I never met Saddam Hussein. \u00a0But I wanted to. \u00a0We were guests, actually, of Tariq Aziz \u2014 who was Foreign Minister at the time. \u00a0Little known fact: \u00a0they both share a birthday (one year apart): April 28th.<\/p>\n
It was my birthday. \u00a0And we had just been detained. \u00a0Pulled from the Baghdad airport just as we were about to leave the country. \u00a0Put into busses (whereas throughout the month we’d been given limos with drivers. Shipped to a grungier hotel. \u00a0We’d been in the luxurious Al-Rachid Hotel, where foreign dignitaries generally stayed. \u00a0There’d been Kuwaitis walking around with their hooded hawks on their arms. \u00a0Elite wedding parties. Turkish businessmen in Western suits. \u00a0And us. \u00a0A small group of American academics brought to Iraq to create exchange programs between our campuses and Baghdad University. \u00a0We’d been given the best of everything throughout our visit. \u00a0Until now.<\/p>\n
Now, we were detained.<\/p>\n
“You will be our guests a little longer,” the Head of Protocol said. \u00a0We were dumped in the grungy hotel with no explanation of why all this. \u00a0We didn’t know at the time that a mere few months later the Gulf War would begin a new era of US-Middle Eastern engagement. \u00a0Which is the nice way to put it. \u00a0I can be nice. Sometimes.<\/p>\n
The Head of Protocol somehow discovered it was my birthday. \u00a0Probably he saw the date in my confiscated passport. \u00a0Dunno. \u00a0Turned out, it was his birthday too.<\/p>\n
He decided to throw us a banquet. \u00a0It was a Saturday night.<\/p>\n
They hauled us back to a private room at the Al-Rachid Hotel for the grand event. \u00a0We’d been told to dress for the occasion. \u00a0I had a place of honor next to the Head of Protocol.<\/p>\n
He raised his glass and toasted us. \u00a0It was a huge glass. \u00a0Cognac. \u00a0It was half full. \u00a0I raised my glass. \u00a0Here. Here.<\/em> And put it down again. \u00a0Took a whiff of it. \u00a0It almost knocked me over. \u00a0I don’t drink.<\/p>\n The Head of Protocol gave me a funny look. \u00a0Urged me with his eyes to drink up.<\/p>\n “You can have mine,” I said. \u00a0Knowing I could get away with this, and that in a Muslim country it wasn’t exactly rude to turn down alcohol. \u00a0The only danger, really, was that I might have shamed him publicly. \u00a0One look at him, though, and you could tell he had no shame. \u00a0But he’d had plenty of cognac, and now he was downing mine.<\/p>\n Affable man. \u00a0At least in this moment. \u00a0I thought I’d try my burning question. \u00a0Maybe I’d get an answer this time.<\/p>\n “How,” I ventured, “can you have ninety-nine statues of Iraqi war heros on the river in Basra, pointing at their enemy, Iran, directly across the waterway \u2014 how can you resolve the war this way?” \u00a0The enormous statues stood each with an outstretched hand, finger-pointing at the enemy. \u00a0Very visible to the Iranians on the other side.<\/p>\n We’d also been given books at the University. \u00a0One, written by Saddam himself (or so it says on the cover) is entitled, “Why We Should Fight the Persians: \u00a0Our Enemy for 5,000 Years.” \u00a0We’d been steeped in anti-Iranian sentiment from our ‘minders’ at least once or twice a day throughout the visit. \u00a0They’d flown us down to Basra, particularly to show us the glorious statues.<\/p>\n The Head of Protocol raised his glass again (which had been my glass a few moments earlier). \u00a0I noticed the music being piped into the banquet hall was Hava-Negila \u2014 an Israeli folk tune. \u00a0The scene was seeming weirder and weirder each passing moment. \u00a0Heavy on the cognitive dissonance…………………………….<\/p>\n “They’re not pointing to the enemy,” he boomed, glaring at me. \u00a0“They’re pointing to our friends<\/em>. \u00a0You’re the enemy,” he boomed, still glaring. \u00a0“Americans.”<\/p>\n In that moment everything changed. \u00a0The ideology we’d been carefully fed the whole month had shifted. \u00a0It was no longer, America, friend of Saddam. \u00a0It was American, who made us fight our brothers. \u00a0Was that why we were detained?<\/p>\n We’d been shown Saddam’s reconstruction of Babylon \u2014 an awesome site. \u00a0All excavated and reconstructed during the ten years of the Iran-Iraq war. \u00a0We’d gone to the exhibitions for Women’s Week and seen a brilliant government-sponsored show of art demonstrating the beauty and power of Iraqi women. \u00a0We’d met with the head of the Iraqi Women’s Union \u2014 and were told it was the strongest union in the country.