Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs Read Online Free Page B
Author: Jim DeFelice, Johnny Walker
activities in school. As I said, my heart really wasn’t into studying. I stayed in high school for five years, but never did well enough to pass. As a consequence, like all Iraqi men not going on to college or able to buy their way out of service, I had to go into the military.
Before I left Mosul, though, I made one last, very important discovery: a girl named Soheila. She changed my life.
2
Love and War
O NE HOT AUGUST day in 1987, just before I joined the army, I spotted a pretty girl going into a house near when my cousin lived. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Ever. At that very moment, I felt something I had never felt before. Her name was Soheila.
How do I describe that feeling? Even in Arabic, I struggle to find the right words. My tongue is not capable of describing my emotion in that moment. There is no way to describe how my heart boiled inside my chest.
I couldn’t keep my feelings to myself. I told my sister, who told Soheila. She seemed unimpressed. Fifteen or sixteen at the time, she brushed off my interest. She was concentrating on her schoolwork, hoping to go into medicine when she got older. She was hoping to be a doctor or something else important—she had a flare for writing. She had no time for boys, let alone me.
I’m not one to take no for an answer, especially in something so important as love. My sister tried to let me down gently, but I paid no attention: I knew what I wanted. I called Soheila a few days later.
“Hey, Soheila,” I told her. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to be friends.”
That was apparently the right thing to say, because she didn’t just blow me off. Soon, we were talking to each other practically every day.
Though I’d never taken much notice of her, in fact our families had once been very close. Soheila’s great-grandparents had come to Mosul in 1937 from Basra, the large Shiite-dominated city far to the south of Iraq. They had relocated to save Soheila’s great-grandfather’s life. He’d been in a conflict there that resulted in someone’s death. Though the actual circumstances now are obscure, it seems obvious enough that he was blamed; in order to escape retribution the family fled north, looking for a city where they weren’t known.
They found their way to Mosul. Without family, they had no one really to rely on. My grandfather happened to befriend the family and helped them get established; for a time they even lived in the same house. The two families grew close enough that my mother and her sisters considered Soheila’s mother and aunts to be cousins.
Some of that connection was lost as the offspring grew. The girls moved out on their own to various places, and by the time I was in high school I personally had only a slight acquaintance with the family. But the women in the families remembered their friends, and my mother and Soheila’s mother would occasionally share tea when they saw each other. That family connection turned out to be important to helping me fulfill my growing desire.
I haven’t talked about religion to this point because it hasn’t been a critical part of the story. Our family was Sunni, the largest branch of Islam in the world, and the most numerous in Mosul by far. We weren’t overly observant, which was pretty much the norm when I was growing up. I might have gone to a mosque once or twice a year, if that. Soheila’s family was from the Shia branch of the religion. Today, there is much animosity between Shia and Sunni in Iraq. This wasn’t true at the time. And since her family had been in the city for decades, most people had no idea that they were Shia. Religion simply wasn’t as important as it would become later on, and for most people it wasn’t a divider. It certainly didn’t keep us apart.
Iraqi culture was a different story. A boy phoning a girl is frowned on at best, forbidden at worst— especially if there is a love interest.
Because of the closeness of our families
Before I left Mosul, though, I made one last, very important discovery: a girl named Soheila. She changed my life.
2
Love and War
O NE HOT AUGUST day in 1987, just before I joined the army, I spotted a pretty girl going into a house near when my cousin lived. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Ever. At that very moment, I felt something I had never felt before. Her name was Soheila.
How do I describe that feeling? Even in Arabic, I struggle to find the right words. My tongue is not capable of describing my emotion in that moment. There is no way to describe how my heart boiled inside my chest.
I couldn’t keep my feelings to myself. I told my sister, who told Soheila. She seemed unimpressed. Fifteen or sixteen at the time, she brushed off my interest. She was concentrating on her schoolwork, hoping to go into medicine when she got older. She was hoping to be a doctor or something else important—she had a flare for writing. She had no time for boys, let alone me.
I’m not one to take no for an answer, especially in something so important as love. My sister tried to let me down gently, but I paid no attention: I knew what I wanted. I called Soheila a few days later.
“Hey, Soheila,” I told her. “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to be friends.”
That was apparently the right thing to say, because she didn’t just blow me off. Soon, we were talking to each other practically every day.
Though I’d never taken much notice of her, in fact our families had once been very close. Soheila’s great-grandparents had come to Mosul in 1937 from Basra, the large Shiite-dominated city far to the south of Iraq. They had relocated to save Soheila’s great-grandfather’s life. He’d been in a conflict there that resulted in someone’s death. Though the actual circumstances now are obscure, it seems obvious enough that he was blamed; in order to escape retribution the family fled north, looking for a city where they weren’t known.
They found their way to Mosul. Without family, they had no one really to rely on. My grandfather happened to befriend the family and helped them get established; for a time they even lived in the same house. The two families grew close enough that my mother and her sisters considered Soheila’s mother and aunts to be cousins.
Some of that connection was lost as the offspring grew. The girls moved out on their own to various places, and by the time I was in high school I personally had only a slight acquaintance with the family. But the women in the families remembered their friends, and my mother and Soheila’s mother would occasionally share tea when they saw each other. That family connection turned out to be important to helping me fulfill my growing desire.
I haven’t talked about religion to this point because it hasn’t been a critical part of the story. Our family was Sunni, the largest branch of Islam in the world, and the most numerous in Mosul by far. We weren’t overly observant, which was pretty much the norm when I was growing up. I might have gone to a mosque once or twice a year, if that. Soheila’s family was from the Shia branch of the religion. Today, there is much animosity between Shia and Sunni in Iraq. This wasn’t true at the time. And since her family had been in the city for decades, most people had no idea that they were Shia. Religion simply wasn’t as important as it would become later on, and for most people it wasn’t a divider. It certainly didn’t keep us apart.
Iraqi culture was a different story. A boy phoning a girl is frowned on at best, forbidden at worst— especially if there is a love interest.
Because of the closeness of our families
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