As he spoke on radio in his deep, serious voice, he at times cradled a cigarette in his left hand while holding a microphone in his right.
Like Cronkite, he had his own signature sign-off: "This is Baghdad station. Ladies and gentlemen, goodnight."
"He was really a superstar," says Shameem Rassam, a former Baghdad TV talk-show host, who worked with Abdulwahed at the TV station. "Ask any Iraqi [of the older generation], he is well-known. He had a good command of the language."
Given his role as one of the pioneers of Baghdad TV, Juliane Ramic, director of social services at the Nationalities Service Center (NSC), the Center City agency that resettled Abdulwahed and his wife in Philly, nicknamed him the "Walter Cronkite of Iraq."
Big adjustments
Abdulwahed and his wife, Hayfaa Ibrahem Abdulqader, who was also a TV announcer in Baghdad (they met at the station, when she worked there), are among the more than 500 Iraqi refugees who have resettled in the Philadelphia area as a result of the U.S.-led Iraq war.
The NSC has resettled the majority of the refugees, many in Northeast Philadelphia - chosen for its good-quality housing, family-friendly feel and access to public transportation, said Ramic.
With Middle Eastern food markets and meat shops, Northeast Philly also offers the newcomers a little bit of home.
But the dramatic change for refugees, coming from a place of violence, then living in a new world where many face a language barrier and an adjustment in their position in society, can be traumatic.
Ramic said it takes about three years for refugees to integrate into American society.
"The first year is fascinating - bright lights, big city," she said. "Then, reality sets in. Sometimes, there's a mismatch of expectations."
