"Don't look at President Clinton."
These were the instructions that Raed Ahmed received before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996.
A burly Iraqi weightlifter was told that Clinton and the United States wanted to destroy his country and that he should show them no respect.
This message came from an official of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, who received such orders from Uday, the eldest son of Saddam Hussein.
"They told me - don't look left or right because the president will be there, don't look at him," says Raed.
"I told them no problem."
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Raed was beaming as he ran into the stadium, proudly carrying the national flag.
At that moment, he was 29 years old and fought for this honor in competition with two other athletes.
Despite the eyes of the Iraqi officials on him, he glanced to the right.
"I couldn't believe it," he says.
"Clinton was looking at us.
"I saw that he was very happy when he saw us. He stood up and started applauding."
It was a moment that changed Raed's life forever.
He was born in a Shiite Muslim family in Basra in 1967.
His father was a bodybuilder trainer.
He started to build a career in weightlifting in the early 80s, and in 1984 he won the title of national champion in the category up to 99 kilograms.
But that career, against the backdrop of turmoil in his homeland, was in jeopardy.
Shiites from the south of Iraq and Kurds from the north revolted in 1991.
The rebellion began shortly after the end of the first Gulf War when Iraqi forces invading Kuwait were stopped by an international coalition led by the United States.
In mid-February 1991, a few days before the start of the coalition ground attack, then US President George Bush issued a statement telling the Iraqis that there was a way to avoid bloodshed.
"It is time for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force the dictator Saddam Hussein to step down," Bush said.
Shiites and Kurds believed this meant the US would support the uprising against Saddam and in March it all blew up.
In Basra and other cities, hundreds of unarmed civilians poured into the streets.
They took over federal buildings, freed prisoners from prisons, and emptied weapons warehouses.
They soon controlled 14 of the 18 Iraqi provinces they had wrested from Saddam's forces, and fighting was also taking place near the capital, Baghdad.
But as the uprising spread across the country, American officials increasingly insisted that their policy was never to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs or remove Saddam from power.
With the end of the Gulf War, the rebels were left without American aid, and Saddam began one of the most brutal repressions against Shiites and Kurds, killing tens of thousands of people in just a few months.
Raed remembers witnessing Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, line up students from Basra University and shoot them.
At the same time, the United Nations sanctions began to hit ordinary people harder and harder.
Raed says people were struggling to get the most basic things like bread and rice.
He was already thinking a lot about how to get out of everything.
Unlike many Iraqis, Raed was able to travel abroad for sports competitions.
However, being a top athlete in Iraq also meant that you had to meet Uday, the notorious and brutal son of Saddam, who was president of the Olympic Committee and the Iraqi Football Association.
Uday's punishments for offenses such as a missed penalty, a red card or insufficient effort were known - torture with electricity, forcing people to bathe in sewage sewage, and even executions.
"He did whatever he wanted, he was Saddam's son," says Raed.
In order to protect himself, Raed made an effort to lower Uday's expectations before appearing in international tournaments.
"I saw people coming out of prison.
"Football and basketball players would tell us: 'Be careful when you go to competitions.' They killed so many people," he says.
"When he asked me if I could come back with the gold medal, I said no.
"For gold, you have to train for at least four years, and in Basra it was very difficult because there was not enough food or water.
"In order to lift weights, you need large amounts of food and physical therapy."
Raed saw international competitions as the best way to get out of Iraq for good.
He trained more than ever - twice a day and five days a week he went through exhausting training, in order not to meet the standards for competitions.
In 1995, he traveled to China for the world weightlifting championships, but felt that there was little chance that Chinese officials would help him and that the risk was too great to attempt an escape.
However, his performance was good enough to secure him a spot on the Olympic team.
He was on the roster for Atlanta.
He was aware that the 1996 Games in America would be a better opportunity for him to escape.
Before traveling to the Olympics, Raed contacted a friend in America.
He began to assess the risk.
What if they send him back to Iraq? What will happen to his family? How will he escape from the ever-vigilant Iraqi officials?
