The Fugitive Chemist: From a war zone to life-saving research

The

Fugitive

Chemist

Abedawn Khalaf

Published in 2019 by Alshimery Press

Copyright © Abedawn Khalaf 2019

Abedawn Khalaf has asserted his right to be identified as

the author of this Work in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-9161368-0-9

Ebook: 978-1-9161368-1-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue copy of this book can

be found in the British Library.

Published with the help of Indie Authors World

I would like to dedicate this book to my family and everyone I have met over the years who helped motivate me and inspired me throughout my life’s journey.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my wife, family and friends, both here in the UK and back in Iraq, for their support throughout the years. I also want to thank Christine McPherson for her help in editing this book. Naturally, above all, I wish to thank Kim and Sinclair Macleod without whom this book would not have got to the publishing stage.

Foreword

Dr Abedawn Khalaf – an appreciation by Professor Colin Suckling

Just over 30 years ago my erstwhile colleague, Dr George Proctor, introduced me to Abed Khalaf who was about to take on the role of the synthetic chemist in a project aimed at the discovery of catalytic antibodies. Once in a while in a scientific career, someone comes along who makes a real difference to progress and success; Abed was one such person and undoubtedly the most significant one in my career. In 1989 catalytic antibodies was a hot field of research and Abed turned out to be the right man at the right time. We were able to obtain a small number of catalytic antibodies and evaluate their properties. The opportunity that most fully and most extensively brought Abed’s chemical and organisational skills into play, however, arose in 1993 when we began a project funded by Proteus Molecular Design into DNA minor groove binders intended for use as anti-infective drugs in human medicine. Abed became a key person in a team of chemists synthesising bespoke minor groove binders according to designs from Proteus, from which we learned concepts, skills, and techniques relevant to what was to become the primary field of our collaboration. After a short period of reflection to avoid conflicts of interest after that project ended, Abed, Professor Roger Waigh and I began what has now become known as the Strathclyde Minor Groove Binders (S-MGB) project, a project that has now become a project of international significance.

The central idea of the S-MGB project was that we could design, synthesise, and demonstrate the activity of minor groove binders active against almost any infectious agent (bacterium, fungus, parasite etc.) because they all contain DNA and by careful structural variation select compounds that are selective with respect to the host, be it human or animal. The importance of this idea has increased hugely since with the public and political recognition of the significance of antimicrobial resistance. More than anyone else in the synthetic chemistry community, Abed contributed over a period of more than 20 years to S-MGBs to the point at which we have active S-MGBs being investigated for development in four continents, Africa, India, South America, and Europe. Abed’s contribution was immense because he made first most of the candidate compounds at Strathclyde. The most advanced compound is now in a phase 2 clinical trial in the hands of our partner company, MGB Biopharma for the treatment of Clostridium difficile infections.

Abed also contributed hugely over these years to the formation of undergraduate and postgraduate students in our laboratories. Nothing was ever too much trouble and he was always calmly and politely able to help. There can be few chemists who at their retirement can rightly say to themselves that they have contributed directly not only to a healthier world but also to the competences of those who will make their contributions in the future. I count myself to be very fortunate to have had such an all-round splendid colleague and friend for so many years.

Colin Suckling, OBE, DSc, FRSE

July 2019

Prologue

Life just does not follow a straight line. There are always problems, diversions, going forwards and falling backwards, as well as unforeseen and unexpected events which have the possibility of making life more complicated, more exciting, or incredibly frightening at times. However, the majority of us just have to take these events in their stride and say, " C’est la vie. "

From the beginning of my childhood, life seemed normal to us and everyone around us. Our parents did their best to nurture us, clothe and feed us, encourage our education, and try to keep us on the right path. As children, we gratefully accepted what was handed out to us.

My adolescence was more challenging. I had my own thoughts and ambitions and I was determined to achieve everything I could, but then the circumstances that surrounded me presented a mountain to climb.

