Just as he had done after every game, Sahib Abbas took the journey back to Karbala by bus. This time, however, there was no sign of his brother Fadhil. An amputee who had lost part of a leg during the Gulf War, his hobbling brother liked to quiz Sahib about the result as they made the 200-yard walk home, rejoicing with him when they won and commiserating when they lost. But, four matches into Sahib’s fledgling career with the top-division side Salahaddin, Fadhil was nowhere to be seen.
“They came and took him a week ago,” explained Sahib’s mother when he arrived home. “They” being the security officers. It had been only few months since Saddam Hussein ordered his army to invade neighbouring Kuwait before withdrawing under the pressure of the US-led coalition. President George Bush called on the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam to step down. Along with his two brothers and a group of friends, the teenage Sahib would go out in his father’s Toyota Land Cruiser and attack checkpoints held by the army. But then the government declared a complete victory and Sahib was forced to flee for his life.
Whilst in hiding, he was contacted by one of his former coaches who suggested he should return to football. He told him Salahaddin, based in Tikrit, the home city of Iraq’s president, were looking for a striker. A few minutes into the trial, Sahib had convinced them to offer him a contract. He was registered to play for the club with the Iraq FA and scored two on his debut, returning home to celebrate with Fadhil. But now, four games in, Fadhil was gone.
Sahib told his mother he would go to the local security directorate to ask what had happened. As a player from Salahaddin, a club headed by a high-ranking Ba’athist official and backed by the regime, he believed he would be safe. Just in case, club president Mohammed Al-Watani - known as Abu Kahla - had given him a contact in Karbala who he said Sahib should contact if he had any problems.
Sahib went to see Captain Zuhair, the contact his club president had given him. He was the man responsible for investigations at the security directorate in Karbala. “I asked about my brother,” Sahib remembers. “Who are you?” Zuhair asked in response. “Sahib Abbas,” came the reply. “We’ve been asking about you,” said the captain. “We wanted to take you at the game against Najaf but Abu Kahla said the club didn’t have a striker.”
Sahib froze. The locals in Karbala had a saying that anyone who entered a security directorate building never returned. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. Zuhair told him to speak to him about what he had done against the state. “What did you want to be, the governor of Karbala? What did you do? How many did you kill? What did you bomb? Your name and file is all here.”
Sahib was thrown into a jail cell. His eyes were covered and his hands were tied behind his back. He was locked up with four people who had fought with him and each day they would be taken to the interrogation rooms where they would be bloodied and beaten. They told Sahib that the beatings were because of him but that they refused to give their torturers his name. Later that day, Sahib was made to sit on an electric chair with wires placed on his feet, hands and genitalia and told that if he lied, the apparatus would know and he would immediately be electrocuted.
Before he had left home, Sahib had told his mother that if he was late or never returned, she should go straight to Salahaddin and tell Abu Kahla and his coach Abdelilah Abdul-Hamed where he was. And on the day of his interrogation they arrived in Karbala, partly because Salahaddin’s players had gone on strike and told management they would not play if Sahib wasn’t in the team. The next day Sahib was released with the death penalty hovering over his head lifted because of the mercy shown by his club president and the pleading of his coach. Football had saved his life but Fadhil and his four friends were executed by the state for their part in the 1991 uprisings.
It was a tragedy marked by bloodshed and tears yet there was to be some good news in 2003, after the regime fell, with the discover that Sahib’s other brother, Mohammed, was still alive. The family believed he too had been killed but rather he had escaped and fled to neighbouring Iran.
Sahib had two constructive seasons in Tikrit as Salahaddin’s top scorer before he orchestrated a move to the country’s top club, Al-Zawraa, where he went on to secure consecutive league and cup doubles in the mid-90s. He left Al-Zawraa in 1998 after a dispute with a member of the club’s board and for several years the sports authorities had a large red X marked by Sahib’s name so he could never play for Iraq nor move abroad to take up a lucrative contract in Qatar.
However, under the immense pressure of the public, the best finisher in the Iraqi league was called up by the great coach Ammo Baba for an Asian Cup qualifier in 1996. He scored on his debut and kept his place in the squad for the finals in the UAE. Sahib went onto become the all-time top scorer in the Iraqi league with 177 goals, between 1991 and 2012, but never truly got his chance with the national side, making only 14 appearances and scoring three goals, between 1996 and 2001.
Sahib went onto retire twice, first in 2010 to coach Karbala-based club Al-Hindiya before returning for a final season at the ripe old age of 41 for the Karbala Sports Club.
“The bitterness of leaving football and moving away from it is mixed with the joy of the celebration and extent of the attention from the large crowd who had been a credit to me and to where I have reached,” said the now 46-year-old having recently, and unsuccessfully, ran as a political candidate – in Karbala.
