| Mr. Abbas says that when he saw the valve Mr. Saffar was trying to replace, he assumed it was for a lawn mower or tractor. Mr. Abbas led Mr. Saffar up a short flight of stairs and then guided him through a labyrinth of shelves overflowing with old and new auto parts. The older man bent down, picked up a small dust-covered box and blew on it until the Ford logo was visible. Mr. Abbas told Mr. Saffar that no one had asked about such an old valve in almost 20 years -- and gave it to him free of charge. "He was showing that Iraqis were such good mechanics that they could even bring a dead car back to life," Mr. Abbas says. After another company put in a new leather interior that exactly matched the color and stitching of the original, Mr. Saffar's final decision was what color to paint the car. It was originally a light green, but that color had been banned when the government decided to reserve it for military vehicles. The car's previous owners had painted it white, but Mr. Saffar thought that made it look cheap. A religious man, he ultimately settled on dark green, the color of Islam. By late last year, the car was finally fully restored, at a cost of $4,000. Mr. Saffar celebrated by driving it from Mosul to Baghdad, a trip of about 250 miles. He tried to fulfill a lifelong dream by entering the car in international classic-car contests and races but couldn't get permission from the Hussein government to travel abroad. Some organizations, meanwhile, made clear to him that he wasn't welcome because he wanted to represent the pariah nation of Iraq. "One organization told me I was a spy and then hung up the phone," he recalls. All that changed when the Americans deposed Saddam Hussein. The old Ford had small rods on the side of its hood meant to hold flags, something the original owner had put on. The day the statue of Mr. Hussein was knocked down in Baghdad, Mr. Saffar says he attached Iraqi flags to the poles and drove through Mosul with his horn blaring. Several days later, Mr. Saffar noticed smoke rising from the grounds of Mosul's main university. He drove there in time to see small groups of young men, faces masked, roaming across the campus with cans of kerosene. Afraid that they would torch the library, he raced the Ford to a nearby mosque, enlisted three friends who owned trucks, and returned to the campus to load books from the library's reference section and Assyrian civilization collection. The men hid the books in three classrooms of a local high school and guarded them until the unrest in the city died down. A framed certificate in his office signed by the president of the school thanks him for his "good offices in protecting the central library's books at the University of Mosul." Mr. Saffar has sent photos of the car to several international vintage car organizations and hopes to enter the Ford in antique-car races next year in Italy, France or the U.S. He has also begun restoring the two other antique cars he owns but says it isn't as much fun as working on the old Ford. "That was love at first sight," he says. Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com1 |
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