The plush glass
entrance of the villa opened and Rana Saddam Hussein and I embraced in a long
hug as I murmured words of condolence for the death of her father. A frail
shadow of her former self, clad in mourning black, she was grief-stricken. Her
eyes were red from weeping.
Among his many crimes, Saddam
Hussein was widely held responsible for the assassination of her husband; yet
she remembers him as a kind and doting figure and as a wonderful grandfather to
her four children.
Rana, 37, cried her heart out to me
over the telephone shortly after his execution nine days ago, wailing: “No
mother will ever produce a hero like him for a long, long time. He was a
one-off.” For her, she sobbed, there was not much purpose to life after his
death.
Now we were meeting a few days
later at her house in Amman, the Jordanian capital. “People tell me I should be
strong,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes as she worked hard not to break
down. “But please remember I have lived through a lot of sorrow, anguish and
pain in the past four years ? not to mention before that ? and there is only so
much I can take. This was the last straw for me. This is the end.”
She said that “people think I am
made of steel” because of who her father was, but “I am human and a woman and
not only Saddam Hussein’s daughter”.
Rana expressed anger, anguish, loss
and helplessness at the events that led to Saddam’s execution.
“I guess I still held hope that by
some miracle, by some last-minute act of God, it would not come to this. I
allowed myself to believe ? to continue to hope ? that somehow, somewhere we
would meet again and reunite. I never thought I would never see him again,” she
said.
A large gold coin bearing Saddam’s
face hung on a long golden chain around her neck. She never removes it. To her
he was not just her father but also the “strongest Arab leader”, the only one
who stood up to the Americans and the world by refusing to bow down to what many
across Iraq and the Arab world saw as “humiliating western demands and
domination”.
We sat in her elegant living room
among silver frames and photographs. on a side table was a picture of Saddam and
her mother, Sajida, surrounded by their sons, their daughters, their sons-in-law
and their grandchildren.
Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay are
dead ? shot by American troops in 2003. So are his sons-in-law. once key figures
in the regime, they were killed in 1996, allegedly on Saddam’s orders.
For Rana, the death of her father
is the biggest blow, however. “My loss is enormous and nothing will substitute
for it. It is bigger than the loss of my two brothers, for he was my only hope
and it was from him that I gained my strength,” she cried.
“I used to sit on my prayer mat and
pray and plead to God not to deprive me of him because he was the source of my
strength, even when he was far away and in prison. Now I have nothing left but
prayers for patience and strength to bear this loss.”
Rana’s daughter Nabaa and her son
Ahmad joined us. They talked with adoration about their grandfather, “baba
Saddam”. He had replaced their dead father as the man in their lives when they
were still very young. To them he was a warm personality, a totally different
character from the man reviled around the world.
Ahmad’s voice quivered as he spoke
of the letter his grandfather had sent him from prison about working hard at
school and getting good grades. Nabaa’s fiance, Ali, Saddam’s nephew, also
joined us. He said that when they were boys Saddam told them stories of his life
that illustrated the meaning of betrayal and urged them always to carry weapons
for self-protection.
Nabaa said she had hardly been able
to eat since hearing the news of the execution. Ahmad removed the cables of all
the television sets in their villa on Saturday to prevent his grieving mother
seeing any footage of the execution. The televisions have since been
reconnected, but Rana was determined not to watch the images of her father being
hanged.
Nor did she want to see the ugly
mobile phone footage of Saddam’s last moments when he was being taunted by his
executioners as he recited the shahadat, seconds before he dropped through the
trap door to his death. The final days and hours leading up to the execution
were vivid in her memory, however.
ON Tuesday, December 26, Saddam’s
appeal against his death sentence was rejected and his execution was ordered
within 30 days. Two days later two of his legal team went to his cell in Baghdad
to get what turned out to be his last messages to his family. They did not
realise how soon the execution would take place.
Next day, Friday December 29, they
set out for Amman. By the time they arrived, news of the possibility of his
imminent hanging was starting to leak. Rana had just finished preparing for noon
prayers when she received a call to go to her elder sister Raghad’s house to
meet the lawyers.
They said Saddam had told them to
inform his legal team and his daughters ? particularly Raghad, who was in charge
of his defence strategy ? not to plead for his life. According to Rana, her
father had said: “This is the moment we have all been anticipating; this is our
destiny . . . The leader has to bear and shoulder his responsibilities and fate,
and this is the moment we prove to all that we were indeed the leaders.”
The sisters knew there was nothing
left to be done; but they were unable find out whether the reports of his
imminent execution were true. For hours they flicked between the television
channels which carried conflicting news. American and Iraqi government officials
played down the reports, but unnamed Iraqi sources insisted that Saddam would be
executed within hours.
The sisters also kept in constant
touch with the son of one of Saddam’s co-defendants ? Awad Hamed al-Bandar,
sentenced to death for his role as president of Saddam’s revolutionary court ?
who was on the ground in Iraq.