After university, I had to endure eighteen months of national service which, like everyone else, I loathed. Iraq was ravaged with many years of war with its nearest neighbour, Iran, and it was inevitable that I would be sent to fight in the conflict at some stage.

Having the courage and determination to move on to fulfil my ambitions and desires in life led me to Scotland to study for two postgraduate degrees, and during that time I was extremely lucky to meet the woman of my dreams, who has been my wife for all these years.

Unfortunately, financial problems led to us travelling to Iraq and straight into the ongoing eight-year war with Iran. As an army reservist, I was posted to Erbil in Kurdistan, in the far north of Iraq. That part of the country was politically unstable; on one hand there were Kurdish factions that were fighting with each other, and on the other hand, Iranian fighter jets were bombing the area practically every single day.

As much as we loved the city of Erbil and the natives (Kurdish, Turkman, Arabs and others), life became intolerable for everyone in that part of the world, and especially for my wife and children. But when we decided to return to the UK, there were several obstacles which complicated matters.

While Carol was forced to fight her way through bureaucracy and paperwork to travel to Britain with our two children, my exit proved even more complicated. With a colleague, I escaped from an army training camp and began an arduous, harrowing, and at times dangerous, two-month journey over mountains and across several borders, overcoming language problems and visa difficulties, before finally and miraculously reaching the UK.

On my return to Britain, I worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, and was involved in many research projects, mostly in the field of medicinal chemistry. During the course of my research work, five patents were published, two of which were licensed to a pharmaceutical company. One of the drugs has now reached Phase II clinical trials as an antibiotic specifically for the treatment of the bacterial infection Clostridium Difficile.

Although I had to retire from work due to ill health in 2017, I hope I have made a small contribution to society and to humanity through the research work that I undertook.

This is my story…

Chapter 1

From the Beginning

I was born in the year 1952 in Karbala, Iraq, but unfortunately, I do not know the exact date of my birth and neither do any of my relatives. To me, that is a great pity; like everyone, I would like to know my exact date of birth. All I know is that I was the second youngest of six children, and was born at some point during the holy month of Ramadan in 1952.

When the very first government census was conducted during early 1960, the government decided to split those people who did not have an accurate date of birth (i.e. without a proper birth certificate) into two separate categories, according to roughly in which half of the year they were born. So, people who were told they were born in the first half of the year were given an official date of birth as the 1st of January that year; those born in the second half of the year were given the official date of birth as the 1st of July in that year. On top of this, most people born before the census were given the year of birth depending on whichever major events occurred around the time of the child’s birth. For example, if a child was born during an eclipse of the moon or if there were exceptionally heavy rainstorms around the time of their birth in any given year, then the authorities would be able to roughly calculate the year of birth from records of when these events happened.

In my case, as I was believed to have been born during the second half of the year, my date of birth was officially registered as 1st July, 1952.

My father, Ibrahim Khalaf, always believed that all the family should stay together in the same house, no matter what happened. So I grew up in a three-bedroomed house that also had a very small box room. My parents slept in one bedroom, my two brothers and I in another, and my three sisters slept in the other bedroom. My grandmother, Sofia (my father’s mother), who was already very old when I was born, slept in the small box room. Her husband died before I was born, and I do not know anything about him.

I cannot remember much about my grandmother Sofia, only that she was very, very old when she died, and nobody in the family seemed to have even one single photo of her! I do remember being very upset and crying profusely when she died, and I recall the mullah (holy man) coming to our house the night it happened. He sat in the room beside her coffin and recited from the Holy Koran all that night. The next morning, official criers (women who are paid to cry and mourn at funerals) came to the house to weep beside her coffin. The house was full of people, and eventually they carried the coffin to the mosque. Following this, the family was in mourning for three days.

Only a few days after her funeral, my father demolished the small box room and gave all my grandmother’s belongings to the very poor people of our town.

My grandmother, Kefaya Jasim Al-Ta’i (my mother’s mother) [01.07.1883 - 06.05.1981]. It is hard to believe that she was aged 98 when she died, as the mortality rates were bad for Iraqis then.

