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  Little did we know.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  A WORLD OF CHANGE

  As far back as I can remember, I have been in love with flying. By the age of twelve, I knew everything about the airplanes that flew out of the Royal Air Force Base at Habbaniya, which is located about fifty miles west of Baghdad. My father, Hormis Sada, served in the Royal Air Force in those days. He was stationed at Habbaniya, and that’s where I grew up. That’s also where I discovered my passion to become a military aviator and a top-rated fighter pilot.

  I knew all the maneuvers our pilots would perform. I memorized the names of their planes and equipment, and I would go to the airfield every day after school to watch them take off and land. I could tell you when a pilot was going to do an undershoot or an overshoot. I knew the difference between high-speed and low-speed landings, and I became acquainted not only with the pilots, but I even learned the terminology and tactics they used. It was easily the most exciting part of my life during those years.

  My father served for more than thirty years under the British flag. Our family traveled to England when he was stationed there for a time, and I learned more about flying each day as I watched the British pilots take off and land. Father eventually retired from the Royal Air Force with a pension from the British government, but for many years this was my life. I spent so much time hanging around the flight line making a nuisance of myself that one day an old sergeant major stopped me and said, “Georges, you know you ought to be working for me, you spend so much time down here.”

  My eyes lit up when I heard that. “Really?” I said. “Would you give me a job?” I’m not sure he really meant it at first, but he thought about it for a second and said, “Sure. Why not? Can’t pay you much, but you can help out around here as much as you like.”

  That was all the encouragement I needed. Every day during my summer holiday I was there first thing in the morning. Except for lunch and dinner breaks, I was on the job until the sun went down most days. It was the best job any boy could ever want, and in some ways it was like a college education. I was in and out of the office all day long, observing how business was done, how the orders came in, how the pilots got their assignments. I carried messages all over the base, and I got to spend a lot of time on the flight line, which I loved best of all. Watching the technicians working on the planes and seeing the pilots climb aboard those shiny new fighters and zoom off was thrilling.

  On top of that, I even got a little money each month, and that was great too. Suddenly I had more cash than any of the kids I knew, and I could buy just about anything I wanted. But the best part was the feeling that I actually had a small part in keeping our fighter pilots in the air. I decided then that as soon as I graduated from high school I was going to become a pilot myself, and that’s just what I did. I applied to the Air Academy my senior year and was accepted as a cadet in 1958.

  Changing Alliances

  Before we actually began classes, however, the country was shaken by a major military coup. Overnight it seemed we had a new government, a new president, and a new set of strategic alliances. Up until that time, Iraq had been closely allied with Great Britain. King Faisal I, his son, Ghazi, and Ghazi’s son, Faisal II, were pro-Western and genuinely peaceful monarchs. But with the overthrow of the monarchy by a military coup, Iraq became a socialist republic with new leaders who favored the Soviet system.

  This sudden change of direction also changed the way the military was run, and it changed the way students were trained in the academies. Most of the cadets in the Air Academy ahead of me had gone to America or England for flight training, and that’s what I had expected to do. I spoke pretty good English and I knew a lot about both those countries. But as it turned out, we were to be the first class of pilots under the new republican regime, and nothing had prepared me for what was to come.

  When we arrived for the first day of classes, we were divided into groups and introduced to our instructors. We were given a basic overview of the program and informed about what we would be doing the next few years. But when they told us about the pro-cedures for flight school, they said we wouldn’t be going to England or America this time. We were to be the first class to go to Russia. That was a big surprise, but I don’t think we were terribly disappointed. We had heard a lot about Russia, and it sounded interesting and exotic. So we completed the basic classes. We had to pass a battery of physical exams and aptitude tests, and when that was complete, on February 9, 1959, we were loaded up and shipped off to our new quarters in Russia.

  Unfortunately, nobody had told us about the weather in Russia in the month of February. We were boys from a warm country and we assumed that everywhere was about the same. So you can imagine our shock when we stepped off the plane in Moscow and the temperature at the airfield was hovering around twenty below zero! We weren’t just freezing; we were freezing and terrified. We had no warm clothes, and nothing heavy enough to protect us from the extreme cold. If we had put on every piece of clothing in our luggage, it wouldn’t have helped. I had never felt such bone-chilling cold in my life, nor even imagined it could exist.

  The Russians who came to get us were as shocked as we were that we hadn’t been warned about the weather. So they immediately loaded us on trucks and took us down to a large government store, built deep below ground, and they told us to pick out whatever we needed—especially warm clothes, overcoats, and heavy boots. So that’s how it all started.

  Our next major problem was that we didn’t know a single word of Russian—we’d all been expecting to go to England or America. But, fortunately, there were translators who could speak to us either in English or Arabic. So we soon found ourselves in a Russian immersion program, and we had to learn the language very quickly. We spent the first few days in Moscow becoming acclimatized, and then we were taken to the Alma-Ata Air Base— located in the Kazakhstan region of the USSR—and that’s where we actually went to school.

