by Jean Sasson
“Despite my daughter’s illness, I was still taken out for torture. Other kind women in the cell volunteered to watch Suzan. For the first time, I didn’t feel the torturer’s whip. I just wanted them to whip me quick and get it over with so I could go back to my child. I ran in a torture room once and cried out, ‘Whip me, whip me fast!’ which startled the torturers. In fact, it was the only time a man laid down his whip and told me to go back to the cell. I was possessed. All I could think about was my daughter.
“Praise Allah Suzan survived. The following year, our lives improved slightly when my brother met a man who knew one of Saddam’s bodyguards. That man got my brother information about where we were being detained. After three months of paying bribes, my brother was allowed to visit me.” She made a sweeping gesture with her hand at her pile of things. “He brought me clothes and prayer rugs and blankets and special food. He even received authorization to take little Suzan out of the prison, and now my child is living with my brother and his wife. Although I’ll never forget how my darling baby screamed when my brother lifted my child from my arms and walked away, it is a great blessing to me that she is safe.”
Aliya began weeping and Samara patted her back as she completed Aliya’s story for her. “Our Aliya is an educated woman, a biochemist. She’s even been awarded several certificates. Prohibited from teaching in pubic schools because she was not a member of the Baath Party, she taught privately.”
Aliya then began to wail in earnest, “My husband is an engineer. He is working as a baker. I am a teacher. And now I am rotting in prison. My daughter will be a grown woman when I get out of here. And I have never done anything against the government.”
Every eye in the cell overflowed with tears of sympathy for Aliya.
Through the wall, they heard Ahmed, the pious young Wahabi convert, begin his nightly prayers. Suddenly, his prayers turned into screams.
Mayada was so nervous by this time that she leapt to her feet and clutched Samara’s arm, crying out, “They are going to kill him! They are going to kill him!”
Samara replied in a low voice, “No. But what they are going to do to him is even worse, particularly for a devout Muslim.”
Mayada didn’t understand until she heard them dragging Ahmed into the hallway, where they stopped in front of their cell door. The guards then took turns raping Ahmed. Mayada was horrified. The brutal rape went on for more than an hour, until Mayada heard one of the guards laugh like a hyena as he told Ahmed, “Relax. You are now the wife of three men and you must please us all.”
4
Saddam Hussein
With her head still throbbing from Ahmed’s screams, Mayada sat silently and watched as one by one, the shadow women melted away from Aliya’s side. Aliya sat quietly on the floor despite Samara’s appeal to organize her bedding and supplies, which cluttered the small cell. Aliya stared so intently at her hands, clutched tightly and curled in her lap, that Mayada wondered if Aliya was thinking of her daughter and how she would never again have the opportunity to hold and protect her child, because Suzan would likely be a wife and mother herself before Aliya was released from Baladiyat.
For a brief moment, Mayada envied Rasha’s detachment, knowing that as she embraced the stories of the other shadow women, the weight of their sorrows combined with her own.
But even as those thoughts were working through her mind, Mayada knew she could never pull back from those shadow women, for she had quickly developed a true affection for each of them. Just then, Samara surprised Mayada with a small pail of water to wash her face and hands. Mayada felt her black mood lift slightly. Although she knew that prisoners were not allowed sharp objects, she had discovered that Samara was a miracle worker, and she asked Samara if there was any way of finding a hand mirror.
Samara glanced at the other shadow women, then nodded before turning and rummaging through the belongings she had packed away in the folds of a rough military blanket. Samara gave a mumble of satisfaction and proudly turned with a small broken mirror in her hand, which she waved enthusiastically. Samara whispered, “Up until a week ago there was a beautiful young woman held here. One of the guards took a special interest in her. He slipped her this mirror with the promise she would not share it with her cellmates. When that guard was transferred to Basra, he issued orders for her transfer, as well. She left me this mirror.”
Mayada considered the steep price that poor woman was paying for the guard’s special interest, but pushed the thought out of her mind. She knew that rape was a form of torture against both males and females in Iraqi prisons, but the most attractive women were raped repeatedly by many different men. For the first time in her life, Mayada was pleased not to be a great beauty.
With a sad sigh she took the mirror from Samara’s hand and looked at her image in the mirror. She winced in surprise. In disbelief she turned the mirror over several times, first looking at the leaded back and then at the mirrored front before building her courage to gaze at her reflection a second time. Yes, the stranger in the mirror was indeed the oldest daughter of Nizar and Salwa and the mother of Fay and Ali.
She touched her face with her fingertips. She marveled that only twenty-four hours had passed since her arrest, but her skin had loosened and now hung in small folds. Lines she had never seen before circled her hazel eyes.
While thus involved, Mayada overheard one of the shadow women exclaim that even dogs in Iraq were treated better than prisoners, and she heard her own voice involuntarily call out, “Undoubtedly some dogs are treated better than us, but not our President’s Doberman, Mukhtar!”
Some shadow women were busy arranging their personal items while others were braiding their hair or arranging their head scarves, but with Mayada’s words, every woman but Aliya discontinued what she was doing and turned in Mayada’s direction.
