KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT

A last-minute call for interpreters

By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff, 3/19/2003

UWAIT CITY -- Mohammed Al-Ragom bought five cartons of Marlboro Lights, an ensemble of dark-colored T-shirts, and thick socks yesterday.

Today, he'll plunk down the equivalent of nearly $1,000 for a Thuraya satellite telephone so he can stay in touch with his family in Kuwait City.

The 29-year-old was shocked last night to learn that he had fewer than 24 hours to report for military training; he wasn't sure he'd ever hear back when he answered a call from the Kuwaiti Ministry of Defense for Arab-speaking volunteers to accompany US and British troops here as translators.

Ragom normally works in the staid downtown quarters of a Kuwaiti Internet service provider called QualityNet. Lately, he's also moonlighted as a translator and guide for the Globe.

Starting tomorrow, however, he'll be in training as an Arabic interpreter for the US Marines.

As he watched American and British troops pour into his country in recent months, Ragom felt a need to get involved, partly out of sympathy for Iraqis who live under Saddam Hussein's regime and partly because during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91 he didn't take up arms.

"I wished I had left Kuwait early in the invasion and then volunteered and come back with the allies," he said.

Even during the humiliating occupation, Ragom said, all his animus was directed against Hussein, never against individual Iraqis, many of whom, he recalled, didn't support the invasion.

"At a roadblock once an Iraqi soldier told me, `I hope you get your country back,' " he recalled.

After the Gulf War, Ragom moved to Boston, where he studied economics at Northeastern and worked at MCI.

He returned to Kuwait less than two years ago, bent on using his polished English and business savvy in Kuwait's new dot-com sector.

But he felt the need to get personally involved in the coming war. "I'd like to see the Iraqi people liberated, as we were liberated 12 years ago," he said.

If all goes well, Ragom hopes to complete his stint as a military interpreter in time to attend a friend's wedding in Boston in October.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 3/19/2003.
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