The Bomber

After my father was jailed for 4 years, my family faced a very hard financial situation because we had lost my father’s salary, it was our only source of income.

I was the eldest in my family so I started working to support my family. I found work in a railway factory. At the same time I continued my studies at night school. I had big ambitions to continue my studying at college. It was hard to get good degrees with night school but I did very well.

After 7 years of night study I finished my high school with at a good level, but it wasn’t enough to get me in to the college that I had dreamed of. So they put me in an Education College in Mosul to study chemistry. This college was restricted and could only be used by members of the Baathist party, that meant all the students must join Albaath party because they were training to be teachers, they must be loyal to the Albaath party to give Baathist education for the students. This is what they did to spread the ideas of the regime and the policies and ideology of Saddam.

Since I wasn’t Bathist member, this meant I would have to join Albaath to continue my studies or leave the college. With our education system I was able to move to lower level of college. So I moved to the college of Art in Baghdad but I faced the same problem, that meant I don’t have any other choice, either I join Albaath or I would have to leave the college, since I hated Albaath party so much, I left.

That was at the time of the terrible Iraq-Iran war. I was conscripted against my will and I became a soldier in the Iraqi army. The same hated army, which killed the family of the old Kurdish woman whom I had seen in my Aunts house when I was child.

I’m a peaceful man, a humanitarian and I don’t believe in violence, also I thought that the war was against the interest of both the Iraqis and Iranians. Military service in Iraq was compulsory so every man must join the army or he will face many different kinds of punishment. Being forced this way to join the regime that I hated so much made me feel terrible and I found myself in to deep depression because I hated the army so much.

I tried to desert so many times but it was too hard because of the security arrangements that they had. I had another feeling to contend with now, not only hatred I felt for the regime and the army but also the feelings of guilt and helplessness I felt at not being able to do anything for the victims of the regime and of Saddam.

I never forget the image of the old Kurdish woman, it came back into my mind and it led me to think of ways to escape this torment. I started to think what I could do which would be enough to leave the army without ruining my life or killing me I had the idea that if I could damage my leg then this would make me unfit to serve in the army, this idea kept running in my head for months. I felt that I needed to do some thing, anything at all to leave the army.

I started to feel that I’m a bad man and also a bloody killer and I could not stand this. Finally I thought I had the perfect plan, to stage an accident with a grenade’s trigger and a motorcycle.

I worked out that using the trigger will damage my foot and with the motorbike it will look like accident. My service in the army was at the front so it was easy for me to get a grenade.

Every 4 weeks I got home leave for one week, in August 1988 with permission for my leave, I went home with grenade trigger and I bought a motorcycle. At night I was ready to start my plan. I put the trigger on my left leg with a bandage and I pulled the trigger while was riding my motorbike, it exploded on my leg, I put the motorbike down on the ground and I opened the tank of petrol to let some come out, I put some petrol on the motorbike and on my leg and I started a fire to burn the motorbike and my leg, I thought that will make everything look like a road accident and the fire would hide the trace of trigger explosive powder.

The trigger of grenade on my leg

The trace of explosion on my leg

I didn’t tell any one about my plan so no one was there to help me after the accident, I wanted to make it look like an accident. I lay in the street with my leg bleeding and burning near my motorbike for some minutes until a passerby noticed me and stopped to take me to hospital. He kindly put me in his car and drove me to the nearest hospital, which was good of him when he didn’t even know me. In hospital I had many operations on my foot.

Unfortunately the doctor found the trace of the explosive powder and wrote a report indicating that the incident was caused by an explosive device, and was not the result of the accident at all. They sent the report to my unit. That mean I would have face a military trial for attempting self-harm it was a very serious offence.

I continued my treatment in the hospital for 1 month. Since I wasn’t able to walk on my leg and needed treatment every 2 days, they gave me permission to stay at home and to go hospital for treatment every 2 days until I become well.

Unfortunately my plan failed and I didn’t lose my foot like I had planned and also worse that this I would be facing a military court when I went to rejoin my unit, and the penalty for this would be 10 years in jail, what bad luck!!!