Raed wasn't sure that escape was realistic when he boarded the plane for America.
Arriving at the Olympic Village, Raed settled in and blended in, trying not to attract attention.
After all, he was chosen to carry the national flag at the biggest show in the world.
Before the opening ceremony of the Games, Saddam's former interpreter, Anmar Mahmoud, who was traveling with the Olympic team, told him several times not to look at President Clinton.
"They wanted to show that Iraqis don't like America and they don't like their president," says Raed.
Mahmoud stood directly behind Raed as they strode down the Olympic track on July 19, 1996.
He says Mahmoud noticed him looking at Clinton, but didn't say anything.
Iraqi officials also seemed genuinely surprised to see the president applauding them, he said.
If there was still any doubt in his mind, it is now gone - he will not be returning to Iraq.
But there was also the problem of how to stay in America.
Raed contacted another friend in America, Mohsen Fradi, and told him the plan.
After that, a graduate engineer from the University of Georgia, Intifad Kuambar, came to visit him.
He had access to the Olympic Village.
Raed asked him for help.
They met in secret, but Raed's followers had already become suspicious.
"Iraqi officials began to doubt that I wanted to stay.
"They told me I wasn't allowed to do it and I'd end up in jail if I did," he says.
Raed was adamant.
The plan was already made, but before that he had to compete.
Unprepared for an equal fight with his rivals, he finished third from the back.
He lifted a total of 303 kg in two separate attempts.
When the contest was over, he was ready to escape.
On the morning of July 28, 1996, the Iraqi Olympic team was preparing to visit a nearby zoo.
As the team left for breakfast, Raed pretended to forget something in his room.
He quickly packed his things and hurried to the front of the Olympic Village.
Kuambar and Fradi were waiting for him there in the car.
Raed got into the car and they drove off.
"I kept thinking about my family," he recalls.
"I was worried about them because I didn't know what would happen to them when Iraqi officials found out that I had escaped."
"I was not afraid for myself because I knew that I was in good hands and that there was no danger for me. I was only worried about my family."
Raed left without his passport, which was held by Iraqi officials along with all other documentation.
First he went to an Iraqi-American lawyer who had come from New York.
Together they went to the immigration agency to explain that Raed wanted to stay in the US.
Then a press conference was organized where he faced the world media.
"I love my country. I just don't like this regime," the New York Times quoted Raed as saying.
After the press conference, Raed said that Uday Hussein's office called CNN saying that Raed had to come back because his whole family was being held hostage.
In the end, they were released when Raed promised that he would not return to the country, but he could not even speak to them for more than a year.
"Things were very complicated for them, nobody wanted to talk to them. "My mother was a school principal, but she was fired," he says.
When Raed was finally granted asylum, he began working seven days a week to raise money for a fake Iraqi passport for his wife.
In 1998, she managed to cross over to Jordan, where she asked United Nations officials for help to allow her to go to the United States.
Raed and his wife settled in Dearborn, Michigan.
They still live there today, with their five children.
There is a large Arab community in Dearborn, and since 2003, when the war in Iraq began, thousands of Iraqis have settled in the region.
"Dearborn is like Baghdad," Raed says with a smile.
He opened a used car lot and continued to train in weightlifting.
He also coaches the local Iraqi soccer and basketball teams.
When Saddam Hussein's regime fell in 2004, he returned to his native country for the first time.
"The whole family was waiting for me and everyone wanted to say hello because we haven't seen each other since 1996.
"They cried when they saw me, they didn't believe they would ever see me again," he recalls.
Raed's parents still live in Basra, but used to visit the United States every year until the pandemic.
Looking to the future, Raed thinks he'll probably stay in Michigan, although he's always been drawn to a place with a climate similar to his home country.
"I'd like to move to Florida because the weather there is like Iraq," he says with a laugh.
"Life is hard here, especially from December to February - it snows a lot and it's too cold. I have never seen snow before.
"I've always wondered how people go outside when it snows like 10 inches?"
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