IN THE FACE OF DEATH

Instead, Iraq fell apart. Although Hanna and his wife never stopped expressing hope for their country, they were waiting for final approval to immigrate to the United States when kidnappers grabbed him, then her, this past May. A message appeared on an Islamist website in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq, a front organization for al Qaeda in Iraq, trumpeting the killing of “two of the most prominent agents and spies of the worshippers of the Cross … a man and woman who occupy an important position at the U.S. Embassy.” On July 8, the U.S. Embassy publicly announced that their bodies had been found and identified.

Hanna and Meskoni were the kind of people you would look for to build a nation — smart and stubborn and proud. The couple could not stand the thought of abandoning their Baghdad home. “Terrorists will take my house,” Hanna told relatives who urged him to leave. He was especially proud of his huge library. “He built his house, as we say in Iraq, brick by brick,” says Hanna’s former office mate at the embassy, Serwan. Yet just before she died Meskoni told a friend that her “mission in life” had been completed by getting her three children out of Iraq.

From Hanna’s earliest years he had a touch of Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln about him. When he was nine, he took to reading his schoolbooks by the light of a street lamp. He graduated from high school, earning a scholarship to study petroleum engineering in England. When he returned to Baghdad in 1965, he met his future wife at the Oil Ministry, where she worked as an English translator. Hanna took his wife with him when he returned to England in 1969 to earn his Ph.D. Their son was born there in 1971. A year later the couple took their son home to Baghdad, where their first daughter followed in 1974 and a second in 1976. Those were the family’s happiest years, before Saddam took over as president in 1979.

In 1992, after Saddam’s disastrous invasion of Kuwait, the couple managed to smuggle their son safely out of Iraq. The couple talked about applying for asylum but decided against it. “They had their dignity,” their son says. “They felt this was a polite way of begging.” Hanna finally landed a teaching spot in Libya. When he returned home in 1997, Meskoni became the breadwinner, taking work as a translator at the Sri Lankan Embassy.

After the U.S. invasion, the couple went looking for work. Meskoni found it first. A friend of hers had been hired as a translator at the Coalition Provisional Authority and immediately recommended Meskoni. It didn’t take long for her to suggest that the CPA could use a man like her husband. When the U.S. Embassy opened the next year, they were among the first Iraqi employees to be sent over.

As the insurgency spread, the couple took elaborate precautions to avoid being spotted as embassy employees. They would drive partway to work, always by different routes, before parking and finishing the trip by taxi. They wore their shabbiest clothes to look unemployed and inconspicuous. Early this year, the embassy’s Iraqi employees were finally promised U.S. visas, based on seniority. The couple promptly filed for theirs.

On the morning of May 21, they took a particularly dangerous route. A friend who had left the country had asked them to withdraw some money from his account at a bank. U.S. officials say the two had left the bank and were driving out of the area when a gang stopped their car. The men grabbed Hanna and let Meskoni go.

She was asked to pay a ransom. Her son says the kidnappers told her to come alone with the cash to a spot near the 14th of July Bridge at 10 in the morning sharp. “If you come at 10:30, he will be killed,” the voice warned. Meskoni was not seen again.

About a month later, police found their two bodies and took them to the morgue. There are unconfirmed accounts that an Iraqi guard was killed and another was wounded trying to protect Meskoni. Her son is convinced she would have faced the kidnappers with or without armed backup. “At a certain point she decided, ‘To hell with it. I am going down the grave with him’,” the son says.

The sad conclusion to their sad tale is that even in death, the couple could not remain in Iraq. The embassy paid to have their bodies flown to an undisclosed country where their children can visit their graves in safety. Their son says the family is grateful.

(With Joe Cochrane and Larry Kaplow in Baghdad) Newsweek