  To say that this was an eye-opening experience would be an understatement. Within days of our arrival in the Soviet Union we were seeing and doing things we never could have imagined. All our ideas and beliefs were challenged, and none more so than our religious beliefs.

  A Close Call

  Along those lines, there’s one story from those days that’s very important to me now. As I indicated briefly in the preceding pages, I come from a Christian family, and my father was very serious about his faith. He was the head of our family, and he was also the leader of deacons in our church, which was the Ancient Church of the East at that time. I was going to be gone for nearly four years, and Father wanted to be sure I wouldn’t forget my faith while I was away.

  As I was about to leave the house on the 9th of February for the flight to Russia, Father said to me, “Georges, you’re going to be away from the family for a long time. Do you have your Bible with you?”

  Suddenly I was embarrassed. I said, “No, Father, I don’t. I forgot to pack it.” So he said, “Why don’t you go and get it, son?”

  So of course I did. I ran back to my room and grabbed my Bible. I quickly opened my suitcase, which was packed and ready to go, and I just laid it inside—right in the middle—totally forgetting that I was going to a communist country where the Holy Bible was a forbidden book! If I had thought for even a moment, I would have known. If the security officers in Russia found me with a Christian Bible, they wouldn’t only burn it, but they might wash me out of the academy and ship me back home on the first plane. But the thought never crossed my mind until we arrived at the Intourist checkpoint in Moscow.

  When we got there, a group of security officers checked us in and they looked through everything in our luggage. A tall, muscular Russian, obviously a KGB officer, opened my bag and immediately spotted the Bible lying on top of my clothes. It said “Holy Bible” right there on the cover, but it was written in my native Assyrian language, Aramaic, which is actually the language that Jesus and the disciples spoke in the first cent
ury. Of course the officer couldn’t read it, so he asked me, “What’s this?”

  Suddenly I realized what I’d done. I thought, My God, this is Russia, a communist country! And this is a Bible! I hesitated for a second and then somehow managed to answer him. “Well, this is a book; it’s a story.” He looked at me and said, “Oh, yes? What kind of story?” So I said, “It’s a story about a very good man.” I was thinking as fast as I could, but of course I didn’t say the name of the good man. Still, I wasn’t lying to him.

  He thumbed through the pages a bit more, and then he asked me, “A good man, huh? Where from?” This time I said, “Well, he was a good man from our area,” meaning the Middle East. Again, I was being accurate but not too precise in my reply.

  At this point, the security guard asked me, “What language is this?” And I told him it was written in the Assyrian language, which is the language of the Assyrian Empire. He thumbed through it again briefly, then laid it back in the suitcase, shut the top, and he said, “Okay, you can go.”

  I thought, Oh, my, that was close! But my Bible is safe for now!

  That was the only time they checked us, so I went from there to my base and placed the Bible out on my nightstand where I would see it and remember to read a few verses every day. Since it was written in the Aramaic language, no one else could read it, and none of the Russians had any idea what was inside those pages.

  On weekends we were given passes to go into the city of Alma-Ata, and on one of those trips I drove in with a group of my friends. So long as our grades were good, we had passes every weekend and we could go wherever we liked, so we would go to places where we could meet the Russian girls and dance with them. I had met a girl who was a student at the college of languages, so I would go there, while my best friend, Samir, would usually go to see another girl who was a student at the medical college.

  Divine Appointment

  Samir struck up a conversation with a young woman on one occasion, and right away she asked him where he was from. He told her he was from Iraq, and she got very excited. “You’re from Iraq?” she asked. “That’s my country! My parents and grandparents are all from Iraq. Those are my people too!” And then she asked, “Are you Assyrian?” And Samir said, “No, I’m not, but I have an Assyrian friend, and his family is from that part of the country.”

  This young woman told him that her family had come to Russia after the First World War, and this was the first time she’d ever met anyone who actually lived in Iraq. She said, “Are there any Assyrians at your base?” Samir said, “Yes, my friend is Georges Sada, and he’s a cadet at the Air Academy with me.” She said, “Oh, yes, Georges!” Then she pronounced my name the Assyrian way—Gyorgyes. “That’s an Assyrian name,” she said. “I recognize it.”

  Samir asked her, “Would you like to meet him?” and she said she would. So Samir told her he would arrange a meeting for the next day. We would rendezvous at the opera house in the town near our base. It didn’t take me long to warm to the idea and I got a ride back into town the next day, making sure I wasn’t late for the meeting. When I got to the opera house, the young lady was already waiting for me, and I was impressed to discover that she was so beautiful.

  I recognized her as Assyrian by her features and her eyes, but she spoke first: “Are you Gyorgyes?” she asked excitedly. I said, “Hello, yes I am,” and I asked if she was the one I was supposed to meet. She said yes and gave me a big hug as if she’d known me forever. And she said, “Come on, Gyorgyes, I want you to go to my house. I want you to meet my family.”

  I thought that was unusual, but I went with her, and when we arrived at her house it was packed with Assyrians—young people, old people. Men, women, and children of all ages. It was amazing, frankly, and they all wanted to speak to me in the Assyrian language. It was incredible, but I was apparently the center of a big celebration.