This is the only photograph I have of my Grandmother Kefaya (my mother’s mother). I took this photograph myself in 1980.

She was married to Saeed Abbas Al-Kalash, who is believed to have been of Greek origin. She always told me that her husband was a very tall man – from her description he must have been around six foot six inches (approximately 1.98 metres) tall – Caucasian, blue-eyed, with sandy blond hair. I believe this account of him, because all my uncles and aunts were very tall and fairly white-skinned. Searching through the internet years later, I found the surname ‘Kalash’ associated with people who had migrated from Greece and settled in modern-day Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan. Perhaps, and this is only a hypothesis, they came as part of the invading army with Alexander the Great.

My parents were both born in the city of Babylon and, after their marriage, they moved to the holy city of Karbala, which is only 42 kilometres west of Babylon. Both my parents were from farming families.

My father, Ibrahim, was born in 1905, but, naturally, did not have a birth certificate or any other official record of any sort to prove his year of birth. He had been married twice before: his first marriage did not work out as planned, and ended in divorce; his second wife, according to him, died of an unknown illness. My siblings and I are therefore the children from his third marriage. There were six of us in total, three boys and three girls, and I was the second youngest of the family.

Our house was in an alley with three other houses and a hamam (a public bath). The alley itself was only about one-and-a-half metres wide and about ten metres in length. I can clearly remember the main street. In the mornings, it changed from a mere street to a vibrant vegetable market, with two butchers’ shops, one at either end of the road. Naturally, there was no room for cars or bicycles to go through, since the traders used to assemble their goods slap-bang in the middle of the street as well as on the two pavements, leaving only a narrow path for pedestrians and shoppers to walk past.

The hamam, which was right next door to our house, was divided into two sections – one part for men, the other for women. From the roof of the house, I could see the dome-shaped roofs and the chimney, which continuously spewed black fumes. The smell used to vary every now and then, and it was much later before I understood why the odour changed so much. The owner of this public bath – a man of Iranian extraction, who only ever employed other Iranians – used to collect old clothes, tyres, and papers, and he burned these as fuel to heat the water.

There was a seemingly endless collection of ropes tied from one roof dome to the other, and there were always a variety of different coloured towels draped over the ropes; these towels belonged to the establishment and were not for personal use by the staff. When I went there every week for a bath, it was always very hot, and there were benches for people to sit on and small marble sinks for mixing the hot and cold water together.

I used to get a great thrill from using the swimming pool there. It was always lovely and warm and had so many steps leading down to it. I would hang onto the railings near the shallow end to watch the proceedings. After the bathers came out of the baths, they would be given a towel to dry themselves, which they would just drop on the floor and leave for the assistant to pick up afterwards.

Our house, which was in an area called Al Abbasia Al Shirkea (which means to the east of the grave of Imam Abbas), consisted of a courtyard and two bedrooms on the ground floor. There was also a big bedroom on the first floor, which was occupied by my brothers and me until my older brother, Ali, got married. Then it was solely for him and his wife. Ali married our cousin, Kathiyma, who was one year older than him. I was told that this was not an arranged marriage as such because they loved each other and wanted to be married. According to my mother, Kathiyma had been orphaned when she was only a very little girl. So, on their marriage, my father partitioned off our parents’ bedroom to make a smaller bedroom for my brother and me. Later on, as a teenager, I converted the courtyard into a small garden.

My mother in her younger years – date unknown.

My father, Ibrahim (01-07-1905 to 03-03-1983) – photo taken in the 1970s.

My Mother Bedria

(01-07-1922 to 13-07-1988).

My mother once told me that my parents had previously owned a date-palm farm, and had kept a donkey in the house as a means of transport. For as long as I can remember, my family had always kept either a live goat or a live sheep in the courtyard. I clearly recall that at one stage there was a fairly young ewe that gave birth in the courtyard, and I took it upon myself to help her look after the baby lamb for many months. I was heartbroken and cried my eyes out when my parents informed me one day that, as we were very poor and struggling for money, they had decided to sell the baby lamb to raise some money. Soon afterwards, a buyer came for the lamb, and when he put it down on the ground to pay the money, the lamb came running over to me straight away. I was heartbroken to have to part with him.

