The cosmic adventures of a bat man

IN A FORTNIGHT's time Kariem Sabir will set off from his home in Athlone to do a 400 mile round trip to Newtownabbey in Antrim where he will compete in the Ulster Table Tennis Open. The journey, however, will be nothing compared to the one that the Iraqi born Irish soldier embarked on 18 years ago when he first came to Ireland with his brother Ali.

Iraqi bureaucracy forced the brothers to abandon their engineering course in Athlone Regional Technical College the main purpose of their move to Ireland in 1978. In time, both became soldiers, but they had very different army careers - Kariem was based in Custume Barracks in Athlone and Ali on the front line of the Iran Iraq war.

The first steps in what Kariem describes as their big adventure were taken in 1977 when their father worked as an interpreter for an Irish businessman at a conference in Iraq. By then the brothers had decided they wanted to go overseas to study. On hearing of their plans the businessman suggested they come to Ireland and offered to put them up until they got settled.

Kariem, who was facing the prospect of compulsory service in the Iraqi army if he stayed, was delighted with the offer, but his mother was unhappy about the prospect of losing her two eldest sons. "The day before we were to leave my mother took our plane tickets and hid them. We found the tickets two days later, but by then we had to change our booking. It was hard for her, we were the first to leave and she didn't want us to go away, she had a mother's heart," says Kariem.

The move to Ireland was a journey in to the unknown for the brothers. "I knew nothing absolutely nothing, about Ireland except what l had heard from the television about the trouble in the north. People at home asked me where I was going and when I told them they said `what about all the bombs going off'."

The brothers (Kariem then 18 and Ali 20) set off on their first trip abroad with `yes' and `no' the only English words in their vocabulary. But never fear, there was a kind Dublin taxi driver waiting to help them out. "We flew to Dublin, but the man we were staying with lived in Sligo. We showed people the address and asked for directions because we thought it was only up the road. They all said that's very far, far away' so. .. we got a taxi.

"The worst part was that we actually ended up standing right beside Busarus, but we didn't know. So we asked this taxi driver and he said `I'll bring you that far for £70'. That was good money in 1978, but we said okay because we hadn't a clue what the value of £70 was." They arrived in Sligo at midnight, £70 poorer, and stayed three months before moving back to Dublin where they attended a language school.

In 1980, on the recommendation of their Sligo friend, the brothers moved to Athlone to begin a Plastics Engineering course, but within three months they were forced to give it up. They had received a letter from the Iraqi embassy in London telling them that the course was not recognised in Iraq, so the money their father was sending them, through the state controlled overseas student account, would be stopped.

It was during their short stay at the RTC that both brothers began playing table tennis and it is a sporting passion that Kariem pursues to this day. "It started when the college ran a ladder competition to decide who would get on the team, so myself and my brother entered and I was the best. I was picked for the team and from there I progressed."

Meanwhile, after failing to find work after he left the RTC Ali decided to return to Iraq where he joined the army. Within three months he was posted to the front line of the Iran Iraq war. After he was captured by the Iranians, he spent nine years in a prison camp.

"He came home after nine years but he never says anything about it - he's always a very, very quiet person, but I know he was treated bad. He's back in Baghdad, but he's changed a lot. We came to Ireland together, I stayed and I have a good life, he went back and became a prisoner of war, it's hard you know."

When Ali decided to return to Iraq in 1981 Kariem opted to stay in Ireland to begin a new life. After working as a cleaner in a garage in Athlone he got a job with Flancare, the shipping warehousing company, and stayed there until he joined the army in 1985. By then he was an Irish citizen, had married his Roscommon born wife Mary, and was looking for some security for his family.

At first, Army life presented yet more language difficulties for Kariem. "When I was in the barracks for my interview everything was in Irish and I thought `oh my God, not another language to learn'. But eventually I got to know the words for all the commands which are all in Irish and I have no trouble with it now."

It was around this time that he met up with Ciaran Bourke, another table tennis enthusiast, who is now a team mate on the Connacht team. The pair have travelled the length and breadth of the country since.

"You would have pains everywhere coming back in the car after playing all day, but it's great, we love it. When I first met Ciaran he loved table tennis so much that we'd train maybe four nights a week. We kept at it and we haven't stopped since, we're keeping table tennis alive."

For the past three years Sabir has been the number three on the Connacht senior team, alongside Bourke, Sean Spellman and Terry Dolan, and he hopes to play in his fourth Senior Interprovincial Championships next March in Galway. His dream is to "bring the Shield home to Connacht", but he admits it will take a while before the province can close the gap on the dominant Ulster and Leinster teams.

He proved his commitment to his sport earlier this month when he helped form a new Connacht branch of the Irish Table Tennis Association after the demise of the old one left the province without any administrative body to run the game.

Having made it his mission to promote the game in Athlone from next week, Sabir will begin coaching children, including his 11 year old son Omar, and he hopes, in time, Jason (9) and Jamal (4). He can never see himself giving up competitive table tennis and although he feels that at 37 he will never make the Irish team he still believes he can improve as a player.

Meanwhile Sabir enjoys his life in the army where he works mainly in the office in the Custume Barracks in Athlone. He hopes some day to get overseas on a tour of duty, but he had to turn down the chance of going to the Lebanon around the time of the Gulf War for safety reasons. "I wasn't able to go because Iraq was threatening Israel with scud missiles. It was my decision. I thought I might have jeopardised myself and the soldiers because eventually they would know where I was from - they'd wonder about that brown old Paddy."

In 1990 he made his first trip back to Iraq since he had left for Ireland 12 years before, bringing his wife and children to visit his family. "It didn't feel like home, I felt like an outsider because at that stage the language was getting hard for me - I hadn't spoken Arabic for a good while. Everything was absolutely different, it was all new to me. I didn't know Iraq, I didn't know Baghdad, it had all changed - dual carriageways, new bridges. The people had changed, too - I mean when I left my brothers were young, when I went back they were as old as me."

The 1990 trip was a timely one because he got to see his mother only a few months before she died. He travelled to Iraq again in 1993 and was shocked to see the effects the sanctions imposed on the country were having. He says they have been difficult years for him, hearing nothing but bad news about his homeland.

"Every time you hear bad news it hits you hard. I don't feel anything for Saddam and his government, I feel it for the people because nobody cares about them. I worry about my family because it has become very difficult to contact them by phone, I haven't been able to speak to them for a year.

While he worries about Iraq and his family he says he has no plans ever to return there to live. "Ireland is my home now, I have no ambition any more to return to Iraq to live. I came here when I was 18, I'm 37 now so I've lived half my life here now. I'm enjoying my life, raising my kids - they're Irish, their father is half Irish, more or less. Everything is okay with me."