by Jean Sasson
“Round tables covered with white tablecloths decorated with floral arrangements were scattered throughout the garden. The Lebanese lady suggested to my mother that they find a place to sit, and when they saw a table with two available seats, they walked to take their place. Two men were already seated at the table, and both were eating. Mother later described one of the two men, who she said was young and handsome. He was eating very slowly and had excellent table manners. She took note only because most Iraqi men have atrocious eating habits, and this young man’s manners set him apart.
“Mother said that the young man looked up and smiled and said hello without introducing himself. She later remembered that the young man’s eyes were deep black and enormously round and that they were shining with uncommon brightness that reminded her for some reason of an animal’s eyes.
“Mother spent her time talking with the Lebanese woman, and then after a while the Kuwaiti ambassador’s wife passed by the table, pinched her on the arm and leaned down to whisper, ‘I didn’t know you knew him. Call me tomorrow and tell me everything.’
“Puzzled, not knowing who the Kuwaiti woman was talking about, Mother said nothing and resumed eating. A few minutes later, the large-eyed young man approached her and asked, ‘How are you, Ustatha [Professor] Salwa?’ ”
“Mother replied that she was fine, and asked him how he was. ‘Well, it’s a heavy burden,’ he remarked cryptically.
“Mother said she had no idea what burden he was laboring under, but assumed his comment had to do with the problems of a big family or a family business. Then he made a few comments that she thought little of, for she had heard similar remarks about her father from every Iraqi. ‘I am a great admirer of Sati Al-Husri,’ he told her. ‘I used to go to your father, Sati, every other Friday when I was a poor law student in Cairo. I asked him many questions, but that great man never once turned me away or tired of answering my questions.’ Mother thanked him before pushing aside her sadness—her father, Sati, had died the year before, only four months after the Baath Party came into power. His absence had left a hole in her heart. She wanted to ask the young man his name, but thinking that would be rude since he assumed she knew him, she said nothing. His words about her father were flowing by now. ‘I have always said that Sati Al-Husri could have been the wealthiest man in the Middle East if he had charged only a few coins for each of the textbooks he authored. But instead of charging a fee for his books, he won the hearts of millions.’ ” It was a well-known fact that Sati’s books were used in every Arab school and that he had refused author’s royalties, proclaiming that knowledge was like the air and should be free, so he gave permission for every school to print and use as many of his books as they needed without charge. While he accepted royalties from books sold through traditional outlets such as bookstores, he never once accepted royalties for his books that were used in teaching.
“Mother was becoming embarrassed by this time, and since she thought this man was having problems with his business, she decided that my father might be able to help him, and finally invited the young man to bring his wife by the villa. She offered my father’s help with his difficulties.
“Mother said that the young man’s eyes immediately lit with merriment, before he lowered his lids and smiled. Later, when she discovered that she had been speaking with Saddam Hussein, the man known as Mr. Deputy, she realized that that was the moment he first understood that she did not recognize the man who held the second highest office in the country.”
Several of the shadow women tittered, hardly able to imagine the dazzling lives that Mayada’s family had lived, and unable to conceive of a mother so confident that she had dismissed the Baathist upstarts as a gang that would be out of power so quickly that she didn’t even need to bother to note the physical appearance of the powerful Vice President.
Of course, in the beginning, Saddam had preferred to be unknown, and had avoided the glare of publicity. The Baath Party first grabbed power in 1963, but came and went so quickly that when they returned in 1968, most people did not take them seriously, fully believing that their second brush with power would be as brief as their first.
But everyone underestimated Saddam Hussein.
Even though Saddam was only thirty-one at the time of the second Baathist takeover, he had learned from the mistakes of 1963, and he was clever enough to remain in the background until the future of the party was assured. Every Iraqi now knows that he built his power base in the party through the intelligence service. From the beginning, the Mukhabarat—the government’s terror and intimidation organization—had reported to Saddam, but although he was the sole architect of terror and would personally take the lives of many Iraqis, he made a concerted effort to present himself as a refined gentleman with polished manners.
Mayada told them that her own first meeting with Saddam came at the saddest juncture of her life, so she had intentionally pushed every memory of that meeting out of her mind until now.
“My father died of colon cancer in 1974, and before the funeral we received a telephone call from Saddam, who was still Vice President. He offered his condolences, and said he hoped to attend the Fattiha [men’s mourning].”
When a family is in mourning in Iraq, the doors to their houses remain unlocked for seven days. People come and go without ringing or knocking, and sometime later that day someone from the presidential palace entered Mayada’s mother’s home and delivered an envelope from Saddam.