He requested a meeting with Saddam.
The Americans, who were still holding the former president, said they would look
into it and let him know.
The telephones in Raghad’s
residence were hot as lawyers as far as Washington, France, Libya, Yemen, Qatar
and beyond debated what they could do further to stay the execution. But by late
afternoon hope began to dwindle and one by one they realised that it was now
just a matter of time.
Their loss of hope was compounded
when the Americans said the requested meeting with Saddam was no longer possible
because “the matter is no longer in our hands”. Saddam’s family and his defence
team believe this indicates that he was handed over to the Iraqi government much
earlier than has been reported.
It was a long night for the family:
Rana, bent on her prayer mat still wishing for the miracle that would save her
father. Just after 5am Jordanian time (one hour behind Iraq), news of Saddam’s
execution began flashing on the television screens.
Dawn had broken by the time Rana
went home to prepare herself for the day’s wake. Raghad went to bed and was
shocked, on waking, to see the official execution footage on television.
THE sisters’ immediate concern on
Saturday was the fate of their father’s body. The Iraqi government wanted to
bury him in secret to prevent the tomb becoming a shrine, but the sisters were
insisting that his body be handed to them for burial outside Iraq in Yemen.
Prominent tribes in Ramadi ? the
Sunni heartland and bastion of the insurgency ? offered to bury him there, as he
had requested. This was acceptable to the family but not to the Iraqi government
or the Americans as it would almost certainly boost the Sunni insurgents’
resolve.
The wrangling went on until Nouri
al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, came under US pressure to compromise by
releasing the body to Saddam’s tribe in Tikrit, capital of his home region.
Tribal leaders were flown to Baghdad to take the corpse home in a wooden coffin.
Initially, according to Rana, the
Americans suggested they make their own way back, but Saddam’s relatives knew
Shi’ite militias would kill them if they were caught travelling with his body.
Eventually the Americans flew them.
Despite the Tikritis’ fears and the
pervasive sectarian bloodletting, Rana rejected the widely held theory that the
execution was the result of a Shi’ite-Sunni vendetta.
Saddam was hanged for killing 148
people after an attempt on his life in 1982 by members of the Shi’ite Dawa
party, which was suppressed by his regime but is now running the country.
Al-Maliki is a member. This was a comparatively small but well documented
incident in what Saddam’s critics say was a reign of terror in which hundreds of
thousands of Shi’ites died.
However, Rana argued her father had
never accepted any difference between Shi’ite and Sunni. She said she had asked
him when she was young what the differences were and he said: “I never want to
hear you define people by their sects. We are all Iraqis and that is the bottom
line.”
Rana said she had been told a story
backing this by a bodyguard who escorted her father while he was on the run in
2003. When they approached a mainly Shi’ite town, the guard wondered aloud
whether the inhabitants could be trusted. Saddam apparently drew a long line on
the ground. He then told the guard that, if he held such views, he should not
cross the line with him but go his own way. Saddam said he could not tolerate
hearing sectarian remarks, according to the guard.
Rana said that since the execution
“many of our close friends who came to pay their respects and extend their
condolences are Shi’ites who cried over my father as if he was their own father.
They were more hurt, upset and distressed than we were”. She said most Iraqi
Shi’ites were “noble” people and she blamed the sectarian conflict now gripping
Iraq on pro-Iranian “newcomers and their followers”.
“This was never an issue but one
which was brought in and instilled by the pro-Iranians who came into the
country,” she said. “Their time will come. They have revealed their true faces
and the deterioration in Iraq has revealed their nature; and like everything in
life the wheels always turn and one day they will turn against them. If they
think they have seen resistance in the past four years then they have something
else coming. The resistance after this will intensify, and what is yet to come
is even more fierce than what we have seen so far.”
BEHIND her grief and anger lies a
complex story of happy childhood, love and marriage, defection, death and
revenge, displacement, separation and exile. Rana was eight when she discovered
that her father was a powerful man and 15 when she married. By 26 she was a
mother of four, divorced and widowed. At 33 she fled the American-led invasion
and her once tightly knit family is now dead or dispersed.
I got some insight into this world
when I interviewed Rana and Raghad three years ago after the arrest of their
father. They talked to me at length about their childhoods, their marriages, the
murders of their husbands, the months leading to war and the final hours in
Baghdad. Much of what they said had not been published before.
Despite the killing of their
husbands, they spoke of their father with unconditional love and immense
respect. They regarded him as loving and gentle. Raghad sobbed that one could
“have other children but never be able to replace or have another father”.
She added: “It is not a person’s
choice to decide his fate or heritage, such is the will and doing of God and I
am proud of my heritage.”
Asked what she loved most about her
father, she gave an answer that acknowledged his standing among his opponents.
“I mostly loved his humanity and endless care,” she said, “but, in order for me
not to sound critical of those opposed to his politics, I should add that at
least that was how he was towards us.”
