Mayada, Daughter of Iraq: One Woman's Survival Under Saddam Hussein

by Jean Sasson

  One of the guards lost his patience. “You’ll pay, by God! You’ll pay!” he thundered.

  Jamila walked mechanically toward the door on her bare feet, so frightened that she had forgotten to put on her slippers.

  The shadow women looked on, sad and silent, as two of the guards caught Jamila by the arms and dragged her out of the cell.

  The moment the cell door slammed, they heard a guard curse.

  Poor Jamila uttered a single loud shriek.

  At Samara’s instructions, Muna, Dr. Sabah and Mayada began to prepare for Jamila’s return. They laid a pad of blankets on the floor. They collected two or three small, clean cloths. They emptied the remains of water glasses into a small bowl and set it aside. They were as ready as they could be to nurse poor Jamila’s new wounds.

  Samara reminded them, “She bleeds heavily from her back. You can take one of my blankets, if necessary, to staunch the bleeding.”

  At that moment, they heard Jamila’s voice screech. They heard her plead for mercy.

  The shadow women silently exchanged long looks of sorrow.

  Jamila wailed and cried continuously for nearly an hour.

  Samara sighed. “Never have I heard such pitiful screeches.”

  Then, without warning, Jamila’s screams abruptly ended.

  The shadow women nervously awaited her return.

  During long months of confinement, Wafae had cleverly twisted the threads dangling from an old and tattered blanket into a set of prayer beads. Now those well-worn beads were passed from hand to hand as every shadow woman prayed urgently for Jamila’s safe return.

  After several hours of waiting, Mayada grew agitated. She prayed. She wrung her hands. She prayed some more. Her heart began to throb violently. She looked to Samara for answers.

  Finally Samara spoke, answering Mayada’s unasked question. “Yes. You are right. Something is terribly wrong.”

  Later, a guard with a broad nose opened their cell door and asked, “Did prisoner Jamila leave any personal belongings behind?”

  Everyone stared at the ugly guard but no one answered.

  He screamed, “Where are her things?”

  Muna stood and moved around the cell gathering Jamila’s meager belongings.

  Samara called out to the guard from her bunk, “Where is Jamila?”

  Every one of the women stared hopefully at the man’s face. He glared at Samara and refused to answer. As Muna handed him Jamila’s belongings, a single worn slipper dropped to the floor. The guard bent his portly frame forward to snatch up the slipper and plucked the rest of Jamila’s scanty belongings from Muna’s hands. He left the cell without saying another word.

  Samara’s voice cracked when she murmured, “They have finally killed her. I knew this day would come.”

  “How do you think they killed her?” Muna wondered aloud.

  “Many prisoners suffer heart attacks. I have known a number whose hearts stopped during a bad beating,” Samara said softly.

  As the shadow women mourned Jamila, the door to cell 52 burst open once again and two guards appeared.

  The taller of the men was severe. He held a short whip in his hand.

  All of the women turned toward him. He shouted, “Where is Mayada Nizar Jafar Mustafa Al-Askari?”

  When she heard the guard shout her name, fear enveloped Mayada. Her eyes fixed onto the whip-wielding man’s face. Her breathing grew squeezed and difficult.

  The man slowly tapped the whip upon his leg and repeated Mayada’s name, in a tone that aimed to turn the proud name into an insult. “Mayada Nizar Jafar Mustafa Al-Askari?”

  Samara responded swiftly, “Is she being released?”

  The guard’s loathing for the women powered his reply. Disgust rolled across his face as he spat, “No. She is not being released.” His rasping voice shouted Mayada’s full name a third time.

  Terror clamped tight into Mayada’s heart. She looked around the room, wishing desperately she could vanish. Her body trembled slightly as she finally responded, “I am Mayada.”

  The guard glowered at her, his bushy eyebrows squeezed across his brow. “You! Out!” He gestured toward the door with his whip.

