When Hasan was just three years old, he was taken to prison together with his family.

The family spent one year and two months there.

He proudly shows me photos of his and his family's prison tags but says he does not remember anything, he was too young. His mother, however, does, down to the names of all the prison guards.

Under Iraq’s Saddam Hussein regime, Kurdish people were systematically persecuted and Hasan’s family was from the Kurdish village of Halabja.

The Freedom monument in Baghdad.

In a military campaign against Iraq’s Kurdish north between 1986 and 1989, an estimated 182,000 Kurds disappeared, were deported, imprisoned or killed.

Also, in 1988, Halabja was gassed, with 5,000 Iraqi Kurds suspected of being disloyal to the regime being killed and another 10,000 injured.

Hasan, who hosted me at his house for a couple of days when I spent a month in the country a few weeks ago, is one of many people who told me disturbing stories of their experiences.

A prisoner in Iran

Another former prisoner I spoke to was Jamal, in Kirkuk. He was a soldier during the Iran/Iraq war and was taken prisoner in 1981.

In broken English peppered with Arabic, he tells me he was in an Iranian prison for 18 years until he was released in 1998 in an exchange of prisoners.

He tells me he was tortured, shot at and beaten with an electric current. He shows me the torture marks on his body as he tells me he hates Iran.

Jamal spent years being tortured in a prison in Iran. He was taken prisoner at the start of the Iran war and released in an exchange of prisoners 18 years later. He is here pictured with the child of a neighbour.

To look at his battered flesh, I have to make an effort.In 1980, Saddam had invaded Iran to gain control of the Shatt al-Arab river, annexing an oil-rich Iranian province and weakening the Iranian military.

The war ended in 1988 with no clear winner when both nations agreed to a UN ceasefire. Iraq’s economy had, by then, been crippled.

People I spoke to seemed to agree that Saddam was a very cruel man. But, in spite of his cruelty, there was some kind of system in the country and, now, there was none, they said.

This statue is a symbol of all the Peshmargas who gave their life for Kurdistan and were martyred.

The militia rule 

“Now we have hundreds of rulers, the leaders of the militias, and they are worse than him,” Amir, from Karbala, tells me as he adds that he cannot wait “to get out of this country”.

Saddam was captured by US forces on December 13, 2003, nine months following the fall of his regime. He was hiding in a hole near his hometown Tikrit.

Members of ISIS were surrounded in this building in Kirkuk by the Iraqi Security Forces in 2018.

He was then tried in a special Iraqi tribunal for crimes against humanity and was condemned to death. He was hanged on December 30, 2006.

During my month in Iraq, I backpacked the country south to north.

After I had two flights to Baghdad cancelled because of the situation in the Middle East, I decided to enter overland from Kuwait. 

The two-month visa, which I obtained at the border for US$80, welcomed me to ‘Mesopotamia’.

The road to the holy shrines in Karbala. Right: Lost in prayer at one of the shrines.

I think it was the first time that the border official who dealt with me saw a Maltese passport because he listed Spain as my nationality. This was in Arabic, so I did not realise immediately but it was not a mistake that caused me any problems. My name on that visa is ‘Maltese Rosanne’.

In my first city, Basra, I stayed for a couple of days with Ali, who graduated as a scientist after studying marine biology but works as a freelance journalist.

He tells me he loves his country in spite of its many flaws, especially Basra, where he spends about six months every year. The other six months he spends in different parts of Iraq and he has no urge to venture out of his country.

Treated by a vet

“I am very happy here, I do not need to seek happiness elsewhere,” he says. 

That may well be the case now but, in 2021, he bought a one-way ticket to Ukraine as he was a wanted man in Basra. For the situation in Iraq did not turn rosy following the fall of Saddam.

Ali was among the people organising the 2018 and 2019 revolutions, the latter stopping only because of the COVID-19 pandemic but not before 700 people, including some Ali was very close to, had died.

Ali himself had been shot in the leg and, because he had to stay underground, he had to be treated by a vet instead of a doctor.

I am very happy here, I do not need to seek happiness elsewhere

His trip to Ukraine never materialised because flights to the country were halted abruptly because of an influx of refugees from Iraq.

Afraid but happy, he fled to Karbala, changed his look and started going by another name. He lived like this in Karbala for one year. He then returned to Basra. He believes he is “safe but observed”. 

The world’s biggest cemetery in Najaf. More than six million people, mainly Shi’a muslims, are buried here.

“I don’t think they [the militia] will do anything to me. The situation has calmed down and they do not want to do anything to revive it.

“But they are watching my every move, yes, and if anything happens, they will be onto me like a ton of bricks.”

He may have escaped the militia but his mother and unborn sibling did not.

Ali’s mother was killed by the militia about 17 years ago. The emotion in his voice was very evident as he recounted the story. 

“My father was driving my pregnant mother to hospital because she was in labour. They wanted him not her. They shot at him and missed him but the shot stopped the car and grazed my mother. She and the baby both died because they needed medical assistance which they did not get.”

Church protection

The militias’ cruelty seemed to continuously crop up in my many conversations with Iraqis.

Mohammad laments that although there is now supposed to be rule of law, it is all about religion.

The militia leaders, he says, are protected by the Church, so the people cannot do anything. “And the situation will never change.”

Amir agrees. He lost a friend in a revolution eight years ago. The friend was killed during Ramadan’s holiest day. Amir still cannot understand why. This incident and others have put him off religion.

Women try to touch the shrine of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, in Karbala. He was killed on the spot of his shrine by an arrow in the Battle of Karbala in the year 680.

It also led him to work voluntarily for media organisations, recording and filming what was really happening in the country.

At one point, he was also a wanted man, so he changed his look and lived in Kurdistan for three months until he felt the situation had calmed down.

A Maltese in Baghdad 

Thankfully, my conversations in Iraq were not all so heavy and interesting but heartbreaking and disturbing.

Researching the country before my trip, I discovered that a Maltese girl, Marie Claire, from Gozo, lived in Baghdad with her Iraqi husband. So I had to meet her.

Marie Claire from Gozo with her husband Hayder.

We met at a coffee shop in a new and thriving part of the city. She tells me she is now settled in the city where she teaches English at an international school.

Her hope is that her husband will eventually be given a visa to visit Malta so that together they can spend some time with her family in Gozo.

Rosanne Zammit is a former Times of Malta journalist. Follow more of her travels on her Instagram account @roszam.