Ten hours was the time I, my wife, and my 11-months old daughter spent in Amman, Jordan last June. Yes, it is just another story about an Iraqi family not allowed to enter Jordan for reasons that remain to be unknown.

The long trip started at 7am when we moved towards the Baghdad International Airport. Although nothing on the road or the check-points seem to be Iraqi, the unpredictable flight schedule seemed very Iraqi indeed. After being physically searched and sniffed by the nice American dogs before entering the airport, we reached the first waiting hall at about 10:30am. It only took us three and a half hours to get there from home.

The flight was scheduled at 11am and there was nothing indicating at which actual time the flight is going to be. At about 11:30am we were called to enter the check-in hall to give our bags to be weighed. We thought that it’s a matter of about 60 minutes and we’ll be in the air. Well, we thought wrong. Just before we got to give our bags, the electricity went off. And believe it or not, there are no working back generators. We waited in the 40C hall for more than 5 hours. My poor daughter slept on the metal bench we were standing by and we kept waiving air for her to stop the rainy sweat. It was 5 hours in hell. But I always keep my hopes up thinking positive thoughts about the guy in the Jordanian intelligence that we arranged to bribe to get us into Jordan. And I was thinking about our small apartment there where we lived for the past two years. I was thinking that it was worth to wait for.

Long story short, the airplane took off at 7pm as it was sent to another trip to Iran and we were waiting for the plane to come back to take us to Amman. My daughter and wife were not feeling very well because of the time we had to wait in the horrible hall and the poor girl kept vomiting for like an hour during the flight.

Once we touched down, I turned my cell phone on, with the Jordanian SIM card in it and I received a call from the bribe guy saying that he is waiting for us before the passports line as planned. I gave him our passports and we stood away from the line waiting for the bribe guy to bring the good news. But unfortunately he did not.

I was taken for questioning by the intelligence guy, and this is a normal procedure the Jordanians follow with ALL the Iraqis. They asked why am I coming and for how long do we plan to stay and this sort of questions. There was some yelling by the intelligence guys trying to squeeze information out of me like I was some kind of a terrorist. I did not care that much as I was sure thing were going in the right direction by the 400$ I was paying as a bribe. Well, again I was wrong. They kept our passports and asked us to wait with a bunch of Iraqis who were waiting by the passport queues.

Les than an hour later, they came to us with a list of names, saying that we will be sent back home. No explanations were given. And the $1500 we paid for the air fare does not entitle us to an explanation. We were taken to the airport prayers zone and this was our jail for the night. There were no beds, only few blankets to share with about 40 people whom were not entitled to enter the kingdom of safety. They brought us dinner from Popeye’s chicken and the doors were look to the morning. I made few phone calls during the night thinking that I might get us out of here before the next day’s flight to Baghdad, but it did not work. No Jordanian I knew was interested in helping an Iraqi. Iraqis became more dangerous than avian flu. You’re not allowed to even talk about them.