  Mayada tried to push herself up from the floor, but a weakness she never knew before now coursed through her body. It sapped the strength of her shoulders, her arms, her hips and her legs. Fearing she would be unable to rise, and knowing every moment she delayed would only anger the guard, Mayada wrenched her body sideways in a desperate struggle to stand. Forcing her body to do what her mind forbade, Mayada pulled a muscle in her right side. She groaned softly.

  “Help her,” Samara ordered to no one in particular.

  Muna and Dr. Sabah together rushed to pull Mayada up from the floor.

  Standing now, Mayada’s head and shoulders shuddered with tearless sobs. Muna patted Mayada on the shoulder, and Dr. Sabah gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

  As Mayada stumbled out through the cell door, she heard Samara gently call out, “We will be waiting for you, little dove.”

  Mayada trailed one guard into the hall while the second guard followed close behind. The men did not blindfold Mayada, and this gave her some hope. Her mind danced upon the possibility of discharge. Perhaps Samara was right, perhaps she was going to be released. The guard had said that such was not the case, but would he truly know anything of her case? Mayada’s heart was flooded by the dazzling possibility of again seeing Fay and Ali. Perhaps Dr. Hadi Hameed, the young doctor from her first night, had telephoned her home. After his message, Fay would have likely called her grandmother in Amman. Salwa Al-Husri would have contacted every official in Saddam’s government until someone ordered Mayada’s release from prison. After all, Mayada knew from experience that her mother was the most tenacious woman in the Middle East, perhaps in the world. Salwa Al-Husri never failed to get what she wanted. Yes, Mayada mused, that’s what has happened.

  Confident now that her release lay at the end of her march between the two guards, Mayada turned to look into the face of the younger man who strode behind her. This youthful guard had not yet spoken, and Mayada asked him confidently, “Am I being discharged?”

  No answer came from either guard, although the older man who marched in front of Mayada stopped in his tracks and turned. He grinned widely and burst into peals of laughter, but just as abruptly, he cut his laughter short and frowned.

  Mayada quickly cast her eyes down to avoid the guard’s look, and the man spun around. She followed, willing her body to move while she tried to keep her mind free of both hope and terror. But any hope ended at a door a short way down the long hall. Mayada heard a murmur of low moans through the metal door. This was the door to the prison torture chamber. Some poor soul was being quietly tortured there now.

  “Wait here,” the guard ordered before he walked away.

  Monitored by the younger guard, Mayada was left to stand in the hallway for a long time. The waiting just multiplied her apprehension.

  Mayada tried not to listen to the moans that came from the torture room. To keep her mind from imagining the scene beyond the door, she studied the young guard’s face. She noted his pale complexion and light gray eyes. He had a pleasant look about him. He was no more than twenty years old—just a child, really, Mayada mused.

  Feeling her stare, the young guard turned and narrowed his eyes. For the first time, he looked straight at Mayada. She bore his gaze as he gave her a malicious sneer. “What are you looking at, you old bitch?”

  Mayada averted her eyes, longing to ask him how one so young had become so filled with hate. But she didn’t.

  The door to the torture room flew open. The largest human being Mayada had ever seen was framed tight within the doorway. He was so tall he had to stoop to pass his head under the door frame. His broad chest forced him to contort sideways to continue through. At his hurried approach, even the young guard jumped aside, reacting as nervously as Mayada. She saw that the man bore an unconscious prisoner across his
sloping shoulders. The door slammed noisily behind him.

  Mayada drew back, and stared at the limp prisoner with frightened eyes. His face was pale and slack, and his head wobbled from front to back. His limbs were twisted in an unnatural way. A large wet circle covered the front of his trousers. In his fear and pain, the poor soul had obviously urinated on himself.

  Mayada turned her gaze to the huge man, closely watching every expression displayed on his face. When he looked back at her, Mayada knew for certain that she had not been called for release. She was going in for torture.

  Everything changed in a moment. Without a word of warning, the huge man hurled his unconscious prisoner at the young guard, who staggered under the weight.

  Mayada instinctively turned to bolt, but the huge man pounced on her, yanking her arm with such force that he lifted her off her feet. He dragged her behind him and into the torture room. Mayada cried out, but immediately the giant man ringed her throat with one huge hand.

