Escape from Saddam

January 28, 2008
For Alsamari, an Iraqi-born first-time author best known for playing the lead 9/11 hijacker in the movie United 93
, real life had already proved dramatic and terrifying, as this gripping memoir wastes no time in conveying. Raised for several years in Manchester, England, Alsamari was unexpectedly sent back to Baghdad by his father a few years before the first Gulf War and he spends the next 10 years dreaming of a way out. Induction in the army in 1994—a punishing experience that the author describes in characteristically straightforward and persuasive prose—leads to a lifelong sentence: recruitment into Saddam's military intelligence apparatus. With the help of his beloved uncle Saad, Alsamari begins the long and perilous journey to political asylum in England, where he eventually engineers the rescue of his family, now gravely endangered by his desertion. The increasingly breathless account—filled with the best and worst of human actions—comes across in vivid and telling scenes spanning Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia and the U.K. Alsamari's moving personal story is representative of a more general plight, which, as broached in an eloquent and thoughtful epilogue, has only grown more complex after 9/11.

February 15, 2008
Alsamari is a London-based actor who played one of the hijackers in the docudrama United 93. He was born in Iraq but raised in Britain. At the age of 12, he temporarily returned to Iraq with his father and wound up trapped there. At 18, after a harrowing period as a military conscript, he deserted, escaped to Jordan, and returned to Britain. When he discovered that family members were enduring prison and torture by Saddams henchmen to pay for his treason, he launched a complicated scheme to rescue them. Alsamaris recounting of his experiences reads like a fast-paced international thriller, but this is a real-life saga that magnifies the tension, danger, and poignancy of the story. Almasaris experience in the Iraqi military is a study in the deliberate practice of brutality and sadism; his anecdotes about coping with the Baathist bureaucracy combine elements of farce and frustration; and, finally, his efforts to rescue his loved ones move across vast expanses of territory and include forgeries, smuggling, and constant fear. A well-written, frequently exciting, and ultimately satisfying true story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)