The butcher who lived at the top end of the street had his own flock of sheep and would bring them into the street every afternoon to feed them. He used to put several metal basins in the middle of the street, which he would fill with barley or other seeds. My sister, Raskiyah, and I would go and pick up whatever barley or seeds were left over after the sheep were taken away and use whatever we gathered to help feed our own chickens, which we kept in a cage on the flat roof of the house.

I started at Al Ezza (which means ‘pride’) primary school when I was six years old. The school was not very far from our house, so my siblings and I used to walk to and from there on school days (Saturdays to Thursdays). As we were fairly poor, I must have looked peculiar wearing my traditional Dishdasha (a long-sleeved robe worn by men from the Arabian Peninsula which usually came down to the ankles), tucked inside my trousers or my shorts. It looked as if I had a very fat waist and very thin legs. Even then, the children from richer families wore more Westernised clothes, but we were of a lower standard.

I really enjoyed my time at school, because I loved learning something new every day. I always came out in the top percentile of the class and earned a number of certificates, which my family kept for many years. When we started learning the English language, the first lesson we had was to repeat words after the teacher, like ‘saucer’ and ‘bicycle’. It is so clear in my mind how we used to shout the spelling of the word bicycle and making it rhyme (B-I-C-Y-C-L-E) while banging on the tables in front of us.

The only thing I was not good at was sport. I could run pretty fast, but I was dreadful when it came to football, basketball, and other physical exercises.

Photograph taken in 1962 when I was in primary five.

Our primary school teachers used to take us for school trips to nearby historical places. One of these places was The Fortress of Al-Ukhaidir (an ancient Abbasid palace), which lies around 50km south of my home town of Karbala. It was basically a rectangular fortress, believed to have been built around 775 AD by Isa ibn Musa, the nephew of the Abbasid Caliph. Gertrude Bell conducted excavations of this site in the early 20th Century. From the information gleaned from the excavations, it is believed Al-Ukhaidir was used as an important stop-over on regional trade routes, akin to those on the Great Silk Road.

The Fortress of Al-Ukhaidir – photograph by Brendan Choi, who has given me explicit permission to use it.

Unfortunately, the fortress has now been left to crumble, and if it continues to be neglected, it will fall into total disrepair and eventually become a heap of rubble in the coming years.

When we went on school outings, my mother would give me a packed lunch consisting of a boiled egg, boiled potatoes, some bread, and a flask of water. How nice it was sitting in the shade, in lovely surroundings, eating what, to me, was a feast in those days. I would then go and play with my friends among the ruins of whichever buildings we were visiting that day.

At the age of ten, I joined the Kashafa – the Arab equivalent of the Boys’ Brigade. I loved wearing the uniform, as it meant I was dressed the same as the other boys, and I enjoyed the training that went with it. Of course, the uniform was provided free to everyone who joined the Kashafa.

In 1964, I finished primary school and had to move on to Al-Thawrah intermediate school (Al-Thawrah means ‘the revolution’). Fortunately, this school was also nearby so I did not have to walk too far to get there. And I still had the same classmates, as most of them were either neighbours or people who had previously lived in the same street as us and with whom I played after school.

The new names for our schools came about after the revolution of the former Prime Minister, Abd al-Karim Qasim (21.11.14 – 09.02.63). He was a nationalist Iraqi Army brigadier who seized power in the 14 July 1958 Revolution, which caused the downfall of the Iraqi monarchy and resulted in King Faisal II being executed at the age of 23. Abd al-Karim Qasim himself was subsequently overthrown following the 1963 Ba’athist Coup in February that year. Following a very short trial, he was found shot dead a short while later.

The three years I studied in the intermediate school passed very quickly, and all too soon I had to move to a secondary school. It was around this time that the Iraqi government changed the school system to three years of study instead of the two years that my older siblings attended for.