With a merry lilt to her voice, Samara looked at her. “Mayada, what nonsense are you speaking?”
With disbelief ringing in her voice, Roula, the most religious shadow woman in cell 52, asked, “A dog named Mukhtar?”
Roula’s skepticism was credible because Mukhtar means “the chosen one,” and is only one of the many names God called Prophet Muhammad in the Quran. To name a dog Mukhtar is the greatest insult to Islam’s great prophet.
Without considering the consequences of discussing Saddam Hussein, Mayada began to tell the shadow women what she knew. “Yes,” she told them, “it is true. During the early days when Saddam still felt warmly toward the mother of his children, he had given Sajida a Doberman pinscher named Mukhtar. And Saddam personally selected the unseemly name. I even met the dog after Saddam had given it a death sentence.” Mayada continued, “Believe me, you would rather double your sentence in this prison than suffer as that poor dog suffered!”
Samara cautioned, “Watch what you say. If they are listening,” and she tilted her head toward the metal door, “they will cut out your tongue and leave you to bleed to death. There would be nothing we could do.”
Every Iraqi knew that to criticize President Saddam or a member of his family brought an automatic sentence of tongue cutting before death, so Mayada understood Samara’s point. She moved away from the door and toward the rear wall of the cell. Once there, she settled back on the floor and lowered her voice to a whisper. The shadow women were curious to hear her story and began to gather in a circle for the second time that morning.
She continued to speak in a low voice. “This happened in 1979, during the early days of Saddam’s rule. Sajida and Saddam did not yet hate each other, and with his new political position, he worried about her security and the safety of their children. Saddam bought Sajida a Doberman puppy, named it Mukhtar, only Allah knows why, and had it well trained so that it would attack when given the simple command, ‘Mukhtar, go!’ One day Sajida was swimming, and when she came out of the pool and reached for her towel, the dog was standing by the edge of the pool watching her. Sajida is a cruel woman who mistreats her house servants, so she is not t
he type to care about the feelings of animals. She didn’t want the dog around and without thinking, she flicked her towel at it and said, ‘Mukhtar, go.’
“Sajida later admitted to her doctor, a physician who tended to my family during the same time he cared for Saddam’s family, that her words of attack confused the dog and that Mukhtar had looked all around and, seeing no one available to tackle, attacked her. Sajida quickly rolled up her towel and stuffed it in the dog’s mouth, but by then the security guards heard her screams and came and pulled Mukhtar away. So she was not injured in any manner.”
A young and unmarried shadow woman by the name of Sara gave a little cry and placed her hand over her mouth.
Mayada smiled at the young woman before telling the rest of the bizarre story. “When Saddam was informed of the incident he was so furious at the dog that he held a little mock trial. I was told that he sat behind his desk with the dog facing him while the dog was held tight on a chain by one of his guards. Saddam was the judge and jury and he sentenced Mukhtar to die by hunger and thirst, even though the dog had performed flawlessly as trained. Before the dog was taken out of the room to be put to death, Saddam took an electric prod and shocked the dog three or four times for good measure.
“Yet the worst part was that Saddam not only wanted the dog dead, but he said that the crime of attacking a member of the ruling family demanded prolonged torment prior to death, and so he sentenced Mukhtar to suffering as long as possible. Saddam instructed his security guards to chain the dog to a metal pole that was hammered in the ground beside the pool. Those guards later reported that Saddam said it would be comic for the dog to die of thirst while chained within a foot of a pool filled with water.
“That poor dog was chained so securely to the pole that its neck was almost flat against the pole, so it couldn’t sit or lie down. And there it remained, day after day in the hot sun, while Saddam observed and laughed at the dog’s pitiful howls. Once or twice a day Saddam or his oldest son, Uday, who every Iraqi knows is even more cruel than his father, would shock the dog with the electric prod.
“Everyone in that merciless household had a heart of stone other than the youngest daughter, Hala, but that dog’s sufferings were so severe that even Sajida was upset about the sight. But of course, no one had the nerve to protest to Saddam on the dog’s behalf.”
Mayada finished the sad story by telling them that, “When the physician returned to the palace to check on Sajida for another medical problem, he saw Mukhtar dying in that pitiful way and asked one of the guards what was going on. When he was told that Saddam had sentenced the dog to die, the doctor built up his courage and went back into the house and told Saddam that he needed a watchdog for security and asked if he might have that dog. For some reason Saddam was in an indifferent mood at that specific moment, so he shrugged and told the doctor to take him. The doctor went to Mukhtar and had one of the guards help cut the chain choking the poor animal. The doctor told me that in the course of his profession he had witnessed the most horrific suffering, yet he had to fight back tears when he saw the condition of Mukhtar. As a result of the dog’s efforts to pull free, the chain had burrowed into his flesh. The doctor said he thought the dog was already dead, but he scooped a little of the pool water in his hands and let it drip over the dog’s face and saw a flicker of an eyelid. He lifted Mukhtar in his arms and carried him to his car and drove to his home, where he nursed the Doberman back to full health.
“A year or so later when I visited that doctor’s house in Mosul, I was overjoyed to see the dog happy. The doctor proudly told me that the Doberman, now given a more fitting name, was a marvelous family pet.” Mayada laughed. “I even have the dog’s photograph, sitting in the living room with family members.”