<\/p>\n “How do you manage with your schedule and your kids,” I’d asked the head of the Union.<\/p>\n “My mother-in-law watches the kids,” she said. \u00a0“Without her I couldn’t manage.” \u00a0But what she did manage is to control women’s labor all over the country. \u00a0All she had to do was say the word, and women up and down the country just plain stopped cooking dinner… \u00a0It got results. \u00a0The demand for literacy was met with schools for girls throughout the country.<\/p>\n We’d visited some of those schools. \u00a0Filled with bright young competent girls. \u00a0Shi’a and Sunni and Christian, side by side. \u00a0Studying everything from world history to plumbing, sewing to mathematics.<\/p>\n We visited Karbala during pilgrimage. \u00a0But there were still few pilgrims, because of the war.<\/p>\n And the military zone in Faw at the Gulf. \u00a0To prove to us ‘Iranian aggression’ and their intentions of taking over the country. \u00a0you point your finger across the Chott, shake a fist at them \u2014 and they could see you. \u00a0I made my one mistake at the Restricted Zone. \u00a0I’d accidently photographed the war plans of the Strategic High Command Post. \u00a0Oops. \u00a0They’d asked me nicely to desist.<\/p>\n Is that why we were detained? \u00a0They’d let me keep the film. \u00a0Weirdly, U.S. Intelligence asked me for my film when I eventually got back to the States. \u00a0How did they know?<\/p>\n But no. \u00a0That wasn’t it either.<\/p>\n We saw a glorious Iraq. \u00a0Thriving and prosperous. \u00a0Educated and secular. \u00a0Emphasizing commonalities across religious and ethnic lines. \u00a0We saw what we were allowed to see. \u00a0And absolutely nothing else. \u00a0We met with the Ministry of Oil (which in Tunisia, would have been Olive Oil), and with students at the University. \u00a0Professors on campus, and the Baghdad Historical Society.<\/p>\n It wasn’t going to be hard to get students interested in studying in Baghdad.<\/p>\n Eventually, they just let us go. \u00a0 It was a couple days later, I believe. \u00a0Tariq Aziz had interceded for us. \u00a0no explanation. \u00a0We’d just been guests a little bit longer. \u00a0Although now we were the enemy. \u00a0Getting out as quickly as we could.<\/p>\n The person sitting next to me on the plane out of Baghdad had been in some high U.S. Military position. \u00a0I watched him hold his breath as our plane began to rise. \u00a0When I asked, he explained. \u00a0There was an optimum altitude at which to detonate a bomb on a plane. \u00a0He’d been fully expecting that we would explode.<\/p>\n When we landed in Athens, and then switched planes for London, someone had grabbed a Herald Tribune they’d found. \u00a0When we had been detained at the airport those days earlier \u2014 the body of Farzad Bastoft had been put on our flight. \u00a0And we’d been taken off. \u00a0Saddam was expelling British diplomats and getting them out of the country. \u00a0They needed our seats \u2014 that’s all it had been. \u00a0Margaret Thatcher was intervening too publicly to save Bazoft, an Iranian-born journalist for The Observer<\/em>. \u00a0He’d been hanged ten days before in Baghdad for spying for the monstrous Iran, enemy for all history.<\/p>\n But now, ten days later, Iran and Iraq were brothers again. \u00a0Islamic neighbors. Allies, and friends. \u00a0New books would be published of their longstanding friendship. \u00a05,000 years of cooperation and peace. \u00a0And whatever the warfare that they ever had suffered, could only be blamed on the U.S. Marines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I never met Saddam Hussein. \u00a0But I wanted to. \u00a0We were guests, actually, of Tariq Aziz \u2014 who was Foreign Minister at the time. \u00a0Little known fact: \u00a0they both share a birthday (one year apart): April 28th. It was my birthday. \u00a0And we had just been detained. \u00a0Pulled from the Baghdad airport just as we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[250,216],"tags":[413,414,412,35,411,415],"class_list":["post-2933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-kaddish-in-two-part-harmony","tag-farzad-bazoft","tag-gulf-war","tag-iraq","tag-middle-east","tag-saddam-huseein","tag-tariq-aziz"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2933"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2936,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2933\/revisions\/2936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}