There was only one secondary school in Karbala at that time, namely the Idadeat Karbala preparatory school. The pupils, who were clever enough, and lucky enough, to attend this school, were being prepped to go to universities and colleges after passing the Baccalaureate examinations. This school was literally just across the road from our house, and consisted of two specialised sections – one for science, the other was for education. Those who were more interested in medicine or science had to attend classes in science-related subjects, medicine, and engineering; those more interested in studying for a degree in education had to attend diverse subjects such as economy, art, sports, and languages. I opted to study science-based subjects as I really wanted to go to university to study medicine and sincerely hoped that I would succeed in achieving the high grades required.

During this time my older brother, Abu Haidar, was stationed at Al Habbaniyah, but his wife and children were still living at home with us. My brother’s first name is Ali, but once a male child is born, the parents lose their own identity and instead become either ‘the mother of…’ or ‘the father of…’. So, when Ali’s wife gave birth to their son, Haidar, my brother was from that day onwards respectfully called ‘Abu Haidar’ (the father of Haidar), and his wife, Kathiyma, was called ‘Umm Haidar’ (the mother of Haidar).

One day, about a year later, I overheard a private conversation between my parents about my second brother, Abd-Alhussain. He was then eighteen and my mother said she wanted to see him happily married. She hoped my father would agree to her suggestion while knowing very well that my brother, having left intermediate school, did not have a job or any prospect of work at that stage. He was six years my senior, and as far as I was concerned, the only things he thought about then were his pigeons, which he kept in a big cage on the right-hand side of our flat roof.

He spent endless hours up there feeding his precious birds, cleaning the cage, and setting them free to watch them soar high into the sky before tumbling back to earth after somersaulting several times. I sometimes went up onto the roof to watch the pigeons flying free and was amazed at how elegant they were in flight. I found it remarkable that they could fly off for so long and travel to God knows where, but eventually they would all come back to their cage. Abd-Alhussain and his friends would make bets about which birds would fly back fastest from specific places, and he would then take the pigeons to the surrounding villages before releasing them. He must have trained those birds well, as they always returned to their nest and never stayed away for more than a day or two.

Eventually, my mother told my father, ‘Our neighbour has a beautiful daughter, Fatima. She has blonde hair and looks almost Caucasian. She is only a couple of years younger than Abd-Alhussain, and I think she is very suitable, and they would be a good match.’

My father could not object. He knew that if he were to forbid this marriage, his own life would be made like hell until he finally agreed. Typically, my mother used to moan repeatedly to my father until he eventually gave her whatever she wanted, just so he could get some peace and quiet.

I dreaded the idea of my brother getting married. Our house was so crowded that there was no space for anyone else to live with us, but nobody paid attention to anything I said, especially as my mother was so intent on getting her own way. Eventually, my father conceded, and both families agreed to this proposed marriage. My brother was delighted at the prospect of being married off to such a pretty girl as Fatima.

To my annoyance, the big bedroom upstairs was partitioned into two smaller rooms just before they were married. I was really upset by all this upheaval and felt it was very inconsiderate of my parents to let both married brothers stay at home with the rest of us.

However, following his marriage, Abd-Alhussain began to turn his life around, and shortly after the birth of their first child, he commenced evening classes. He eventually finished his secondary school education and then applied to study Arabic language and theology at the Faculty of Jurisprudence at the University of Kufa. Within four years, he finished his degree and managed to secure a post as a secondary school teacher. He subsequently taught Arabic Language and theology until he had a stroke shortly before reaching the official retirement age.

With so many people living in such a small space, I found myself struggling with my studies. It was bad enough that we had problems at school due to there not being enough good secondary school teachers, but to top everything off we now had to face an even bigger problem – my mother’s mental health crisis. We all realised that she had not been very well for some time, and her situation was slowly but surely getting worse.

Throughout Iraq, in the middle of June, when the exam results were finalised and the marks were due to be distributed to the pupils, it was standard practice for the Ministry of Education