“When Mother looked inside the envelope, she saw that the envelope was filled with 3,000 Iraqi dinars [$10,900]. That could have bought a house, but thankfully we already owned our home. Mother insisted that we call Saddam to offer our thanks but I reminded her that in Iraq one does not react that way to an act of kindness. Although Iraqis do not acknowledge gifts until later, and they do so by returning a favor rather than by verbal thanks, Mother was adamant that it would be appalling manners not to thank the Iraqi Vice President for his good turn. She said she didn’t care what an Iraqi might or might not do. My mother took her own father Sati’s beliefs about Arab Nationalism to heart, and always claimed she was not Iraqi, or Syrian, or Lebanese, but that she was an Arab, plain and simple. She would behave with good manners even if I would not.
“Since my mother had no sons, it was up to me as the oldest daughter to represent the family. I didn’t want to make that call. From the beginning of my life I had been influenced by my father. He disliked the Baathist regime, so I disliked them. Even though many of my school friends were members of the party, I never joined. As we all know, the Baathists made everyone who registered at a university join the party, but the children and grandchildren of Sati Al-Husri were given an automatic exemption from that rule. Although we were not Baathist, we were given priority status in many things. I did not want to talk to Saddam Hussein, a man my father distrusted.
“But my mother was not a person easy to refuse, and so I had to do her bidding. I was only eighteen, but I called the Vice President on his direct telephone line. I noticed that his voice was nasal but that he was extremely polite. I wanted to get off the phone as quickly as possible, so I thanked him for his kind gesture and then waited for him to say goodbye. He told me that he was very sorry but that he would not be able to make the Fattiha, and he asked the family to forgive him for that. He was so humble during that call that he won me over.” She confessed to the shadow women, “I’m ashamed to say that when I hung up the telephone, I was a supporter of Saddam Hussein.”
Samara nodded in understanding along with several of the other shadow women. In the beginning of his reign, many Iraqis supported Saddam Hussein. He came into power with ambitious ideas to improve the country, and quickly began to make changes that soon benefited most Iraqis. He had been influenced by Sati’s belief in education for every Iraqi, and he launched a large-scale building program of schools in every village for young Iraqis and tutors for older citizens. Then he focused on health care, building hospitals and medical clinics. Within
a few years he opened every profession to women, creating an atmosphere of equal opportunity for women in Iraq unknown anywhere else in the Middle East. For a short time, it appeared that good things were coming to Iraq. And, of course, Saddam had been so guarded about his plans to build an internal security organization that ordinary citizens didn’t have any idea what kind of security nightmare was on the horizon.
“My mother was considered one of the most fashionable women in Iraq, and she traveled to Paris frequently for the designers’ shows, where she would select her fall or spring clothing collection. Saddam knew about this, so shortly after meeting Mother at the dinner party, she received a men’s clothing catalog from the palace, along with a note from Saddam asking her to please look through the catalog and note any appropriate day wear for a man in his position.
“Everyone who knew him understood that he was a man who loved clothes—he changed designer suits five times a day. Mother told me that she sympathized with a village boy who was previously deprived but now found himself in a position to buy a house of fashion, if he so desired. So, she turned to the pages and items he had indicated he liked and was astonished to see that he fancied the velvet jackets worn by roulette tenders in gambling houses and casinos, where the jackets have no pockets for obvious reasons. My mother had been in the company of world leaders for her entire life, so she had no qualms about telling Saddam that his selections were unsuitable and to never, never purchase a velvet suit without pockets. Anyhow, after writing him a note about the tasteless velvet suits, she looked through the catalog and made a number of better selections and had the family driver return the catalog to the palace. Later when Saddam was televised at one government function or another, Mother and I saw him wearing a variety of the choices she had made.”
The shadow women were stunned and urged Mayada on.
“Later, in 1980, Mother was the head of a committee that was compiling a special display book about Iraq. The book was a very expensive production with full-color photos, and when it was finished, Saddam, who had overthrown Bakir in 1979 and appointed himself President, received a special, hand-delivered copy from Mother’s office. He was very taken with that book and asked Mother to come by his office and bring her two daughters with her. By this time Abdiya was newly married and living in Tunis, so I went alone with Mother.
“We were escorted into Saddam’s offices the moment we arrived at the palace. The war with Iran had not yet started so Saddam was wearing civilian clothes. He had on a white suit with a black shirt and white tie, and Mother nudged my side with her arm. I almost burst out laughing when I looked into her face and saw that she was giving me a cross-eyed grimace because the President of Iraq looked like a junior version of the mobster Al Capone in that suit. Mother later told me that Saddam Hussein was one man who shouldn’t be allowed to select his own clothes. But that soon ceased to be a problem, because he discarded civilian clothes altogether when the war with Iran erupted. He was never seen out of his military uniform, and Mother once said that that was the only good benefit of a terrible war.
“In June 1981, I had a weekend column at the Al-Jumhuriya newspaper called ‘Itlalat’ [‘Overviews’] and I had written an article about the concept of time—comparing it to the time of Allah, which is unlimited—and I touched on the Einstein theory and the backward effect of time, and how much I wished there were forty-eight hours in the day instead of the current twenty-four.