  With his hand around her throat, Mayada’s only desire was to hold on to her life. Fay and Ali needed her. She fought her fear and tried to keep her wits about her. She focused on her physical surroundings. The torture room was not much larger than cell 52. Men she had never seen before stood in dark corners of the room, and they soon began to stream toward her. Mayada had never been so frightened in her life, not even on the first day of her arrest.

  One of the torturers greeted Mayada with a hard kick to her lower body as the giant threw her to the floor. She cried out in surprise and he laughed as he said mockingly, “Welcome, Mayada Nizar Jafar Mustafa Al-Askari.”

  Mayada longed to discover the courage to fight back, but she was hopelessly outnumbered.

  The giant man threw her into an old wooden chair that was worn with scratch marks. Before she could protest, two men jumped forward and bound her to the chair with a number of white plastic bindings.

  Within seconds, her arms and legs were immobilized against the chair frame. She struggled in vain against the nylon restraints. Now she was truly helpless.

  She was blinded by a bright light.

  Although quivering with fear, she focused her attention on the one face she could see looming in front of her. An ugly man with a large, flushed face on an oversized head set upon a small body stared at her.

  “So, you are a supporter of the Shiite!” he accused, swinging his rubber truncheon close to Mayada’s head.

  Another angry voice from the back of the room denounced her. “She plots with them.”

  Another voice called out, “Such actions bring unpleasant consequences.”

  The accusation puzzled Mayada. She had been raised by moderate Sunni parents, who enjoyed friendships and business associations with people of every religious affiliation. Mayada had never felt prejudice against any Iraqi—Sunni, Shiite, Christian or Jewish. Her employees were Shiite. In her printing shop, she accepted business from any person or company, as long as the printing order was not illegal. And from the day she had opened her shop, no one had ever asked her to print anything against the government.

  But Mayada now had a sudden flash of memory: Several months earlier, she had accepted an order to print some simple Shiite prayer books. Were those prayer books the problem? If the printing of prayer books was illegal, she had never been informed. Still, Mayada knew Saddam’s government hated everything associated with Iraq’s Shiite population.

  Keeping her face free of the panic she felt, Mayada protested in vain. “I have done nothing wrong.”

  Her terror grew as she detected movement behind her. Mayada sensed that she was surrounded.

  “This is what happens to supporters of the Shiite,” the big-headed torturer said, as he stepped forward and slapped Mayada’s face three times hard.

  She cried out in surprise.

  The torturer gestured with his hand, and an unseen man slipped a blindfold over her eyes.

  Despite her fear, Mayada spoke clearly, so all could hear: “I am an innocent woman.”

  In response, she heard only loud laughter.

  She was slapped once again.

  She was kicked on her shins.

  The truncheon came down on her fingers.

  She shrieked.

  Another slap, followed by, “Shut up!”

  Surrounded, her heart began pounding so loudly that she heard each beat clearly.

  Mayada felt her sandal being slipped from her right foot. The big toe on that foot was squeezed in a clamp. A rough hand yanked back her hair covering, and a second clamp squeezed her right earlobe.

  Through the pain of the clamps and the disorientation of the blindfold, she heard heavy equipment scrape against the floor as it was moved closer to her. Something ominous was being readied.

  She began to pray, “God let me live, for Fay and Ali.”

  One man suddenly threatened, “This is what happens to traitors.”

  Mayada heard the hum of machinery. Immediately, the first burst of electricity coursed through her, and her head jerked backward as the electricity rolled down her neck and into her armpits, and up her leg and into her groin. She wondered if her body had been set afire. “Ahhhhhhhh. . . .” She gasped for breath, crying convulsively.

  The voltage was sent through her body again and again. Tremors and spasms seized Mayada, convulsions so forceful they threw her head against the back of the chair. The pain grew unbearable.

  She screeched for mercy. “Please! Stop!”

  She heard loud laughter.

  “Please! No!”

  They stopped the electricity for a minute.

