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On his first morning in Baghdad in December 1976, Isham looked out the window of his hotel room to the famous Al-Rashid street, and his heart sank. "I looked down the street and all I say were men, men and more men," he rolls his in mock horror. "I thought, 'God, what was wrong with this city?"

The first task he undertook in Baghdad was to look for batteries for a small radio-cassette player he had with him.

"I marched around the city looking for batteries which I didn't find. When you can't find a battery in a city of two million, you know you're in the wrong place! It was a nightmare. Beirut was a sophisticated Mediterranean resort compared to this."

Having said that, Isham admits that he was well treated by his Iraqi hosts. He even managed to meet up with Tareq Shalal, formerly of the Iraqi diplomatic corps in Malaysia, who had helped shelter him during his underground months in Malaysia.

In Baghdad - the lack of batteries notwithstanding - Isham soon settled into Iraqi life. He soon found solace in the fact that Iraq had some very good beers. "I remember two of them vividly - Shahrizat and Farida," he quips, "They reminded me of my old UM friends, Shahrizat Jalil and Faridah Al-Hadi. I'll never forget those two beers. It would be like forgetting old friends."

Nasty visa

Most of Isham's two months in Baghdad was spent at the office of the Baghdad Observer , where his Palestinian translator friend worked. The newspaper was run by another exile, an Angolan Indian, who was the editor-in-chief. "I spent most of my time monitoring the teleprinter that kept me informed of Datuk Harun Idris' arrest in KL in 1976.

After some time though, Baghdad seemed a little too tame for the young Isham. "Iraq was nice - but I was bored." An Iraqi student delegation was due to leave for a conference in Bangkok and asked him if he wanted to join them. He accepted. "These students were not real 'activists' - we flew 1st Class to the conference!"

In Bangkok, Isham decided to try to get to Australia again. In January 1977, he flew to Hong Kong and found that most of the student activists had gone to Australia for a conference. "This time I decided to use whatever muscle I had. I got the student unions in Australia to pressure the foreign ministry to pull my persona non grata standing, " Isham says. They succeeded and Isham was given a visa.

"You know, it was still that K Rice guy at the visa section," Isham laughs. "And he gave me a nasty kind of visa - I had to use it within three days or I couldn't go." Isham managed to make it out of Hong Kong just in time three days later and reached Australia.

Mucking about Down Under

Australia was a two-year sojourn for Isham. Student activism was alive and kicking in the main campuses around the country It was the perfect environment for a young activist. "I was mucking about, basically," he admits. "Australia is a great place to muck about".

Here, he got back into the swing of demonstrations, protests and serious partying. He also met up with Yunus Ali again. The latter had left Malaysia in the wake of yet another crackdown. The arresting binge of 1976, under the euphemism of weeding out 'communists', targeted the press this time.

Upon the death of Tun Abdul Razak, his deputy Hussein Onn succeeded the position as Malaysia's third Prime Minister in 1976. The Deputy Prime Minister position then became vacant. There were strong rumours that the new Prime Minister was planning to appoint Ghazalie Shafie, the Home Minister, as his deputy.

This, allegedly, was met with stiff opposition from the three vice-presidents of Umno - Ghafar Baba, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and Dr Mahathir Mohamad. All three threatened to resign if either one of them was not chosen.

Subsequently, Hussein Onn chose Dr Mahathir. With this, the new Deputy Prime Minister became Ghazalie Shafie's biggest obstacle in the alleged quest to become Prime Minister.

Red-baiting

The 1976 arrests were rumoured to be part of a not-too-subtle conspiracy to implicate Dr Mahathir, as it targeted people who were known for publicly supporting him. Samad Ismail and Kassim Ahmad, who were detained under the ISA, were, like Anwar Ibrahim, vocal in their support for the emerging powerful pair of Mahathir Mohamad and Musa Hitam within Umno.

They were detained for allegedly being part of a Malaysian-Singaporean communist plot to overthrow the government.

"The crackdown in 1976 was very different from the student detentions of 1974," says Professor KS Jomo of UM's faculty of economics and administration. "It was a time of factionalism in Umno; and in the power struggle, red-baiting became a means for the different factions to jockey for power."

Not wanting to get caught in the crossfire was Yunus Ali, who joined Isham in Australia in 1977. However, 10 years later, he was to be caught in yet another crackdown in Malaysia. In Operasi Lalang , Yunus Ali, who was then a member of UM's academic staff, was detained under the ISA and sent to Kamunting for two years.

Hot potato

By 1978, Isham found out how influential Malaysia was as far as Australia was concerned. "I had a great time in Australia," he says. "But Ghazalie Shafie was exerting a lot of pressure on Australia's premier Andrew Peacock to get me deported. Apparently my presence in Australia was not conducive to Malaysian security."

To get him out, the Australian government looked for something in the past to pin on their unwanted 'guest'. Four months earlier, Isham had been arrested on charges of obstructing police during a demonstration against Singapore's prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, but was released without charge. The government decided to bring up the case again, this time, pressing charges. However, the Australian courts found him not guilty and he was released.

