For the engineer from Reston, taking a job in Iraq this year meant carrying an AK-47 for protection. It meant working 12-hour days, sweltering through nights with no air conditioning and enduring terrifying, window-rattling bomb explosions.
He couldn't wait to go back.
Ezzeldin Ezzeldin is one of dozens of Iraqi Americans from the Washington area who have been returning to their homeland to work on its rebuilding. Business people and engineers, journalists and professors, they are trying to lend their U.S.-honed skills to a country ravaged by war.
Some have returned from their trips to Iraq disillusioned with the slow pace of reconstruction and their reception by Iraqi and U.S. authorities. But others said their journeys were worth the risk and the time away from families in the Washington region.
"You can never forget where you came from," said Ezzeldin, who returned to the United States in June after six months of work in Iraq. "I feel like I did something over there. I brought something new to the country."
About 2,400 Iraqi natives live in Virginia, Maryland and the District, according to the 2000 Census, and many were thrilled at the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Although few are willing to move their families to a war zone, about three dozen or more have returned to Iraq on temporary contracts, local Iraqi leaders said.
They are people such as Ezzeldin, who has built a comfortable life in Northern Virginia, working in technology and driving a Mercedes-Benz. People such as Wail Jamil, a network engineer from Springfield who immigrated five years ago to wed an American; and Raya Barazanji of Arlington County, who has spent years helping Iraqi refugees in the United States.
Until recently, Ezzeldin had never imagined going back to Iraq. He decided to flee Baghdad one horrible day in 1994, when government agents came to his family's home and put three bullets in his father's head, apparently mistaking him for a dissident, Ezzeldin said.
"My father got killed for Saddam. That's why I left," the 40-year-old engineer recalled as he sipped soup with his mother and 8-year-old daughter one recent evening at a French cafe in Reston. For years, Ezzeldin tried to forget his native land as he built a new life, first in Germany and then in Virginia.
But his hopes soared with the U.S.-led invasion. When he was invited to join a Pentagon-sponsored program that recruited Iraqi Americans to help with reconstruction, Ezzeldin jumped. He arrived in Baghdad at the start of this year.
"I wanted to do something. We were supporting the war from the beginning," he said.
Like many of the returning Iraqi exiles, Ezzeldin was stunned to see his homeland. The buildings and infrastructure had deteriorated over the years because of economic sanctions, the war and widespread postwar looting. And suddenly, most Iraqi women seemed to be veiled, a startling sight in Baghdad, which had been staunchly secular.
"I was like, 'What's going on?' " Ezzeldin recalled.
Then came the professional challenges. Ezzeldin was trying to set up the computer system for the Iraqi Governing Council, a body appointed by U.S. authorities. But all the job candidates sent to him were relatives or friends of council members, and they knew little about information technology, he said.
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