  We talked and laughed and got better acquainted, but after a little while, an old man came over to me and whispered, “Gyorgyes, do you have a Bible?”

  “Bible?” I said. “Why, yes, I do. I keep it on my nightstand back at the Air Academy.”

  To say his eyes lit up wouldn’t do justice to the expression that came over his face. “You do?” he exclaimed. “You have a Bible?” But then he said, “Oh, my God! You left your Bible back at the Russian base? On your nightstand?”

  I said, “Yes, I read it every day.” The book was written in Aramaic, so only an Assyrian who knew the ancient language could read it. But the old man was clearly worried and said, “Look, we must go and get it now.” He immediately called three young men and told them to get their car. He said they would have to drive me back to the base to get my Bible before someone came and took it away.

  I was embarrassed by all the commotion and I said, “Sir, it’s very far from here. As you know, the Alma-Ata Air Base is at least thirty miles away.” But he insisted. “No, listen to me. I’m sure of this. We can’t leave that Bible there for another minute.”

  With that, I joined the three young men and we drove to the base as quickly as we could. I went down to my room to see if the Bible was where I left it, on the nightstand, and sure enough it was. Actually, this was the first time I’d worried about it. It had never crossed my mind that someone might take it. So I took the Bible with me and we drove back to the city.

  When I handed the Bible to the old man, he immediately opened it. His eyes shimmered with tears as he held the book in his weather-beaten hands. And when he began to read aloud in the Aramaic language, I could feel his emotion. Tears of joy flowed gently down his wrinkled cheeks, and everyone in the room crowded around to see for themselves. I couldn’t believe they were all so happy.

  But then I thought, You know, it’s really a miracle that this Bible is here at all. I only put it in my suitcase at the last minute because Father had asked if I remembered to pack my Bible. And then the KGB officer had gone through my luggage at the airport, and if I hadn’t been very careful in the way I answered his questions, he would have taken the book away and destroyed it. And now, here I am, with a Bible that only these people can read, in their native language. And they’re filled with such joy to be able to put their hands on this forbidden book after so many years.

  As the thoughts were racing through my mind, I remembered the passage in Isaiah which says: “ ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’ ” (Isaiah 55:8–9 nkjv).

  I was humbled to realize that when God wants his Word to reach a particular group of people, even if they’re thousands of miles away, he has his ways of doing it. And in this case, I was chosen as his messenger, to take that precious book to people who hadn’t seen a Bible in many, many years. I was so happy I’d managed to bring the book from Iraq to Russia, and to put it in the hands of people who wanted so much to read it. They were afraid that the police might come and confiscate it, so they came up with a plan. They decided that each man in that group was to take the Bible for a week, and one at a time over the next several months each one would copy ten pages by hand.

  In time they would be able to copy the entire Bible in their own hand. And then, when they had one complete set, with all the verses and chapters of all sixty-six books, they could pass the handwritten copy around and each family could make their own copy. It would have to be kept in a safe place, but this way every one of the Assyrian families in that area would be able to read and memorize the Scriptures. And once again, for the first time in a very long time, they could worship God as they had done in their native land.

  In reality, I suppose, we were smuggling Bibles into Russia, but I must say that it was done innocently enough. As you might imagine, this experience had a profound influence on me, and I was humbled to know that God had chosen to use me in this way.

  Something to Prove

  I was in Russia for three years, and during that
time I qualified as a fighter pilot and graduated from the Academy as a 2nd lieutenant in the Iraqi Air Force. That’s how my life as an officer began. At that time the hottest plane in the sky was the Russian-made MiG fighter, and I was excited to learn that I would be flying the MiG-17F, which had a very sophisticated afterburner system. When I began flying regular missions, I felt like I owned the sky—and for all practical purposes, maybe I did. That plane was incredibly fast. It carried a standard payload, and it was a thrill to fly.

  From 1961 to 1963, I was gaining a lot of experience as a fighter pilot, and I was eventually transferred to a MiG-21 squadron at Al Rashid Air Base in Baghdad. But all this happened just in time for the next big surprise from the Iraqi government. On the same day I arrived at my new unit, there was another revolution. This time it was a coup d’état staged by the Baathis, who overthrew the government of Prime Minister Abdel-Karim Qassem.

  President Qassem was driven from power and executed on February 8, 1963, and the Baathis—led by Col. Abdel-Salem Aref and supported in turn by Gamel Abdel Nasser and the Arab Nationalists in Egypt—took over the government. For the next three years the country would be run by a group of socialists who happened to be anti-communist, which meant that there were all sorts of new tensions between Baghdad and Moscow.

  After the coup, President Abdel-Salem Aref managed to hold on to power for three years, until his death in a helicopter crash in 1966. Someone had sabotaged his helicopter, but at that point his brother, Abdel-Rahman Aref, who had been chief of staff of the army, succeeded him as president. That government only lasted until 1968, when a different group of Baathis, led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, rose up and forced Abdel-Rahman Aref to flee the country and go into exile in England.