  She was so weak that she couldn’t speak, but she could hear a demanding voice ask, “Tell us about the Shiites who are conspiring against Iraq.”

  She groaned and shook her head. When she tried to speak, nothing came from her mouth but a wild chattering. Her tongue would not function properly.

  “You decide. Give us names.”

  She shook her head again.

  She heard the sound of someone walking and then the roar of the machine once again. Even before the electricity struck, she screamed loudly.

  She screamed and cried as the current struck deep into every part of her body.

  Mayada’s blindfold closed her world to everything but the fire that rolled up and down her veins, deep into her sinews.

  Just as she thought the agony would never end, Mayada heard a woman’s high-pitched shriek from far away, a howl of pain unlike anything she had ever heard. Before she blacked out, she mumbled a heartfelt prayer for the suffering creature who had let loose that spine-tingling scream.

  An hour later, cell 52 was unlocked and Mayada was tossed to the concrete floor.

  She was unconscious, and the shadow women were unable to rouse her.

  For Mayada, the following hours passed in a dazed twilight.

  It was a sunny day and she was in Beirut, eating a flavored ice cream. She glanced up to the balcony of a rose-tinted villa. There stood Jido Sati and her father, side by side, each with a wide smile and a pair of waving arms that motioned for Mayada to come running, to run into the comfort of their open arms. Mayada hurried her pace to reach them quickly, but no matter how fast she ran, she failed to shorten the growing distance between her and them. As her father and grandfather drifted farther and farther away, Mayada began to weep in disappointment, then to scream in fear as dark events overwhelmed her: Cigarettes were snuffed out in her eyeballs; she was handcuffed and a length of wood was inserted between her elbows and her knees; she was suspended from a hanging hook; she was placed inside a tire and rolled around and around; she was tied to a table and her bare feet were beaten; two belts were tied to her arms and she was hung from a ceiling fan that spun round and round and round, turning back time, carrying her back to her childhood.

  Like most upper-class Iraqis, Mayada’s parents lived in Baghdad from September through May; during the hot summer months of June, July and August, they traveled throughout the Middle East and Western Europe.

/>   When not traveling, Mayada lived with her mother and father and her nanny in a lovely old house on the banks of the Tigris. A line of beautiful homes housed Nizar’s mother and his three brothers, Tarik, Zaid and Qais. A cooling breeze wafted off the river through the open windows of the houses and into the peaceful, tree-shaded gardens that surrounded them. Their lovely little neighborhood felt so safe that the family’s nannies were confident enough to allow Mayada and her cousins to run happily from garden to garden without close adult supervision. Their little black Scotty dog, Scottie, was always on their heels.

  Those childhood days were the most carefree of Mayada’s life. Swimming was a favorite pastime, and Mayada was good at it. Abdiya was an excellent diver. After many days of swimming in the sunshine, the girls’ little bodies were tanned bronze; their father jokingly called them his “two little fishes.”

  Salwa wasn’t a housewife in the traditional sense, as she had never learned to cook or clean, but she was an expert in guiding servants so that her house ran in perfect order. Most happily for her children, Salwa gave the best parties in Baghdad.

  She always gave her girls a double birthday party before school was out, so that the sisters could celebrate with their Iraqi friends and cousins before the family left for their summer travels. Those birthday parties were the talk of Baghdad, because Salwa meticulously prepared them many months ahead. Fireworks were sent from Lebanon and cake decorations were ordered from London. While the girls were allowed to choose the flavor of the cake filling—usually chocolate, orange, vanilla or lemon—Salwa chose the theme. One year, the theme might mean a heart-shaped cake, the next year a cake in the shape of a train. Salwa even ordered special baskets from Harrods of London to hold the many presents.

  She also cleverly arranged games galore. There would always be a treasure hunt, in which the children searched for hidden toy animals. The child who discovered the most animals would win a prize, usually a great toy. Salwa organized pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, or suspended a papíer mâché sack, filled with sweets and candy bars. The children were blindfolded and given a baseball bat so that they could send candy flying through the air.