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

  As the van passed through the palace gate, a man at the gate jumped into the van and stabbed all the dead bodies. The van was then stopped by a military jeep, whose soldiers took the bodies of the young king and the regent. Crowds had begun to gather, and to pacify the angry mob, the driver threw them the body of Faisal’s regent, which was promptly stripped naked, dragged across Baghdad and hung from one of the balconies at the Al-Karhk Hotel. The crowd then cut off his hands, arms, feet, legs and genitals, ripped open his mouth, then dragged what remained of his body to the Ministry of Defense and hung it there. A young man from the crowd then took a dagger and ripped open his belly and several men in the crowd draped the regent’s intestines around their necks, like necklaces, and danced in the streets. Finally, someone took the regent’s body, splashed it with gasoline and set it on fire. The remains were thrown in the river.

  The young king was taken to the Al-Rasheed Military Hospital, where the doctors pronounced him dead. His body was temporarily buried on the hospital grounds, to avoid a similar mutilation by the crowds. Other family members were also buried there.

  Prime Minister Nouri Al-Said, the uncle of Mayada’s father, was on the run. He had heard about the massacre and knew there was nothing he could do but save himself. Nouri was an old man by then, but the crowds nevertheless wanted him dead, as well. A neighbor, Um Abdul Ameer Al-Estarabadi, urged Nouri to escape to the Ummara tribes, who would give him refuge. Nouri put on a woman’s abaaya (cloak) for camouflage. Unfortunately, Nouri and the neighbor decided to stop along the river in Abu Nawas, and someone in a passing mob spotted a man’s shoes beneath a woman’s abaaya. Sensing something was amiss, they seized Nouri. He was bound and tied to the rear of a car and dragged through the streets of Baghdad.

  The mob threw Nouri’s lifeless body into the street, where cars took turns running over him. Others used knives to cut off his fingers. Later, a well-known lady from a good family in Baghdad went around to parties showing off one of Nouri’s fingers in a silver cigarette box. Baghdad had been turned upside down.

  After Nouri’s family heard about the killing, his son Sabah went to ask for his father’s body, so the family could have a proper burial. Sabah was murdered and dragged through the streets, as well.

  And as Jafar predicted, the coups continued, finally leading to the emergence of the Baath Party, led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakir and Saddam Hussein. Its aims were a socialist, secular government that would aspire to Pan-Arab unity and Arab rule in the face of foreign domination.

  The Baath Party first came to power in Iraq in February 1963, but was overthrown before the end of that year. A more powerful Baath movement guided by Saddam Hussein returned to Iraq in 1968. For Mayada, the Baath Party had become a never-ending nightmare, the root of so many of Iraq’s troubles.

  That first night in prison was the longest night she had ever spent. Her eyes wide open, she thought of her family, of Fay and Ali, and blamed herself for not leaving when her mother had warned her that Iraq was finished. Mayada retraced the history of Saddam’s Iraq in her mind and realized that while Iraqis were being lulled into tranquility by Saddam’s charismatic personality, he was crafting four black doors to contain—and obscure—his evil.

  In 1980, Saddam had been the President of Iraq for only a year, and many Iraqis still believed in his greatness, but he was actually plotting the first of two wars that would ruin Iraq.

  It was a peaceful September day. Baghdad was still wrapped in the cool of the morning. Mayada and her husband, Salam, were having an early breakfast at her mother’s home. She watched him eat and contemplated what he would look like when he was old. She hoped that she would not be around to see his black hair turn gray and his body thicken from all of the eggs, toast, milk and sugar he liked to consume.

  Mayada had discovered on their honeymoon that she had made a mistake when she agreed to be his wife. Now she toyed frequently with the idea of leaving him, but women in the Middle East approach divorce with extreme caution. So she had accepted that she would be one of many millions of women who live without complaint in a loveless marriage.