"I then basically became a real 'hot potato' for the Australian government," Isham laughs. The threat of Isham's repatriation to Malaysia even managed to become an issue for the Australian opposition and the unions. Bob Hawke, who was then the secretary-general of the powerful Australian Congress of Trade Unions (ACTU), put a ban on union pilots flying any plane that would take Isham back to Malaysia.

"Finally, Peacock sent me a letter requesting that I leave voluntarily," Isham agreed and left with Yunus for Karachi, Pakistan. In Karachi, the two friends parted ways. Yunus left for Kuwait and went on to Lebanon to join the PLO's Al-Fatah freedom fighters. Isham went back to Iraq in the spring of 1978.

This time, he stayed in Baghdad for three months. "I thought the whole thing was a bad deal - from Melbourne to this. So I decided to go back to Lebanon. The war was getting worse there, but I thought it was a lot better than dying of boredom in Baghdad."

Happy hours in Beirut

When Isham arrived in Beirut, the taxi driver took one look at him and drove him directly to the Japanese Red Army headquarters. "He thought, since my eyes were all slitty, I had to be a Japanese terrorist!"

This was Beirut of the late 70s, a confused mass of militia groups, terrorists, mercenaries and shelling. The Japanese Red Army was in the city supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) led by Marxist theorist Georgist Habache.

"Incidentally, the PFLP was also a one-time base for South American terrorist Illyich Ramirez aka Carlos the Jackal, who was recently repatriated to France to stand trial for various terrorist acts committed throughout the 70s and 80s around Europe and the Middle East.

"You name it - Beirut had it, "Isham quips. "Everyone was there, especially those not welcomed in their own countries." In Lebanon, Isham decided to look for Yunus who had by then, joined the PLO and was undergoing military training in one of the many camps surrounding Beirut. "I attended his 'graduation' ceremony while I was there. It was a big thing in the PLO then, graduating as a soldier."

On his second stint in Beirut, though, Isham decided That he would better serve 'the cause' without a gun. He did the next best thing and joined the information bureau of the PLO's foreign ministry, as a volunteer reporter with its English publications.

Rounded up

Beirut was, strangely enough, pleasant for Isham this time. "Once I became a little more streetwise, Beirut was not too bad a place to be in, actually, "he says. "My favourite street was the chic Al-Hambra. I ignored the noise of guns and bombs; and kept to our side of the Green Line. The 'Green Line' divided Beirut into the Muslim west and Christian east.

As the war escalated, Isham took the opportunity to catch up with his movie-watching. "I watched the original version of Last Tango in Paris in Beirut." Isham's happy hours in Beirut came to an end with the kidnapping of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in Rome by the Italian Brigate Rosse (Red Brigade) terrorist group.

"There was a rumor that he had been taken to Beirut. This was followed by a mass rounding up of foreigners." One of them was Isham.

"They wanted to know what a Malaysian was doing in Beirut, "Isham explains. "They released me after questioning, but I knew that it was time to go". Moro finally turned up dead in Rome, a few yards away from his office near the Vatican and Isham left for Iraq.

"The student opinion in Karachi "

By now, Saddam Hussein was in power. If the atmosphere in 1976 was stifling, now it was unbearable for Isham. "They were hanging 'communists' practically by the busloads!"

When Saddam assumed power as president after the retirement of Hassan Al-Bakr in 1979, he quickly established his party as the only ruling group in the country, doing away with the communist and Kurdish factions of Iraq's previous coalition government.

In the next six months, Isham traveled around Iraq, including the northeastern Kurdistan region, to get away from the oppressive environment of Baghdad. Iraq was, by now, mounting a campaign that would eventually lead to the invasion of neighboring Iran in 1980.

In Iraq, Isham's passport expired and he had to go to the Malaysian consulate to get it renewed. It was, of course, confiscated, leaving him without any legal travel papers in a country he wasn't too keen on hanging around in. Being as resourceful as he was, he decided to leave Baghdad anyway.

He flew to Karachi and when he reached the airport, managed to convince immigration officers there that he was a transit passenger and walked into Pakistan without any valid travel documents.

Ideological split

Karachi in early 1979 was one of the more popular cities for Iranian exiles who had fled the country just prior to the revolution that would topple Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, and establish the Ayatollah Khomeini as head of a new Islamic republic.

Isham's timing could not have been better, and since exiles tend to flock together, he took up the cause and joined in the demonstrations in Karachi against the Shah. The BBC soon started quoting him in their despatches from Pakistan as " a student opinion from Karachi."

"At first, everyone in Karachi was united in the protests," he remembers. "When the Shah was finally deposed, the mullahs in Iran quickly established Khomeini as spiritual leader of the new republic. Then there was an ideological split among those who had before united against the Shah."

Isham is quick to point out that Khomeini never really had an organized political party behind him. The Ayatollah had been exiled since 1964, spending most of that time in Iraq. In 1978, Iraq deported Khomeini to Paris, where he became more accessible and started receiving substantial press coverage.