The shadow women sat in silence. Although every woman there was suffering at the hands of Saddam’s own security forces, each had always held hope that should Saddam learn the details of their personal stories, he would intervene and have them released. But now with this new information, they understood for the first time that their President was clearly deranged and that perhaps he was the cause of all the brutality taking place in Baladiyat and every other prison in Iraq.
A petite shadow woman with jet black hair and blue eyes, a woman by the name of Eman, spoke to Mayada for the first time that day. While she was too frightened to ask a question about Saddam, she wanted to know the name of the doctor who had saved Mukhtar.
“I had best not say. He is still one of Saddam’s physicians.”
Eman nodded in understanding. Every Iraqi not employed in the vast Iraqi security apparatus took care to protect others in the only way they knew, by keeping them anonymous.
Their circle was interrupted by the sounds of a man screeching. He was pleading for mercy as he was dragged through the hallway. As he passed by their cell door he temporarily escaped his jailer’s clutches. They heard him tumble against the metal door, and in a panic, he frantically banged on the door with his fists, begging to be let into their cell as though he believed it was a possible avenue of escape. But the guards jumped him and it was clear from the sounds that balled fists were hitting the man on his face and body. After a multitude of curses and hits, the weeping prisoner was taken away.
Mayada’s eyes met Samara’s eyes for a short time before she asked why there was so much torture this morning, since she had told her they did not torture in the mornings.
Samara’s face flushed red and she shrugged and held her delicate white hands in the air. “There are times when they make an exception.”
Mayada felt a rush of affection, for she now knew that Samara had lied to calm her fears. Samara added, “But it is true that they do the greater part of their torturing at night.”
Roula murmured that Samara was telling the truth.
Everyone sat quietly and listened to the screams as they slowly faded away, before an older shadow woman wearing thick eyeglasses said, “I never considered Sajida’s cruelty, before now. I felt sorry for her when Saddam took Samara Shabendar for his younger wife, and I decided then that I liked Sajida.”
Samara sighed. “Iman, now we know you wasted your sympathy.”
Iman nodded in agreement. “I had an image in my mind that was unreal.”
Mayada wanted the entire world to know the complete truth about Saddam’s family. “She is even more stupid than she is cruel, and she can be thankful that Saddam didn’t divorce her,” Mayada whispered. “Saddam hates her and she hates Saddam. The only thing they have in common is their children, and although they are still legally married, they rarely see each other.”
Samara asked, “Truly?”
“What I am telling you is true.”
“Tell us the whole truth of this woman,” Iman implored.
One of the younger shadow women named Muna breathlessly asked, “Have you met Saddam?”
Mayada didn’t answer but Samara laughed lowly, then cupped her hands and whispered. “Of course she has!”
Even Aliya had begun listening by this time, and she quietly joined the circle. She looked at Mayada and asked, “Will you tell us about him?”
Mayada nodded yes without hesitation. Yes, she would talk. Everything had altered for her over the past twenty-four hours, and she had moved past her usual precaution of refusing to reveal what she knew about Saddam and his family or his inner circle of officials. She had changed so radically since the morning of her arrest that her only regret was that her audience was too small. If she could will it to be true, her listening audience would begin to multiply until the entire world could hear what she knew about Saddam Hussein.
“Just speak with a low voice,” Samara urged once again.
“I will tell you everything, from the beginning.” Then she smiled at Samara. “And I will whisper.”
Samara was understandably nervous about the topic. “We must be prepared, so if the door opens, I will act as though I am discussing my favorite foods, and,” she gestured toward an older shadow wom
an with blond hair that Mayada did not yet know, “Anwar, you argue with me that I do not know the meaning of good food. The rest of you, start chattering about this or that so that nothing we are saying is understood.” She looked at Mayada and smiled widely. “These men believe we are nothing but a bunch of stupid women.”
Anwar laughingly agreed to her role in the deception, and then everyone looked expectantly at Mayada and asked her to go on.
Mayada told them that her mother met Saddam in 1969, only a year after the unpopular Baath military coup in which Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakir became President. She reminded them that the Baathist Party was not accepted by Iraqi intellectuals, and that her parents had never joined the party. In reality, when the Baath Party seized power, there was political confusion in Iraq, and many former government officials were waiting for the true faces of these new rulers to be revealed before deciding whether to remain in Iraq or flee to a neighboring Arab country.
“My parents had been invited to a foreign embassy for a small party, and because it was summer, a dinner buffet was served in the garden. My father, Nizar, was having a discussion with one of the foreign ambassadors in attendance, and my mother was filling her plate while chatting with the wife of the Lebanese ambassador. It was a routine social function, with female guests talking about the upcoming social season and male guests discussing politics, although everyone was more wary than usual since word had spread throughout Baghdad that the Baath leaders were averse to any criticism. My father told me that the Baathists didn’t have any patience for friendly political bickering, which as you know is an innocent form of entertainment common in the Arab world—men have been known to sit for hours in a coffee shop while enjoying hearty arguments about the current ruling party.