  Mayada had another reason for feeling anxious. Salam had recently been drafted into compulsory military service; he was now uncomfortably attired in his army fatigues. He tugged at his sleeves and pulled at the crotch of his trousers, which had been washed only once and were still stiff. He was dressed as a warrior, yet Mayada could not connect the idea of violence with this man now living so intimately with her. As these ideas were working their way through her mind, her mother’s house was shaken by a loud “swooooosh,” followed by the blasts of lesser reverberations. Dishes rattled, lights flickered and her mother’s three brightly feathered finches fluttered nervously from one side of their cage to the other. Fear washed through her body and settled into her stomach. “Salam, are those Israeli planes?”

  Salam’s face flickered in astonishment while small beads of sweat formed on his skin. His husky voice took on a strange high tone. “No. No. It cannot be.”

  Mayada’s heart beat faster as she waited for the piercing sounds of sirens, but the air around them was silent. Salam moved quickly to turn on the radio, but routine programming filled the airwaves. Mayada was working at the Al-Jumhuriya newspaper in Baghdad, so she decided to ring the office. As her hand reached for the receiver the phone startled her with an incoming ring. She lifted the receiver and heard the voice of Dr. Fadil Al-Barrak, a recent acquaintance of her family. Dr. Fadil was the head of the Secret Police, the man that everyone knew answered only to Saddam Hussein. It was uncharacteristic that a soft-spoken gentleman such as Dr. Fadil held a position that placed him in charge of internal security, but soon after Saddam assumed complete power, he had revamped the intelligence organizations. Saddam had said that an ignorant man was less trustworthy than an intelligent man, and had appointed a number of highly educated Iraqis to prominent positions. Dr. Fadil was an enormously powerful person in Iraq, overseeing many security departments, including security affairs, Islamic movements, military defectors sections, economic security, opposition groups, drug affairs and others.

  Few people in Iraq had the ear of men in such high positions, but Mayada thought little of it at the time, because her parents and grandparents had always been connected to important world leaders.

  Truthfully, though, Dr. Fadil had an unusual relationship with her family. While he had become a family friend, Mayada’s mother, Salwa, had never actually invited him to occupy that role. Dr. Fadil was a writer and had come to their family requesting to see the books and papers belonging to Mayada’s famous maternal grandfather, Sati Al-Husri. Mayada’s family thought nothing of the request, since Sati’s writings on Arab Nationalism and Arab educational programs were frequently used as a reference for many Arab writers. From that simple beginning, Dr. Fadil had become a more frequent guest in their home.

  On that fateful day Dr. Fadil skipped his usual niceties. “Is Salam serving in Baghdad?”

  Mayada felt a flicker of surprise over his concern for her husband’s safety. Dr. Fadil had disapproved of her marriage from the first moment, because Salam was from a very well-known feudal family. His father had owned slaves until 1960, and a revolutionary Baathist like Dr. Fadil deliberately avoided former slave owners. Nevertheless, his closeness to the family had not ended, and he had even given Mayada an expensive piece of jewelry on her wedding day.

  “No, he is serving in Al-Mahaweel,” Mayada answered, referring to a military base in southern Iraq. Sensing that something unusual was afoot, she asked Fadil what was going on.

  He whispered ominously, “This is your pin-up hero waging war against us.” She knew immediately what he meant, and also understood that the warplanes had nothing to do with Iraqi internal friction but instead related to the growing tension between Iran and Iraq. Despite the seriousness of the moment, she almost laughed aloud at his mention of her “pin-up hero,” for she understood how a foolish incident that meant nothing, really, had so angered this man wh
o considered himself a loyal supporter of her family.

  The incident had occurred during her engagement and was directly linked to a 1979 student gathering at the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Several bombs exploded during the gathering, killing two students and wounding many others. A week after the bombing there was a huge student march from the University to the Bab Al-Muaadam cemetery, where the slain students had been buried. The demonstration meandered through the city and even passed through the main street close to her mother’s home. Two government ministers were heading the march, so there were numerous police cars, secret police and intelligence agents patrolling the entire area. When the demonstration passed by her mother’s home, two hand grenades were tossed into the procession. The house next to her mother’s home was occupied by the Iranian consulate, and so the Iraqi secret police immediately assumed the violence had originated there.

