WESTBROOK (AP) – An Iraqi immigrant who left his native country 13 years ago intends to travel to Iraq and see his 14-year-old daughter for the first time since he fled.

Khaery Alhamdany said he’ll begin his trip on Saturday and spend 45 days in his hometown of Basra. When he left after the Persian Gulf War of 1991, his daughter, Zamin, was an infant just learning her first words.

She has lived with Alhamdany’s family since her mother remarried, he said.

“It’s been a long time,” Alhamdany said. “I see her in my mind as a baby.”

Alhamdany and his brother, Abbas, took part in an uprising against Saddam Hussein in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war. After Saddam regained control of the region, the brothers left Iraq.

They ended up in the United States in 1994, and came to Maine a year later. The brothers worked at Portland seafood companies for several years before buying Friendly Discount in 2000.

With Saddam captured and the Iraqi government looking like it might begin to stabilize, Alhamdany said conditions in Iraq are finally safe enough for a return trip.

Alhamdany has kept in touch with his family by phone because letters into Iraq from the United States were typically intercepted during Saddam’s reign, he said.

Now he calls his family in Iraq on a regular basis, and said people are slowly adjusting to the freedoms of a post-Saddam world.

“Before you have to be a soldier, now you don’t have to,” he said. “Now you do anything you want.”

Abbas Alhamdany said his brother is joining a large number of refugees who are going home for the first time. Some are choosing to stay.

Khaery Alhamdany married two years ago. He and his wife, Anwar, have a 4-month-old daughter, Xana.

He hopes to bring his American and Iraqi families together, beginning with the trip to Iraq. Alhamdany said his daughter has told him during phone conversations that she wants him to be a part of her life.

“She said, ‘I go with you or you stay with me,”‘ he said.

AP-ES-01-09-04 0216EST