Dozens of weary passengers made their way down the long hallway to baggage claim at LAX. I peered anxiously through the clear glass doors, searching every face. Then I saw him.
He wore a name tag around his neck -- like a kid who might get lost. He clutched a white plastic bag with big blue letters: IOM. International Organization for Migration. He looked happy, but tentative. I must have looked the same.
We hugged awkwardly and made polite chitchat about his 48-hour journey from Baghdad, about the jet lag and the airplane food. The trip was his first by air. He'd rarely been out of Iraq. Now he was a refugee who would make his home in America.
We loaded up his suitcase and headed down the 405 to start our new life together.
My brother-in-law Ali and me.
When I married an Iraqi I'd met on assignment in Baghdad, I knew I would help his brother start a new life in this country. I just never imagined I'd be doing it alone.
::
The phone jarred me out of my sleep.
"Good morning, habibi. Did I wake you?" My husband's familiar voice and Arabic endearment instantly soothed.
For nine months we'd been awaiting word on his application for refugee status. Saif was eligible to apply because his work as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times put his life at risk. He had also applied on behalf of his younger brother, Ali. They both received provisional approval from the U.S. State Department, but the wait for final security clearance felt endless.
Now, in late February, Saif was calling to say the State Department had given an Iraqi colleague permission to resettle in the United States and a departure date. I tried to feel happy for our friend.
"Just kidding!" Saif said, his voice gaining excitement. "It's me! I'm coming! I'll be there March 4!"
I didn't care that it was early morning and my whooping and hollering might wake my neighbors.
I fired off e-mails to spread the news and began a round of jubilant calls.
"Saif is coming!" I told a good friend, trying not to shriek. "He's coming! We got the call! We got the call!"
No further explanation was needed.
In the midst of my next conversation, the call waiting beeped.
Saif's voice had a strange tone. Government officials had called again. "They said they made a mistake. They meant to call Ali."
I hung up the phone and wept.
"It felt like being told you've won the lottery, only to realize that you checked the numbers wrong -- and hadn't really won after all," I wrote in an e-mail to friends and family. "I don't think I've ever in my life had such a swing in emotions from elation to disappointment."
But there was little to be done and no time to waste.
Ali would arrive in 10 days.
--
I first flew to Iraq in December 2007, at a time when I was rebuilding my life after a bad breakup. Unencumbered by a relationship or responsibilities at home, I took an assignment I previously would have pushed aside. The two-month rotation in Baghdad would be my first as a foreign correspondent. Love was the furthest thing from my mind, which felt crammed from reading dozens of newspaper articles and books on Iraq and the war.
The Times bureau took up an entire floor of a heavily guarded, all-suite hotel, surrounded by concrete blast walls. One unit had been converted into a newsroom, with several computers and a bank of televisions tuned to Arabic-language news channels. Correspondents lived and worked out of their rooms, the doors wide open. The floor felt so much like a college dorm that one two-bedroom suite shared by a few of the Iraqi staffers had been dubbed the "Frat House." Some nights, the guys played Wii or rocked out on an electric guitar to keep from going stir-crazy.
With car bombs and falling mortars still a daily occurrence, reporters strayed outside only an hour or two a day -- if we were lucky. Leaving the compound required an armored car, a second chase car, an interpreter and a guard.
Colleagues back home had told me much about the tight-knit group of Iraqi staffers and urged me to arrive bearing chocolate and coffee to make a positive impression. Someone urged me to break the ice with Saif by cracking a joke, using a derogatory nickname.
Saif -- who I later learned hated the label -- snapped at me, stormed out of the room and didn't speak to me unless he had to.
But the tight quarters made it hard to avoid each other. His silence ended when he confided to me about failed romances and fears that the war was stealing the best years of his life. I shared my heartbreaks. Soon Saif, who worked until midnight, would appear at my door each night after his shift and keep me company while I waited for my bosses in Los Angeles to edit my stories.
We watched reruns of "Saturday Night Live" and "King of Queens." We sipped bad red wine and talked about love and friendship and war and religion. He brought me Iraqi delicacies. I baked him cookies. It seemed like we had known each other for years.
