Lewis Alsamari

The book I read was Escape from Saddam written by Lewis Alsamari. This book is an autobiography that would fit under the nonfiction genre. Escape from Saddam is about an Iraqi named Lewis Alsamari, originally named Sarmed Alsamari. Alsamari spent most of his childhood in the UK. When he was twelve years old he moved back to Iraq. Alsamari had wanted to return to the UK ever since. After having a poor attendance in college, Alsamari was drafted into the Iraqi military. Soon after, he was offered a position in the Iraqi military intelligence. Although this job would provide him with power and a nice paycheck, he still didn’t want to serve under Saddam’s regime. With the help of his uncle Saad, Alsamari escaped to Jordan, then to Malaysia, and then finally to the UK where he was granted political asylum. Unfortunately, while Alsamari was safe out of Iraq and had started a new life in the UK, his family back in Iraq was being tortured by military officials because they wouldn’t give Alsamari away. Now Alsamari is determined to free his family from the claws of Saddam and his corrupt regime.
There are numerous themes in Escape from Saddam. A few of them are fear, brutality, and loyalty to one’s family. These three themes are prominent throughout the book. These themes are even more interesting because the book is a true story and yet a thriller at the same time.
If there is one thing Saddam and his regime excelled in, it was enforcing brutality upon the citizens of Iraq. The regime strongly opposed western civilizations and their cultures. They said that AIDS was “A western disease, an epidemic confined to the relative promiscuity of the non-Arab world” (p. 32). Alsamari recalls a time when there were posters everywhere that had four pictures of women and their names and they claimed that these four women were HIV-positive and “Were part of a wicked Zionist plot to deliberately spread AIDS around our great nation” (p.32). These four women were later informally arrested without the means of defending themselves through a legal process, and then thrown into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison where people were treated like scum. What happened to them next was completely brutal. “Stripped of their clothes, they were placed, alive and screaming, into an incinerator so that they and their ‘vile disease’ could be utterly destroyed” (p.33).
Undoubtedly, Saddam and his regime’s brutality reached the army as well. It was made sure that the lessons that were being taught to the recruits were beaten into them. The recruits were constantly beaten if they didn’t do something right or if they didn’t do something as fast as the trainers wanted them. Instead of crawling under a barbed wire fence in 60 seconds, Alsamari did it in 68. The trainers beat him up, pushed him into a muddy pit, and had him climb his way out. However, there was another form of brutality in the army; interrogation training. They would tie a soldier to a chair and give him a story that he was in captivity and his captors wanted certain information. Other soldiers were then ordered to try to beat it out of him.
Saddam and his regime made sure that his people were afraid of him. This way he could maintain power over Iraq. Other than the example with the four women who allegedly had AIDS, there is another example in which Saddam exercised his power to put fear into the people. When Alsamari was a child, there was a huge march or thousands of people there to celebrate Saddam’s glory. Within that huge crowd, there was a small group of people who were shouting protests against Saddam. Helicopters were immediately ordered to fly over the crowd and spray white paint on them. Then soldiers were ordered to shoot anyone with white paint on them. Some people were lucky and survived the atrocity.
There is a motif in Escape form Saddam and that is a line that is spoken by Alsamari’s uncle, Saad. “The genuine man never forgets his family”. This means to stay loyal to your family. Saad did everything he could to help Alsamari escape from Iraq. After settling in the UK years later, Alsamari set himself for one goal; to get his family out of Iraq. At first, Alsamari tried to find a legal way to bring his family to the UK. But after seeing that any legal way of setting his family free is out of the question, he resorted to illegal actions. It took two tries to get his family out of Iraq. The first time he stole money from the company that he was currently working for. With that money, he paid for fake passports. Unfortunately they were caught in Malaysia and his family had to be deported. The second time, Alsamari arranged for his family to be smuggled to Turkey. Afterward they flew to the UK were they were finally granted political asylum. This shows that Alsamari was willing to stay loyal to his family even if it meant breaking the law.
There isn’t anything that I dislike about Escape from Saddam. I absolutely loved it and I didn’t want to put it down. It was as though I was reading a thriller but it was more thrilling than a thriller because it was all true. This book teaches so much. It teaches you about live in the army, live in Iraq under Saddam’s rule, real fear and paranoia, and loyalty. While reading this book I began to feel more grateful for the everyday liberty that I possess and have taken for granted. This book really opens your eyes to how good you have it and I would recommend this book to everyone.… (más)