What Happens Next:
From Baghdad to Annandale
By J.p. Lawrence
One chance.
Ammar Al-Rubaiay has one chance to score against the top-ranked soccer team in America. The goliaths on St. Lawrence’s soccer team have stymied Bard College’s efforts all day, but the game has somehow remained close.
And now Bard’s striker passes the ball to Ammar who takes one touch and somehow beats both defenders nearby. Ammar can see the goal right in front of him.
A long road has led to this point.
The next second seems like an eternity.
Ammar is shocked—everyone in the crowd is shocked. He can feel the anticipation like a surge roll through the crowd. Everyone on both benches screams as he gathers his left leg and kicks.
Ammar has a brother and sister, both younger, and he loves playing Mario and playing soccer in the street.
His neighborhood is a quiet one, and if you have a ball, you’ll find a game, Ammar recalls.
His father once worked for a company owned by Saddam Hussein’s government. But then the company gave his father a choice: join the Baath party, or get out. And so Ammar’s father got out.
Ammar’s childhood is spent moving around as his parents work odd jobs: making clothes, working at a sweets business, taking engineering jobs every now and then.
His parents, Ammar says, would talk about the good old days, of the days before Saddam became a tyrant, when there were more jobs, better pay, and no fear.
But now Ammar is 12, and everyone is afraid. The US military prepares their invasion, and war hangs like a hammer over Baghdad. Ammar and his family are not in Baghdad. They and four other families have fled their homes to wait out the war in the countryside.
The grownups talk and talk about what is going to happen. Ammar hears them, but he does not understand at that age. He just senses that something is going to happen—something bad.
His mother wakes him up one morning and tells him about a statue in Firdaus Square—a 40-foot tall statue of Saddam Hussein in a suit, his arm held up in a salute. As Ammar and his mother watch on their television, a crowd of Iraqis and the US military tear the statue down. Everything becomes real at that moment, Ammar says. His mother tells him, “We’re going home.”
And now everyone begins to say what could not be said during Saddam’s rule. Everyone talks about what’s going to happen next, who the next president is going to be, what the Americans were really trying to do. In Baghdad, there is no electricity and there are looted houses everywhere, but Saddam is gone.
“No one knew what was coming next,” Ammar says, “but everyone expected it would have to be better than Saddam.”
But now Ammar is 16, and things aren’t better. Things are getting worse. His neighborhood empties as people flee to leave the violence. Ammar takes the taxi to school and sees bombs and dead bodies in the street. Car bombs in the distance break the quiet of the morning.
Groups of young men, their minds filled with promises of money and heaven, roam Baghdad, while the US military hides behind their armor and weapons.
Once, the Americans were everywhere and little children would greet them and try their English. But as the years went on, everything became more dangerous, Ammar says. The children stayed inside and played video games until the power went out. There was so much violence and there were bombs everywhere. No one knew who wanted to kill and who wanted to just say hello.
Soon, if a terrorist group hit a vehicle in a US convoy, the soldiers would go and shoot up the whole street, Ammar says. Just shoot randomly at all the houses around.
“By 2007, it was worse than it was when Saddam was there,” says Ammar.
And now Ammar is 17 and getting ready to leave Baghdad. He has just been accepted into a program that will bring him to America for a year.
The process of getting accepted and then acquiring a visa has lasted months. Ammar has never left the country. He doesn’t even have a suitcase.
A few days later, he says goodbye to his parents and leaves for a year in America.
And now Ammar is in America and he cannot go back.
He was supposed to go back to Iraq after 10 months. But when violence claimed more and more Iraqis connected to Americans, his host family in Pennsylvania realized he could not return.
He received asylum from the United States. He is now a permanent resident.
He has been in America for five years now. He is studying biology at Bard College and hopes someday to work in the medical field—podiatry, perhaps.
His family still lives in Baghdad. Life is safer since Ammar left. But his parents still lie when people ask where their son is—they say Syria, or Jordan.
He calls them late at night, twice a week. He hopes someday to go back home.
Ammar’s foot swings like a hammer and the St. Lawrence goalie stands poised and ready and ball takes off and travels and falls—wide. The crowd groans and Ammar runs back up the field and the game breaks apart for Bard. They lose.
But next year, Ammar says, he is going to play St. Lawrence again, and when that game comes, he will score against them.
He’ll get another chance then.