How did she assess the many
accusations of brutality against his regime? “I have no right to decide upon it;
but I should say that I do not think he was the first in pursuing such a course
and, as far as I know and according to my knowledge, if we look back in memory
we would find bigger and more ugly errors committed by the majority of Arab
countries, even if not by all.”
It was only natural to ask how she
could defend her father when he was to blame for the death of her husband,
General Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid. He and his brother Saddam Kamel, who was
married to Rana, were both key figures in the inner sanctums of the regime. In
mid-1995 they were reported to have urged Saddam to comply with United Nations
resolutions to win relief from international sanctions. The president’s sons and
his powerful cousin, Ali Hassan (Chemical Ali), reportedly opposed the plan.
After heated rows with them, the
Kamel brothers felt it unsafe to remain in Baghdad. They made plans to flee to
Jordan with their families, not telling their wives until the eve of departure,
according to Rana. on August 8, 1995, the two couples fled along with 30 members
of the al-Majid family, including Saddam’s nine grandchildren.
His adroit response was to
discredit the brothers by releasing a torrent of information about secret arms
programmes and to blame Hussein Kamel for hiding them from UN inspections.
Wrong-footed, the brothers failed to convince either the CIA or Iraqi exiles of
their good faith. After six months they decided to go home. Leaving Amman on
February 20, 1996, the entourage reached the Iraqi border just after midnight.
Uday met them and accompanied them to Baghdad.
The next evening Raghad, Rana and
their children went to see Saddam to seek his forgiveness and to apologise for
the humiliation they had caused him. It was a tearful reunion. Saddam hugged
them, according to Raghad, but said that “while he would forgive us he could not
forgive our husbands for humiliating him and making him suffer all these months
in such a manner”.
Saddam told his daughters that the
only way to absolve themselves in the eyes of the Iraqi people was to agree to a
divorce.
“It was a choice between father and
husbands, but our religion instructs us to please our fathers first and
foremost,” Rana said. Islamic teaching emphasises the seriousness of obeying
parents under all circumstances.
“You know deep inside we did not
really wish for this. After all, we had had a lifetime with our husbands. We
were convinced that with time wounds would heal and things would return back to
normal since they had been our husbands and remained the fathers of our
children,” Rana explained.
Three days after returning, and a
day after the divorce papers were delivered to the sisters for their signatures,
there was an attack on the Baghdad household of the al-Majid family, where their
husbands had been staying. Everyone inside was killed.
News of their husbands’ deaths
arrived at their mother’s house where they were staying with their children.
Rana said: “I recall seeing my
mother suddenly bend over as if a huge weight had just landed on her shoulder as
she tried to hold our hands and control us. ‘My daughters’ catastrophe has
broken my back’, she repeated over and over again. My mother never looked the
same from that day on.”
Rana collapsed on a sofa: “I stayed
like that for the next seven days, unable to talk, eat or drink. All I did was
breathe and cry.”
She said that her former self ?
“the spoilt daughter who had had no responsibilities in life and the loved wife
whose every wish and demand had been Saddam’s command” ? had gone for ever.
Raghad’s views on this episode were
surprising and honest: “If I told you that what happened was correct or
acceptable, I would not be accurate. Our leaving the country in that manner
[defection] was wrong regardless of the reasons. Running away from a problem was
not the correct way . . . But the outcome of the return was 100% wrong. It could
have been possible to have resolved it in a different manner other than the way
it was eventually resolved by everyone.”
Raghad defended her father’s final
act against their husbands as one “influenced by many hateful people who carried
no love for the family . . . This is not to defend or justify my father and the
decision he took, or felt forced to take, at the time; but this is the truth.
But we are also to blame for indirectly presenting these hateful people with
their chance, since our decision to return was a more dangerous one than the one
taken about leaving the country. We were warned of all the dangers of returning.
“The decision to return was not our
[the sisters’] choice. We followed our husbands for better or worse . . . There
are many secrets in the life of politicians and their families, many things we
have still found no solutions or answers for. These questions are among those we
still seek answers for and hope that time will provide us with the answers.”
Raghad said her reaction to her
father’s decision to act against their husbands “was a normal one which left me
angry for several years”. With the passage of time and seeing the difficulties
that her father faced, she decided that she had to put her personal feelings
aside and take a more objective view because “something bigger and more
dangerous” loomed ahead.
Eventually Raghad became the
leading force behind her father’s defence team when he faced trial. But when I
asked whether she would have wished for a different life, her answer revealed
the burden of being who she was.
“Yes,” she said, “it would have
been one in which my father Saddam is a simple lawyer and my mother Sajida an
elementary teacher, one in which I will grow among them in a normal way far from
all the greediness and problems that power and leadership bring. We would then
have been the happiest family, enduring only what others endure.”
She hoped that her own children
would be able to lead normal lives and forget the life of power and riches
afforded to them as Saddam’s grandchildren.
Should any of them want to go into
politics, she would oppose it with all her power. “Never for them, neither now
nor in the future,” Raghad
said.