In Baghdad, Kurd will fly Tricolour

For Saleh, who speaks fluent Hindi, this will be going back a little in time. He had taken charge of the Tricolour and the mission even in 1991 when Desert Storm broke over Baghdad.

Tyagi is praying Saleh survives the war. Even the coordinates of the Indian mission in Adamiya locality have been conveyed to Washington, a precaution against coalition warplanes confusing targets — ask the Chinese, their mission in Belgrade went up in flames when the Americans locked the wrong target — though this is no guarantee of total safety because precision-guided munitions also go astray at times.

It will be now up to Saleh and some local staff to keep alive India’s communication channels in the mission. New Delhi today asked Tyagi to move to Amman and instructed that Saleh and others be told to keep the lines crackling.

This is necessary because there’s always the possibility of some Indians showing up at the mission gates, wanting to be airlifted home.

And New Delhi knows there’s nobody better than Saleh to take care of the mission.

His contact with Indians hark back to the days before India’s independence when Anglo-Iranian skirmishes were the order of the day. Indian soldiers fought under the Union Jack along the Shat-al-Arab waterway, in Kurdistan and even Baghdad.

As a child, Saleh helped Indian soldiers in Aasarat-al-Hindiya, now a posh Baghdad address, and picked up fluent Hindi.

The Indian mission hired him as a messenger nearly 40 years ago and he has weathered the upheavals ever since, standing by the mission at the height of the Iran-Iraq war and Operation Desert Storm.

In 2001, Saleh was asked by the then Ambassador R Dayakar to pack and leave as it was time to retire. He left quietly, without even collecting gratuity.

But New Delhi woke up and decided to pay Saleh his dues. A proposal was moved at the highest levels in South Block to pay Saleh his gratuity and get him and his son Hadi re-employed at the embassy. Jaswant Singh, then External Affairs Minister, also chipped in for the faithful retainer.

Although rules stipulated that Saleh be paid $ 4,000 as gratuity, Singh went a step further.

On November 11, 2001, Saleh was handed a letter of commendation from Singh and a cheque of $ 5,000 at a ceremonial function by none other than Dayakar, currently Joint Secretary (NRI) in South Block. And now, Saleh the faithful returns to stand guard.