I kept thinking about ways of lengthening my treatment time, for that I looked in medical books about general disease to find some way to make more damage to my leg and to lengthen the time of treatment! I read about gangrene. I found it was what I was looking for and would be easy to get in my foot by stopping the blood flowing. I tied up my second toe on my left foot with thread to stop the blood from reaching the tissues, it was very painful so I did the operation in the evenings and then I took sleeping pills to overcome the pain. Then one morning I woke up with gangrene in my foot! I thought the gangrene would move to more tissues in my foot but it didn’t!!! I did it twice, the first time I lost the tip of my toe and the second time I lost the rest of it. After all this effort I did no real damage to my foot at all I just lost my second toe.

I had to have treatment for more than one year, every time it started to heal I would mess it up again. I had put myself in danger and I had borne lots of pain all to avoid joining the army and to not become a killer for the regime of Saddam. I was sure that Iraq-Iran war didn’t have any sacred reasons and Saddam used the war to enforce his regime, I hated that too much. The war and policies of Saddam were against humanity and I was having nothing to do with it.

I continued like that, going back and forwards to the hospital until the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991. After the war (which lasted only 45 days) I had the chance to get forged documents showing that I had finished my military service. Then I was able to live well and move in the streets. I never went to my unit again because I had to avoid a military trial and didn’t want to be jailed for 10 years! I lived after that with fear of being arrested by the police or the intelligence of Saddam’s regime. I was very careful in my life, I didn’t do any legal business with government, and I avoided going to any government office. When I walked in the streets I used Crutches. Because of this I didn’t had the chance to have a good job or do business legally.

4 years after the Kuwait war, the regime started to change the old documents of those who finished their military service legally and issued new documents to everyone. Also now they needed to rejoin the army for 1 month every year for training. It was very dangerous for me to continue living in Iraq without any proper legal documents and it was too late to go back to my unit after all these years that I had spent full of fear and pain. I felt it was not possible for me to continue to live my life in my own country any more. At any moment I felt there was big risk of me of being arrested and that I could face a military trial with penalty of 10 years jail or even death. At that time I felt my choices were gone, and the only way to survive was to leave Iraq in search of a better life somewhere else.

GANGRENE

Definition

Gangrene is the term used to describe the decay or death of an organ or tissue caused by a lack of blood supply. It is a complication resulting from infectious or inflammatory processes, injury, or degenerative changes associated with chronic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus.

Description

Gangrene may be caused by a variety of chronic diseases and post-traumatic, post-surgical, and spontaneous causes. There are three major types of gangrene: dry, moist, and gas (a type of moist gangrene).

Dry gangrene is a condition that results when one or more arteries become obstructed. In this type of gangrene, the tissue slowly dies, due to receiving little or no blood supply, but does not become infected. The affected area becomes cold and black, begins to dry out and wither, and eventually drops off over a period of weeks or months. Dry gangrene is most common in persons with advanced blockages of the arteries (arteriosclerosis) resulting from diabetes.

Moist gangrene may occur in the toes, feet, or legs after a crushing injury or as a result of some other factor that causes blood flow to the area to suddenly stop. When blood flow ceases, bacteria begin to invade the muscle and thrive, multiplying quickly without interference from the body's immune system.

Gas gangrene, also called myonecrosis, is a type of moist gangrene that is commonly caused by bacterial infection with Clostridium welchii, Cl. perfringes, Cl. septicum, Cl. novyi, Cl. histolyticum, Cl. sporogenes, or other species that are capable of thriving under conditions where there is little oxygen (anaerobic). Once present in tissue, these bacteria produce gasses and poisonous toxins as they grow. Normally inhabiting the gastrointestinal, respiratory, and female genital tract, they often infect thigh amputation wounds, especially in those individuals who have lost control of their bowel functions (incontinence). Gangrene, incontinence, and debility often are combined in patients with diabetes, and it is in the amputation stump of diabetic patients that gas gangrene is often found to occur.

Other causative organisms for moist gangrene include various bacterial strains, including Streptococcus and Staphylococcus. A serious, but rare form of infection with Group A Streptococcus can impede blood flow and, if untreated, can progress to synergistic gangrene, more commonly called necrotizing fasciitis, or infection of the skin and tissues directly beneath the skin.

Chronic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus, arteriosclerosis, or diseases affecting the blood vessels, such as Buerger's disease or Raynaud's disease, can cause gangrene. Post-traumatic causes of gangrene include compound fractures, burns, and injections given under the skin or in a muscle. Gangrene may occur following surgery, particularly in individuals with diabetes mellitus or other long-term (chronic) disease. In addition, gas gangrene can be also be a complication of dry gangrene or occur spontaneously in association with an underlying cancer.