  Mayada’s family home was a beautiful one with large balconies. Her bedroom had a wide veranda that extended out above their garden and overlooked the consulate. Security forces had to pass through her bedroom to look out on the balcony, from which they planned to shoot into the home of the Iranian representative.

  A few weeks before, Mayada had cut and pasted on her wall a catchy photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini, showing the scowling cleric in his black turban framed against a fuchsia background.

  When the secret police burst into her room and spotted the image of their enemy, they were so stunned that they forgot they were in pursuit of dangerous rebels and instead rushed to report her treason to the authorities. The Iranians were saved from a barrage of bullets on that day because the young woman Mayada Al-Askari had posted a picture of the Shiite cleric Khomeini on her wall. Such an offense was considered treasonous by the minority Sunni government. But Mayada was too young and too confident to believe she could be in serious trouble for pasting a photograph on her wall.

  When Dr. Fadil was told about this incident, he phoned her. The usual warmth of his voice cooled as he informed her that he would be passing by the house at ten o’clock that evening and to please not toss her precious jewel box here and there for everyone to see. She understood his reference at once, for in Iraq when one wishes to scorn a person they say the opposite, and although Khomeini was called a “jewel box” by Dr. Fadil, the cultural translation meant that Dr. Fadil’s enemy was in reality a piece of slime.

  Dr. Fadil was a man of his word. He arrived promptly at ten that evening, and although his face was calm, his manner bore a distinct frostiness. A tall man, he stood at his full height as he looked down at Mayada, and she noticed that his left eye was smaller than his right eye. For the first time, she felt that Dr. Fadil was not exactly the kindly man he pretended to be. He squeezed his lips together before asking Mayada’s mother, Salwa, for a glass of scotch. He took a long gulp before returning his full attention to Mayada.

  A man so close to Saddam possessed great power within the Iraqi governmental hierarchy, and he had the might to have her crushed like an insect, but he loosened up a bit after the scotch passed his lips and began to lecture her like a schoolmaster about their neighbors, the Iranians. He twisted his glass in his hands as he gathered his words and said, “You should have seen Khomeini when he was deported from Iran. He had nothing and we opened up our country to him. He lived in Iraq for many years as a welcomed refugee and when Saddam approached him to speak to the Shiite people against the Shah, who was doing nothing but trying to topple our government, he refused.” The soft-spoken Dr. Fadil surprised Mayada and her mother with a sudden outburst. “The man is nothing more than a Persian with shit stuffed inside his bones!” Visibly struggling to gain control of his emotions, he cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Behind his pious facade he’s conspiring with the imperialists.”

  Mayada was still naïve in those days, believing that no harm would come her way; she struggled to hold back a laugh but sensed that Dr. Fadil was at a breaking point. His lowered lids couldn’t conceal the anger in his eyes, and his olive skin had reddened with passion, but she was still brave enough to say, “I thought the Baath Party preaches democracy, and if this is the case, why can’t I hang up the picture of my enemy on the wall? I should have the right to hang any picture I please in my bedroom.” When he took a deep breath she saw that he was growing even more serious, and so she tried to ease the moment with lighter words. “The color contrast of the pink and black was what caught my eye.” She laughed. “It was the color, not the cleric.”

  Dr. Fadil was furious at her careless words, and he shouted about her lack of Arab loyalty against the Persian beasts. Her mother was a wise woman and knew the ways of men. She replenished his scotch and murmured, “It is good you are here to guide my daughter. She has no father, you know.”

  Mayada felt a surge of anger at her mother, cringing at the idea that any other man might consider himself a substitute for her father, Nizar Al-Askari.

