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thedrifter
10-27-06, 12:46 AM
Beyond the Battlefield
By Gail Cameron Wescott
From Reader's Digest
November 2006

Something was wrong. It was a blistering June morning in 2005 when Marine Maj. Christopher Phelps led his team into the center of Saqlawiyah, a small Iraqi city ten miles from Fallujah. The place normally teemed with vendors hawking cucumbers, tomatoes and a hodgepodge of goods, but in front of the soldiers now stretched a chaotic pile of dusty rubble and thatched roofs. Fellow Marines, who thought the market a perfect place for insurgents to hide homemade bombs, had demolished it overnight at the request of the Saqlawiyah city council.

Phelps noticed groups of Iraqis quietly glaring at them. He didn't like the feel of it. Neither did his Iraqi interpreter, Mustafa Subhy Abdualla. Sixty-five U.S. soldiers had been killed by insurgents the previous month in Iraq, and the marketplace was located in eastern Al Anbar Province, one of the most murderous sections of the Sunni Triangle. Phelps and Abdualla looked at each other. "Let's get out of here!" shouted Abdualla as Phelps simultaneously ordered his team to take cover in the nearby police station.

"Was a bomb hidden there that morning?" asked Phelps afterward. "I don't know. The point is that Mustafa and I were totally in sync. That was true in every situation, every time we worked together."

As they had come to depend on each other for their lives and the lives of their team members, the major and his interpreter had developed a communication that went beyond words. Says Abdualla, "I read his mind, he read mine."

Their friendship would change their lives in ways they never guessed. They had first met four months earlier. Phelps had participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was now on his second tour of duty. Upon arriving at Camp Fallujah, he headed for the "Terp Hootch" -- translators' bunkhouse -- to meet his interpreter, who'd be crucial to the success of this mission. Phelps would be leading a civil affairs team involved in the daunting task of rebuilding the country.

On the surface, the two had little in common. Tall and gregarious, Phelps, 34, grew up in a large, outgoing family in rural Kansas and, with wife Lisa, had four young sons, ages three to eight. Abdualla, single and soft-spoken, was a 30-year-old chemical engineer, raised by his widowed mother and two older sisters in an elegant home in urban Baghdad.

That first night as the sun set over nearby Baharia Lake, a favorite vacation spot of Saddam Hussein's murderous sons, Phelps asked Abdualla one probing question: Why did he want the job? Translating for U.S. and Coalition forces involved extremely hazardous duty. Branded traitors by the insurgents, most interpreters adopted fictional names; some even wore ski masks.

Abdualla answered, "You guys came and provided an opportunity for my country. I want to give something back."

Phelps liked what he heard. "He was talking about loyalty and sacrifice and sounded like Marines I hang out with." As Phelps turned to go, he casually asked Abdualla what music he listened to. "George Strait," he replied.

Phelps blinked. "You mean the country-western singer, King George?" Abdualla smiled. "Oh man, we're gonna get along great."

For eight months, Phelps's six-member team worked to earn the trust of the citizens of Saqlawiyah and Fallujah. They spent long days talking with locals about building water treatment plants, power grids, schools and medical clinics, and explaining how to set up city councils that would represent the people's interests.

Phelps relied heavily on Abdualla, who offered more than simple translations. "You can say 'hello' in different ways," says Abdualla, who often served as an early warning system.

"I'd be talking to a sheik," explains Phelps, "and I'd hear Mustafa saying quietly, 'Sir, he's lying.'"

Each morning when the team set out, Phelps recited a simple prayer: "I hope to God we make it back." Incoming fire from snipers and the threat of homemade bombs were routine. "It was like going on patrol in Vietnam looking for an ambush," says Phelps. "But you can't worry about being blown up. If you're constantly fearful, then the enemy has won."

"Even when bombs destroyed our vehicles," says Abdualla, "we had to keep moving. That's all you can do -- keep moving."

Back at Camp Fallujah in the evenings, Phelps would smoke a cigar while Abdualla puffed on Marlboro Lights. They learned they had more in common than they thought. Both of their fathers were military men; their mothers were teachers.

Phelps's dad, Master Gunnery Sgt. Kendall Phelps, was so devoted to the Marine Corps that he rejoined at age 57, much to the chagrin of his wife, Sherma. He wanted to deploy to Iraq with his son (see My Son, My Hero) and was stationed in Ramadi.

Abdualla's father, Subhy Abdualla Mohammed, died in 1976 when his only son was two. He had a distinguished 29-year career in the Iraqi army but refused to join Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party when it rose to power in the '70s. His wife, Nidhal, attributed his death from a massive heart attack at age 47 to pressures Ba'ath operatives put on him.

