From Hanna’s earliest years he had a touch of Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln about him. When he was nine, he took to reading his schoolbooks by the light of a street lamp. He graduated from high school, earning a scholarship to study petroleum engineering in England. When he returned to Baghdad in 1965, he met his future wife at the Oil Ministry, where she worked as an English translator. Hanna took his wife with him when he returned to England in 1969 to earn his Ph.D. Their son was born there in 1971. A year later the couple took their son home to Baghdad, where their first daughter followed in 1974 and a second in 1976. Those were the family’s happiest years, before Saddam took over as president in 1979.

In 1992, after Saddam’s disastrous invasion of Kuwait, the couple managed to smuggle their son safely out of Iraq. The couple talked about applying for asylum but decided against it. “They had their dignity,” their son says. “They felt this was a polite way of begging.” Hanna finally landed a teaching spot in Libya. When he returned home in 1997, Meskoni became the breadwinner, taking work as a translator at the Sri Lankan Embassy.

After the U.S. invasion, the couple went looking for work. Meskoni found it first. A friend of hers had been hired as a translator at the Coalition Provisional Authority and immediately recommended Meskoni. It didn’t take long for her to suggest that the CPA could use a man like her husband. When the U.S. Embassy opened the next year, they were among the first Iraqi employees to be sent over.

... contd.