  She loved her father with a great passion. March 2, 1974—the day her father had died after a long bout with colon cancer—was the saddest day of her life. She could still barely think about her father, and any time the memory of his suffering came to her, sadness would creep through her body like a spreading darkness, and she would actually become ill. But now she remembered the gentle masculine love that enveloped the three women her father loved most, his wife Salwa and his two daughters, Mayada and Abdiya. During his last conversation with his girls, he had been frantic with the knowledge that he was going to die very soon and would be leaving his daughters without a father’s protection. He had trembled while telling Salwa that Mayada must go to medical school at the American University in Beirut, that he had the funds in a bank in Lebanon for that purpose and that Abdiya should follow her sister. He had looked at Abdiya and called her his “little kitty,” and emphasized that education should be her main goal in life. Her father’s devotion to learning was understandable because he was a highly educated man who had studied economics at the American University of Beirut and then went on to read economics at King’s College at Cambridge, where his tutor was the well-known economist John Maynard Keynes.

  With her mother’s words still ringing in her ears, Mayada felt an unexpected spasm of hatred toward Dr. Fadil, hatred that he had lived while her own father had died, even though she knew such thoughts were sinful—only God could make such determinations. She watched as her mother placated the man with her soothing words, yet she was thinking that a person couldn’t appease ruthlessness for very long. For the first time, she was beginning to suspect that Dr. Fadil had a merciless element to his character previously unknown to her or her mother. She thought back to how other Iraqis reacted to his name and to the fact that she knew him. Some veiled their eyes and glanced away, suddenly remembering long-forgotten tasks that needed their attention, while others lavished on her a respect she had not earned—and in the next breath asked her to intervene and assist them in getting this job or that plot of land.

  She wanted to ask him why Iraqis reacted to his name with such obvious trepidation, but her mother furtively pinched her arm and gave her a penetrating look.

  Dr. Fadil obviously liked the idea of lending a guiding hand to the granddaughter of the legendary Sati Al-Husri. He smiled and then drank some more scotch. He teased Mayada’s mother about the foolishness of children. Before he left the house, he reminded Mayada that without his protection, the discovery of her pin-up hero would have landed Mayada’s entire household in prison for an extended term. When Dr. Fadil finally departed at midnight, Mayada grudgingly admitted that her mother was a genius in manipulating such awkward situations.

  And it was this same Dr. Fadil, who still remembered that incident, that now informed her that Iran and Iraq were at war. He told her that Iranian planes had entered Iraqi airspace and passed over Baghdad, although he claimed that Iraqi heroes had now chased them back across the border.

  After hanging up the telephone, she reported to Salam what she had learned and then watch
ed as her husband blundered through the house gathering a few supplies to take with him to the front. She felt a sickening realization wash over her that Salam might well be the first battlefront casualty. Although Mayada did not wish to be married to the man, neither did she want him to die.

  Women in the Middle East generally accept the rituals of marriage and child-raising without question. Mayada was no exception. By the time she was twenty-three years old, she had considered marriage more than once.

  When an attractive man named Salam Al-Haimous walked into her newspaper office to place an ad, the shy-mannered man quickly won her attention. When he saw Mayada, Salam mentioned that they were next-door neighbors. Mesmerized by his gorgeous face, Mayada wondered how she had failed to notice him. But from that day on, she grew more observant. When Mayada next arrived at her home, Salam waited outside to greet her. Despite Salwa’s misgivings about the marriage, Mayada and Salam had gained the blessings of both parents within a few months.

  As soon as the ceremony ended, the joyous couple left Baghdad for a lengthy European honeymoon. Mayada had traveled the world regularly since she was a child, but Salam had never been out of Iraq. Within an hour of boarding the aircraft, Salam made it clear that as an Arab sheik, he insisted his wife hide her knowledge in front of others. He explained with a grin, “I will handle everything. I am the man.”

  In Italy, Salam wanted to ride all the trains. Mayada adored the museums. Salam liked the gambling casinos. Mayada browsed the libraries.

  Country by country, the marriage quickly unraveled.

  In Spain, Mayada discovered that Salam thought Picasso, the world-famous painter, was the name of a food dish.

  And with that, Mayada realized she had made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Still, she dreaded the thought of Salam risking his life in war.

  That September morning was only the beginning of years of crushing losses. The ensuing war between Saddam and Khomeini led to the deaths of 1.5 million men, women and children.