Refugees: Omar's Journey

By EDWARD W. DESMOND/SHUSHAMI

Talia is standing by the small window inside a worn tent, a streak of morning light framing her pretty face in the smoky air. She smiles at the baby in her arms, and for a singular, brief moment she looks like a Madonna in the midst of hell. Her three elder children are sitting on a blanket set on the cold, damp ground. The eldest, a boy of seven, has a vacant look in his eyes, and he twitches every few seconds, like someone lost beyond the edge of pain. His younger brother and sister gaze at him, then look quickly away, a fog of panic filling their eyes as they contemplate their mad brother, the gloom of the tent, their possessions reduced to a teapot, a blanket and a few ragged clothes. Omar, their father, clears his throat and volunteers, "The boy, he has been like that since the bombing. He is disturbed, I think."

Omar and his family come from Kirkuk, the northern Iraqi city that was captured by Kurdish guerrillas in late March and retaken by Iraqi forces about a week later. Omar decided to flee Kirkuk after he saw the Iraqi Mi-24 helicopters hanging like avenging demons on the horizon, unleashing their terrifying rocket fire and evoking the threat of what he feared most: chemical weapons that make every breath a draft of fire. Not only was Omar sure that the Iraqis would kill many Kurds in Kirkuk in reprisal, but he also knew that he would be in more trouble than most. He is an ex-Iraqi army lieutenant who refused the call to return to duty after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. So he gathered his family and a few belongings and started the trip toward Iran, leaving his car behind because the road was already a chaotic snarl.

They walked and hitched rides for six days to reach the border, enduring sub-zero cold, rain and snowstorms that left the children shivering uncontrollably. They marched high into the hills of Kurdistan along narrow mountain roads deep in slippery mud, thinking a thousand times that their world had come to an end. The worst moment came at a mobbed road crossing, where Omar and Talia, each with two children, were separated as they struggled aboard different trucks. Omar did not see his wife again for two days, and in his arms was their seven-month-old daughter, weakly sobbing for her mother's milk. Other nursing mothers saved the little girl's life by giving her a turn at their breasts.

Yet wretched as they are, Omar's family is among the blessed ones. They live in one of the thousands of tents pitched on the steep slopes of the Sirwan River valley, a few miles inside the Iranian border. The Iranian army provides shelter, bread every day, and a crude dispensary gives basic medical help, especially against rampant dysentery caused by the lack of clean drinking water. But Omar's family must make do with only one blanket to stave off the frigid nights. The terrible cold and disease claim young lives every day, a tragedy underscored by the cemetery of small, fresh graves on a grassy knoll above the camp. A red wash of wild poppies is in bloom, a sad bouquet expressing heaven's remorse.

Life is even more chaotic at the border checkpoint up the road, where a crush of vehicles and humanity begins and stretches back into Iraq for miles. With maddening slowness, Iranian troops let a sprinkling of refugees through the checkpoint, taking care not to let them pass before the campsites are ready. Perhaps they could be settled faster, but so far the Iranians have been left to do the job almost entirely by themselves. Commitments from Western countries to help the more than 1 million Kurds at the border have just started to pick up beyond the initial trickle according to angry international relief officials, who believe the slowness in part reflects Western distaste for Iran's Islamic government.

One stretch of the road has a steep mountain wall on one side and a near vertical drop on the other, in places falling away for several hundred feet. Old men overtaken by exhaustion sprawl dangerously close to the brink. Other refugees step over them, too tired to lend a hand. Distressed mothers, wondering when dehydration and shock will claim their children, hold their diarrhea-plagued babies over the road's edge and let them relieve themselves.

Where the roadside broadens into a high meadow, families camp out under whatever shelter they can find, usually by draping tattered plastic sheets over a frame of sticks. The surrounding mountains were a major battleground during the Iraq-Iran war, and minefields are everywhere. Relief officials say dozens of refugees have been killed or maimed after straying off the road.

The fleeing Kurds are barefoot peasants as well as prosperous city dwellers and farmers who have tried to escape with their cars, trucks and tractors. A white Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera joins the line, along with a brand-new Massey- Ferguson harvesting combine. Iranian soldiers drive up the road, throwing bread to the Kurds and starting a frantic scramble that sends more than one person rolling down a steep embankment. When the crowd parts, old men patiently pick the crumbs out of rocks and mud, their only margin of survival. Whenever the refugees discover a reporter in their midst, they crowd around and find someone to express their fury in English: "Why did George Bush do this to us? He has betrayed us. Why did he tell us to rise up? Why didn't he shoot down the helicopters?" The questions are the same, over and over again.

At the border post, the Iranian troops carefully search each vehicle for weapons -- Tehran insists that Kurdish fighters will find no haven in Iran -- as well as articles offensive to strict Islamic sensibilities. Pop-music tapes, for example, are forbidden, as is immodest dress. One woman, about to drive her Volkswagen up to the checkpoint, frantically tied a scarf over her hair but still stood out in a short skirt and knitted leggings. She managed to get through the checkpoint, but not before giving away her collection of tapes.

The flight is particularly hard on more prosperous Kurds, who are no more prepared to endure the rigors of refugee life than American suburbanites would . be. Khaleda, 19, a well-dressed university student, escaped with her brother and two cousins. Their parents gave them the car and told them to go, fearing that the Iraqis would kidnap and kill the young people, as they had after past uprisings.

But they have languished in the long queue of cars on the Iraqi side of the border for two weeks. Khaleda and her friends, seeing the hardships ahead in the refugee camp, are among a very small group who have decided to go back to their parents and take a chance that Saddam will honor his pledge of amnesty for the Kurds. "We can't stand it," she says. "At home we have a nice big house and lots of money. We don't trust Saddam. But we hope he will leave us alone." Nothing in her face shows that she believes her own words.