“Everyone at the paper praised the article, and then I received an unexpected telephone call from Mother saying that I must hurry home. Someone from the palace had called and would be calling again soon. I hung up with a sense of dread. I was frightened that my article might have displeased the President, who had become increasingly testy after the start of war, so I was uneasy. Within minutes of returning home, the telephone rang and the caller was a man by the name of Amjed. He was polite, identifying himself as Saddam’s private secretary. He went on to say that President Saddam wanted to see me at 5:00 in the afternoon the following day. I was told to come to the Al-Qasr Al-Jumhouri, or the Republican Palace at Karadda on the Tigris.
“I was becoming increasingly anxious and didn’t believe I could bear a full night wondering why I was being summoned by Saddam, so I bluntly asked the secretary if anything was wrong. Amjed chuckled and said, ‘No, no, you should say, is something right, dear sister, because you are being commended by the President for your work.’
“His words put my mind at ease so I called my editor at the paper, Sahib Hussain Al-Samawi, and told him what was happening. Of course, he was thrilled, and said that the minute I left the palace I was to come by his office and report on everything that happened.
“I was married at the time but everything was going wrong with Salam. But he was pleased about the situation and told me that he would ask for a pass from his military camp to take me to meet with the President. His military commander gave him permission to take off the entire day because of the event. So at 11:30 the following morning, he came to the house, took a bath and changed clothes, and assured me that he would return at 4:00 that afternoon to take me to the palace.
“My marriage was troubled because Salam had several girlfriends, and when he did not return by 4:30, I knew that he had lied once again. I had to rush to find a taxi to take me to the palace because Mother, believing that I could rely on Salam, had used the family car and driver to take her to an afternoon function.
“I arrived at the palace disheveled and breathless five minutes before my appointment, although I managed to pull myself together. I was escorted by a junior secretary from one large room to another until I finally arrived in a vast living room, which was filled with many other Iraqis waiting to meet with Saddam. Despite the war with Iran, there was an abundance of everything at the palace. Palace guests were served juice and offered various brands of soft drinks, which were served in tall crystal glasses worth more than most Iraqis made in a week. After a few minutes, everyone was ushered into a second large room, which was set up for dining with a buffet table with every conceivable kind of food displayed. There was even a huge mound of the most expensive Beluga caviar in the center of the table, but most of the people present were poor Iraqis and had never seen Beluga caviar and refused to eat those tiny shiny black fish eggs, even after I assured them it was an edible food that was terribly expensive and considered to be a delicacy throughout the world. There was a second side table laden with sweets and every kind of fruit—pineapples, mangoes and cherries.
“I was too nervous to eat, but everyone else was eating with enthusiasm. A lady with brightly colored orange hair edged in my direction. She made an attempt to befriend me, telling me that she was eager to meet with Saddam and had written him a letter about a lost inheritance, and that she was sure she was going to have success in getting her birthright back. She hinted that she had a romantic crush on the President, and that made me wary, so I slowly moved to the opposite side of the room where I initiated a conversation with an older lady. But that poor woman was so nervous that she could barely whisper her name, and her hands were trembling so hard that she dropped two glasses of juice on the Persian carpet. So I moved away from her as well.
“After finishing our dinner the group was escorted back to the living room, where tea was served. We sat and waited, and just as I was thinking that we had been forgotten, a man dressed in military fatigues entered the room and called out my name. When I walked out of the room, I thought I felt envious eyes upon my back.
“I was taken to another living room, smaller but more posh than the large one. Soon I heard a huge commotion and military men were running and shouting and I understood that Saddam had arrived at the palace. In about an hour a second military man came into the room and requested that I follow him. I was exhausted by this time but did as I was told. I was taken to yet another room, which had a large wooden desk in the center with a number of blue upholstered chairs with gold-leaf designs on the wood.
“The second milit
ary man shook my hand and congratulated me, then gave me instructions on how to conduct myself when I met the President. He was frighteningly firm when he said that I was not to speak first, nor was I to extend my hand to shake Saddam’s hand but to respond accordingly if he offered first.
“I was surprised, because Saddam had been so approachable and humble the last time I had met him. I told myself that the new face of Saddam was emerging.”
Samara laughed and whispered, “Perhaps that was his real face and his old face had been the fake.”
Mayada nodded in agreement before finishing her story. “Two tall, wooden doors were opened by a military usher. Saddam was sitting behind a desk in yet another room. He was wearing large-rimmed glasses that I had never seen before, and he was dressed in his military clothes, but his personal appearance was much the same as it had been the last time I had seen him. He was a dark man with very curly hair and a heavy masculine jaw, and still had that small, light-green tattoo on the tip of his nose, the one he had removed a few years later.
“Saddam then surprised me with a smile and extended his hand, which I shook according to the instructions I had received. He asked, ‘How is our creative writer?’ I replied in the proper Iraqi manner, saying that as long as he was well and strong, all Iraqis were well and prosperous. He then asked me how everyone was at the newspaper, and I reported that they had all asked me to convey their love and respect to him.