After the collapse of the pro-West regime of the Shah, he returned to Iran. "The most organized of the anti-Shah groups were the socialist left-wing Fidayeen and the Mujahideen, which was led by Ayatollah Talegai. These groups, which did most of the groundwork in toppling the Shah, were eventually left out of the new government and later driven underground again."

To Russia with ...

"When Isham recounts his two years in Karachi, I sense the tiredness in his voice. Although he does not admit it, one can imagine that at that point in his life, he must have started to realise the difference between idealism and reality and to weary of fighting causes for other nations.

He had had enough of Karachi and wanted to move on. He managed to buy a passport that once belonged to a Thai Muslim.. "His name was Nuseng Maman, and he was born in 1922," he says. "He had left his passport with a travel agent during a pilgrimage to Mecca."

In 1980, with this passport, Isham hoped to go to Afghanistan. However, this was just after the establishment of the Russian-backed government of Hafizullah Amin. Kabul was under curfew. Fighting was fierce between government troops and the Mujahideen resistance groups. In retrospect, it was probably not a bad thing that Isham was turned back at the border.

"I changed my travel plans and decided to try Europe for a change." Isham left Karachi in late 1981 for Frankfurt via Moscow.

Transit in Bombay

The transit in Moscow saw Isham's worse nightmare come true. In Moscow, his false passport was seized by Russian officers and he was detained for two days, while they decided what to do with him.

"It was in the middle of winter and I actually contemplated suicide!" He laughs. After what was probably the longest two days of his life, the Russians decided to deport him to Thailand, seeing that he was carrying a Thai passport. "I thought, Thailand? The Thais would just send me over the border back to Malaysia!"

The only hope Isham had was that the plane would stop over at Karachi. "Karachi Airport was at my finger tips. I was quite sure I'd be able to sneak back into Pakistan."

It turned out that the stopover was to be Bombay. Isham was not too perturbed when he found out. He had been to the Bombay Airport before and he hoped to make an easy getaway there. He boarded the plane, accompanied by two Russian officers, flushed his travel papers down the toilet and waited for the plane to land in Bombay.

When they arrived and he got to the transit lounge, his heart sank. "It was a bloody new airport," he shakes his head as he remembers how he worked his mind during the 45 minutes in the transit area, feverishly thinking of ways to avoid getting back on the plane.

The new airport building was actually built as an extension to the old airport with a narrow, closed-up space separating the two structures. Squeezing through a narrow opening from the men's toilet in the transit lounge, Isham got into this space and waited there, sandwiched between the walls of the 7th floor of the two buildings.

Ladies' loo

In Moscow, Isham had already briefed another passenger of his predicament and asked him to inform one of his friends in London of the situation. That traveller was scheduled to reach London in six hours. Isham decided to wait it out in the pitch darkness of his Bombay airport hideaway.

"In those six hours, I wrote three demands on a piece of paper. The first was that I was to be arrested in Bombay, not Malaysia. The second was that my lawyer in Australia be informed. And the third was for asylum in India."

Malaysian newspapers would later report that Isham was caught in a ladies' toilet in Bombay airport. Isham denies this, although he admits that he did attempt to get help from a woman in the toilet when his six hours was up. "I called for help through the ventilation shaft. Yes, it was the ladies toilet, but she was just washing her hands. I asked her to call the police, and when she got over the shock, she kindly obliged," he glosses laughingly over the ladies' loo incident.

As it turned out, the plane had not left for Bangkok yet and the Russian officers were unwavering in their resolve to take him with them to Thailand. Isham demanded to speak to the police and threatened to fall to his death if the Russians did not leave immediately.

The deputy police commissioner of Bombay heard his demands, arranged for the press to speak to him, after which he surrendered and was arrested. While he was not technically arrested in a ladies toilet in Bombay Airport, as reported by the press here, the negotiations for his surrender, which took 45 minutes, did happen in a ladies' toilet.

Isham spent three months in a Bombay prison while Amnesty International began negotiations for his release and various governments debated if he should be given asylum in their countries. "It wasn't too bad in Bombay - I spent New Year's Day and Deepavali in jail. The prison wasn't the Sheraton or the Hilton, but it was clean and pretty decent."

[The final part will appear tomorrow]

SHERYLL STOTHARD is vice-president of Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM). She originally wrote the above article for the Men's Review in February and March 1995. The above is the fourth of a five-part series.

DOTMAI

Hishamuddin Rais

Penulis kolum ini sedang dinilai oleh polis sama ada akan dibawa ke kem tahanan lanjutan atau dibebaskan. Beliau telah ditahan selama 51 hari sejak 10 April lalu.

Hishamuddin Rais dibenarkan menerima lawatan anggota keluarga Rabu lalu.

Penulis kolum 'Dotmai' di malaysiakini kini sedang menjalani soal siasat secara intensif oleh unit-unit khas pasukan polis Cawangan Khas (SB).

Selepas 60 hari dikurung seorang diri dalam bilik kecil dan gelap dalam keadaan rehat yang tidak mencukupi, Hishamuddin akan dibawa ke kem tahanan lanjutan selama dua tahun di Kemunting, Perak jika Menteri Dalam Negeri Abdullah Badawi menurunkan tandatangan sebagai persetujuan.