Abdualla paid little attention to Iraqi politics until the first Gulf War. He was 16 and couldn't understand why Hussein was invading Kuwait and torturing people. "Suddenly there was fear that you could lose your life because you disagreed," he says.

When U.S. and Coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, Abdualla was ecstatic. "I felt like we were in a hole in the middle of the world, waving and screaming with nobody hearing us -- then here come these great guys," he says. He quickly applied to be a translator for the United States.

After just a month on the job, he was patrolling with the 82nd Airborne along Fallujah's main road when there was a huge explosion. "Within seconds, we had eight casualties," Abdualla recalls. His lieutenant, still yelling commands to his patrol, was bleeding profusely from a shrapnel wound to his leg. Though he had no first-aid training, Abdualla rushed through gunfire to pull him under a dump truck; he removed his flak jacket and applied pressure. He was later credited with saving the lieutenant's life.

By the time Chris Phelps arrived, 16 months later, Abdualla had been through both battles for Fallujah and was well known to the insurgents, who had made him a target. He had been shot at and pursued Mafioso-style on the road to Baghdad. Still, he chose not to wear a mask. The purpose of the civil affairs team, he reasoned, was to befriend his fellow countrymen; an interpreter wearing a ski mask seemed a contradiction. "If I die," he said, "I die doing the right thing."

But Phelps worried about him. "When you are in combat with someone, you rely on them day in and out," he says. One evening, Phelps asked Abdualla if he had ever thought of going to America. Abdualla confessed that it had been his lifelong dream, but how could it come true? "It's going to happen," Phelps replied.

He helped Abdualla apply to the University of Kansas, Phelps's alma mater, to pursue a master's in economics, and in August, Abdualla was accepted. The next month, Phelps's team, having completed its tour, packed up to leave. "We were hugging and crying," Abdualla remembers. "It had only been eight months, but it was like I'd known these guys forever." Phelps handed his terp a ceramic jayhawk, KU's mascot, and said he'd see him in the United States.

Abdualla rented a car and driver for the 12-hour, 500-mile drive to Jordan to apply for a visa; the U.S. embassy in Baghdad wasn't set up to handle immigration. His 64-year-old mother, Nidhal, accompanied him. Both were dozing when the driver hit the brakes and gasped, "Mujahedin!" Jolted awake, Abdualla looked out the window and saw a dozen men gathered around a bleeding figure on the median. Firing an AK-47 at point-blank range, an insurgent executed the man on the spot. When the driver said the man had likely been captured because he worked for the Americans, Nidhal turned to her son and began to sob.

At the embassy, Abdualla presented his paperwork and was fingerprinted and told to wait. A few minutes later, the clerk returned and said simply, "The application was refused." Abdualla was devastated.

Phelps, back home in Kansas, exploded when Abdualla, who had returned to Fallujah to resume his interpreter duties, phoned him with the news. He decided it was his mission to get his terp out of Iraq for good. "I was going to make this happen," says Phelps. After contacting Kansas lawmakers and others, he learned of a special immigration program for Iraqis who had contributed significantly to the U.S. mission. He assembled a package detailing Abdualla's family history, education and service to send to top Marine officials and the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments. And in March 2006, he flew to Washington for a meeting at the Pentagon. Later that month, the visa was finally approved -- a little more than a year after Phelps had first arrived in Fallujah.

Abdualla, who initially had doubts, said goodbye to his mother in Baghdad. It was a traumatic parting. In December, a fatwa had been issued on her life, and threatening flyers were left in her garage. But Nidhal was adamant that her son accept this opportunity that, she said, "might never come again." Finally, on April 13, Abdualla boarded a Royal Jordanian flight for Chicago.

Phelps drove eight hours to meet the plane. In full dress uniform, he stood at the gate, with video camera in hand. When he spotted Abdualla, he shouted, "Welcome to America!" In his car, he blared George Strait's "Ace in the Hole." The two cruised into Chicago and stopped along Lake Michigan for a smoke. "I felt like screaming and jumping," says Abdualla. As the two continued on to Kansas, says Phelps, "sometimes I'd look over at Mustafa and we'd just start laughing. We couldn't believe we'd done it."

Abdualla adapted quickly, acquiring a driver's license and a taste for barbecue in no time. He settled into a Kansas City apartment, and has spent so much of his spare time with Chris and Lisa Phelps's sons that they've begun calling him their second daddy. Abdualla is teaching the boys Arabic. "Soon we'll speak it so well," says six-year-old Dalton, "that our teacher won't know what we're saying."

At press time, 147,000 U.S. soldiers were serving in Iraq. To send a message to the troops, visit americasupportsyou.com .