Hassan Janabi is back in Sydney for a brief holiday with his family after more than a year in Iraq. It was a journey that started as the realisation of a lifelong dream, but turned into a nightmare.

HASSAN JANABI: This is the first holiday. It’s going to be a real holiday. The challenges are still there, but it is far more dangerous. It is just cheap killing.

I first met Hassan when he arrived in Baghdad just a few weeks after George Bush declared the war officially over. A water engineer from the Sydney Catchment Authority, Hassan was one of many Iraqi exiles hand-picked to help with the reconstruction of his homeland.

HASSAN JANABI: The feeling that you are back home is beyond imagination, beyond description, I cannot describe it. Yeah, this is the first day, the first morning in Baghdad, since 1979.

HASSAN JANABI (ON TELEPHONE): Guess where I am now? The Presidential Palace. (Laughs) She doesn’t believe me.

As a Shi’ite and a student activist, Hassan would have been killed for walking where he is now. The first weeks of Hassan’s stay were chaotic, but filled with hope. He thought he would only be needed here for a few months, but ended up staying for over a year.

HASSAN JANABI: Can you believe this? Just tell me, can you believe this? I’m back! (Laughs)

Hassan, what are you most looking forward to?

HASSAN JANABI: Here? To drink. To drink wine with my family and my friends! It is really very exciting to be here. I became scared at times. The last month was very, very scary. And I thought I would be killed any minute, basically. That feeling was very, very frightening. But there was no way out, there was no escape.

And you are going to go back?

HASSAN JANABI: I am. Yes.

Hassan had only been at work for a few days before it became obvious the Americans didn’t have much of a plan to get his country back on its feet.

UNITED STATES MAN: It’s their government that led them into this problem, not us. We’re actually helping them get out of it and they need to pull themselves by the boot straps.

IRAQI MAN (TRANSLATION): It was better under Saddam. There were rewards. But it’s not like that now.

Hassan thinks this lack of planning caused today’s instability in Iraq.

HASSAN JANABI: You can only cry. What else can you do?

HASSAN JANABI: I think it took some time for the Americans to realise that the security of the country is directly related to the economy, to the jobs. I think it took longer than it should be. Economic growth and jobs for the people is the main reason, I think, for the so-called insurgency. I am still adjusting to civilised life. Back there we drive on red light, drive on the kerb, the wrong side, no problem, As long as you get to the destination that’s just fine. I think my life is getting a little bit more complicated. I am not a pragmatic politician of some sort. I have always been a pacifist, but this is very tough for me. The magnitude of the changes that’s happening every day in front of your eyes is so big. You need this internal transformation to happen for you to comprehend and to stay a normal person.

The transformation began 15 months ago when Hassan saw his brothers and sisters for the first time in 25 years. Hassan hasn’t been able to see his family for months. They live in a village outside Najaf, the holy city which has recently been reduced to rubble. The area is a no-go zone for foreigners or exiles, who, like Hassan, are working with the new regime. But in January this year, before Najaf blew up, Hassan brought his wife and three sons from Australia to meet the extended family.

FIRAS JANABI, HASSAN’S SON: It was, before I went I thought it would be pretty bad, you know, crummy. But it was a lot better than I expected.

In what way?

FIRAS JANABI: A lot of love. A lot of family.

FAISAL JANABI, YOUNGER SON OF HASSAN: I bet he’s going to cry now.

FIRAS JANABI: Shut up. (Laughs)

HASSAN JANABI: See? Even Faisal pulled a gun.

That’s you?

FAISAL JANABI: Yeah. And that’s a real AK47.

HASSAN JANABI: What was that AK47?

FAISAL JANABI: It was a real one.

HASSAN JANABI: Yeah?

FAISAL JANABI: Real.

HASSAN JANABI: Number three. OK. Two.

His family had a shocking introduction to the country Hassan had mythologised. Driving into Iraq, they were robbed by armed bandits.

HASSAN JANABI: Unfortunately, it started with a big hiccup where the entire family, we got ambushed on the way near Fallujah on the way to Baghdad. That was the first day, that we got basically chased by another car and then ordered to stop, so our driver stopped. He could not escape. So they pulled their machine guns and pistols at me and my son, and they demanded the money. So it was a horrible experience, but then they get adjusted very soon and they settled with their extended family very well and I think they like it. Don’t you, bubba?

FAISAL JANABI: Huh?

HASSAN JANABI: Didn’t you like being in Iraq and with the family?

FAISAL JANABI: Yeah. But the first experience was zero out of 100.

HASSAN JANABI: Zero out of 100? Why?

FAISAL JANABI: Because they even asked me for money.

For a quarter of a century, Hassan’s dream was to see an Iraq without Saddam Hussein. Now he can’t imagine that Iraq might be anything other than the happy democracy that was promised.

HASSAN JANABI: You’ve got the bad, and the worse. What we had under Saddam Hussein was the worst that could happen to any human being. There was no political system like Iraq. I am not sure about Pol Pot in Cambodia, but this is the worst thing that could ever happen to Iraq. That was Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime. Now Saddam has gone. We have new people there, new factors, new players on the political stage in Iraq, but we can deal with them. It is very easy to deal with them.

So you are saying that it was so bad then, it is OK to deal with the bad stuff now because it can’t be as bad as it was?

HASSAN JANABI: That’s right. Yes.

But people are now being taken hostage daily and, with his connections to the new regime, Hassan is a prime target. His holiday with his family is over. Returning this time is an act of faith. If Hassan acknowledged the gravity of the crisis in Iraq, he may have to accept that his dream is over.

Do you get scared, Hassan?

HASSAN JANABI: Most recently, yes, before I left Iraq, the last month of six months. I started to feel a little bit worried. Maybe the reason for that, not only the intensity of the bombings but that call inside that I want to see my family and it is going to happen in one month and I started to feel that maybe within this month something is going to happen and maybe I am not going to see my kids and my wife. So this affected me a little and I got a little scared.

Just a little bit.