Code Name: Johnny Walker: The Extraordinary Story of the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Fight with the U.S. Navy SEALs by Jim DeFelice, Johnny Walker Read Free Book Online

human activity. It’s being positive; it’s doing something. It’s the opposite of war, where the goal is to tear things down.
    I wasn’t particularly philosophical as I worked. I wanted to make a living. I wanted to earn money and have a good life, one where I fulfilled my dreams.
    Those dreams had been modified by reality. Lessened. I wouldn’t be king. But I was going to be successful. Maybe not rich, but well off, with enough money to have a nice house, nice cars, and a nice family.
    And I definitely had someone in mind to start that family with.
     
    SOHEILA AND I HAD kept in touch while I was in the army. Now I saw my chance to spend more time with her—and to make her my wife. I told her I would do anything and everything to convince her mother to let her marry me.
    But now there was competition, serious competition. A cousin of hers had a very important job in the government and had been nominated to be a high-ranking minister in Saddam’s government. He was single, and needed a pretty wife in order to hold that position with respect.
    Even though he was the same age as Soheila’s mother, he told the family that he wanted to marry Soheila.
    “I’m very important now,” he told Soheila’s mom. “I will let Soheila live an amazing life with my money . . .”
    Blah-blah-blah. You can imagine the things he said. Not that they were lies: I am sure that he was sincere, and would have given Soheila many things.
    Except true love.
    Soheila’s mother agreed to let him marry her. When I heard, I went wild. Angry? I was beyond angry. Fury doesn’t begin to describe how I felt.
    But I was calm, too. I was not going to be beaten in this.
    I gathered up some friends and relatives and went to pay Soheila’s family a visit. As Soheila remembers it, a few of us had had something to drink before we came over. She also remembers that I had a pistol.
    My memory is vague on both counts.
    “Hey,” I told her mother as soon as I saw her outside the house. “I will marry Soheila. No one can touch her. I am her cousin.”
    (The claim about our being cousins may sound strange to Americans. In Iraqi culture, cousins have what might be called the right of first refusal—they can say that they have the right to marry a girl and no one else can object.)
    Technically, I was not her cousin. Our families were close, and at times the women used words like aunt and cousin to signify this. But there was no actual blood relation, and my claiming there was wouldn’t make it so.
    But all is fair in love and war, yes? I may not have fought in the war that had just passed, but this was an entirely different matter.
    “I’m her cousin, and I will marry her!”
    “You are not her cousin!” her mother screamed back. “You don’t have that right.”
    “I am!” I insisted. “I have this right, and no one else will marry her but me. If anyone gets close to Soheila or tries to take her, I will kill them. She is mine. Nobody can take her.”
    By now, I had created quite a scene, both inside and outside the house. Neighbors came over and tried to calm me down. Even my own friends were concerned. I stayed for five hours, arguing my case and letting other people do so. Finally no one had any energy left even to talk. I went home, still determined that I was going to win.
    Soheila’s cousin heard what had happened and soon changed his mind about wanting to marry her. But Soheila’s mother was still reluctant to give Soheila permission to marry me.
    I kept working on Soheila. It was clear that she loved me—she was writing me love poems regularly. The words went straight from her pen to my heart, kisses that could penetrate all the way to my soul. Our love burned so deeply that every day I could not be with her was like living in hell.
    One day, I convinced the brother-in-law I worked for to speak to the family for me. He and some of his friends went to Soheila’s house and spoke to her mother, trying to convince her that we loved each