was dead.
Sometimes, so did he.
“Most of the time, it was very, very quiet. I think only death could be so quiet,” he said while holding court with visitors and admirers one recent day.

WELL-KNOWN STORY
It seems like everybody in Iraq knows Sayed’s story. It reached Baghdad by way of the relative of a television reporter who interviewed him. Newspapers ran with the tale. Iraqis argued about his feat over coffee and tea. Young people questioned whether anyone could — or would want to — hide for so long. They’d rather die, some said. Older people expressed less skepticism — they wondered why more Iraqis didn’t think of doing what he had done.
Sayed said he went outside his homemade tomb only twice — to rebuild and repair the chamber.
“The last time I saw him, he was taller than me,” said Kamel Khalef, a neighbor who stands about 5 feet 8. Sayed embraced Khalef and came up only to his nose.
Sayed’s face is all cheekbone and beard. He lost his teeth, and stores them in a matchbox.
“They fell one by one. I kept them to remember the time I spent. Look at this molar. This one was 1990,” he said.
It is a testament to the fear instilled by Hussein that Sayed came up with a solution that condemned himself to solitary confinement.
He said he was a follower of the Dawa party, a Shiite Muslim group that battled Hussein for decades and has recently, like Sayed himself, emerged into the light of day. Secret police arrested two of his friends and they were executed. “I saw their names on a list of the executed. I thought up this idea. I built the wall in one night,” he said.

Remainder and full story here.

 

[TheOriginalCujo]

Lest we forget what was going on in a country that, until the gulf war, we thought of as an ally.

Cujo

 

[Pete Younger]

And still they say it was an unjust war...better not get into that again though.