From golden toilets to the taste of candy and even to love, Iraqis are cursed with memories of Saddam Hussein and his regime. We delve through those memories, with writers from across different generations, to uncover the implications and the horrors of the Ba’ath regime.

In the throes of deep love, couples often indulge in imagining the names of their yet-to-be-born children. Perhaps the man selects a girl’s name reminiscent of his first love, his mother, or a significant woman in his life. Similarly, a boy’s name might honour his father, grandfather, or a cherished individual whose memory he wants to revive. However, naming a child after figures like Hitler, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, Lucifer or Golda Meir, for instance, verges on madness. What future do parents foresee for these children? What kind of life do they imagine awaits them? 

I remember an acquaintance proudly sharing an anecdote, recounting how the President saved her from her father. When he heard the President’s name, her father, who was a formidable man with a perpetually stern countenance, would smile, his wrinkles following the President’s name. This happened even when he found a love poem tucked away in her closet among her underwear. 

Hidden among her underwear was a photograph of herself, delicately kissed with rouge from her lips and scented with “a pinch of soap” since perfumes were an out-of-reach luxury due to the sanctions on Iraq. Next to the picture, there was a love poem, extolling the virtues of an olive-hued uniform, the official military uniform of the Ba’ath regime, praising its wearer’s strength, stature, and dignity. 

In a fit of rage, he shouted, “You bitch, who is this for?” She told me she did not know why she blurted out, “It’s for baba Saddam… for the President, I swear, Father.” 

This utterance spared her a thrashing, perhaps even from being killed. The father dared not scream again but kept quiet and was too afraid to tear the poem apart, even though Saddam’s name wasn’t mentioned.  

Her Father thought that laying a finger on a poema for the President might prompt his daughter to report him, risking his very existence. Alternatively, resorting to violence and assaulting his daughter could lead to her disclosing to her Ba’athist teacher, Sawsan, that she was punished for writing a poem praising the President. 

He pictured intelligence agents visiting his home and asking him: “You insult the president?” He might have imagined his own demise: head in the gallows, body languishing beneath, marred by the blue bruises of torture. 

After what can only be described as a film documenting his torment flashed before his eyes, he gave his daughter a hug and kiss and went to his room, closing the door behind him. Despite years devoid of embraces, he now expressed tenderness towards his daughter, driven by both dread of the President and as a twisted homage to him. 

After surviving that incident and her father’s threat of violence, she made a vow to God that, if she was blessed with a son, she would name him Saddam Hussein. 

And she followed through. 

She was not alone in her allegiance to Saddam Hussein. A relative of mine had a stroke after watching the execution of the Commander Father. In a gesture of undying devotion, he gave his newborn son the middle name, Al Majeed, the glorious one, and named him Saddam Hussein Al Majeed. 

I wonder about Saddam Hussein Al Majeed, born in 2003, in a world far removed from the tumult of his namesake’s regime. Raised in the comfort, rights and material wealth of Canada, much of which was denied to Iraqi people in the sanction’s era and to most of his generation, how did he reconcile being named after a tyrant responsible for the killing of young women and men, and plundering and starving an entire population? Now in his twenties, I wonder if he has pictures of Saddam Hussein, perhaps with a lion behind him, as his screensaver on his smartphone. Or if he glorifies Saddam Hussien, like many others born after 2003, clinging to a distorted legacy and defending it fervently against any dissenting voices. 

Perhaps Canadian Saddam Hussein Al Majeed will choose to name his son Uday, much like my ex-boyfriend wanted to, with the intention for him to be nicknamed Abu Serhan, the father of Serhan, as was the nickname for Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s son.  

I was furious. The idea of naming my child after Saddam Hussein’s son almost drove me out of my mind. The irony was palpable. Neither of us had lived under Saddam Hussein’s regime. He was a child in that era, and I was still in my mother’s womb. Despite presenting all the evidence against Saddam and detailing the crimes he had committed, my ex-boyfriend remained adamant about naming our future son Uday. He said he would give up our love. But is this idea for a name? No, no and no.  

The prospect of carrying a child named Uday disgusted me. As a staunch feminist and secularist, they called me “a big fuss.” If my son were to be called Uday then I would be “Um Uday” or the mother of Uday.  

The thought of becoming a subject of ridicule, a meme among classmates and family, weighed heavily on me, particularly as I actively engaged in arguments and debates about Saddam Hussein and his crimes. I thought about how my stomach would be tied in knots if I was carrying Uday inside me. Disgusting. OMG! 

A year later, I was happy to get to know another big fuss such as myself seeing him in person at workshops on hate speech and human rights. Despite being from Saddam Hussein’s tribe, he claimed to stand against Saddam, calling him a criminal. I believed him, although he seemed to use countless Telegram stickers featuring Uday. It seemed to me that reverence for Saddam Hussein might be an inherited legacy, passed down without consideration or logic, as I found a picture of Saddam Hussein prominently displayed on his bookshelf alongside images of Guevara and Karl Marx. It was another disaster to which I turned a blind eye. 

When I asked him the reason, his justification was that although he hated Saddam, he also respected him as a warlord. 

I replied, “What!!! Pardon?” 

That was the biggest red flag I had ever seen in my life. I thought to myself, what the hell are you doing Mary?  Love to be damned. I would not bring another Uday into this world. 

SST — Saddam Standard Time  

Mezar Kamal 

In 2001, the Baghdad municipality unveiled the Saddam Hussein Clock project, a time centre operating on the President’s schedule. The initiative featured the Commander’s Clock tower, a museum highlighting the president’s so-called accomplishments, with gardens surrounding the tower and museum. The project’s philosophy was both amusing and absurd. It aimed to overhaul the concept of time itself, disregarding standard time altogether. How? By replacing conventional clock numbers with words referencing the president’s name and his various titles. The hands of these clocks pointed to twelve titles: Saddam Hussein, the Knight, the Comrade, the Fighter, the President, the Leader, the Liberation Hero, the Mujahid, a word with religious connotations meaning fighter, the Role Model, the Builder of Iraq, the Victory Maker, and the Man of Peace. 

In SST, Saddam Standard Time, the day would be condensed into just 12 hours, which would shape life’s rhythms across Iraq. For example, when Iraqis need to specify a particular time, such as half past five, they would say, “Our appointment is at the President and a half.”  

While it may be tempting to brush off the project as a foolish one, its emergence has significant symbolic weight. It serves as a stark reminder of the profound influence that the President had in a country where the fates of many individuals and communities were inexorably intertwined with his essence, as the unequivocal holder of power. 

How can a person survive this trap? It is either escape or death. As an alternative, many people in Iraq developed a coping mechanism, which was less drastic than the American military approach, but sufficient and necessary for survival. They embraced “the trick” and played along – at home, out in public and within institutions. This is how people endured the dark hours of the dictatorship, beginning in 1979 taking them up to the even darker hours of 2003. 

On a quiet uneventful evening, Khalid Shahoud, a taxi driver navigating life’s challenges during the later years of the sanctions period, was stationed at a Kurdish refugees’ garage on the outskirts of Ramadi in central Iraq. He recounted an anecdote about a Kurdish man who came into the garage at sunset and asked to book an entire car for himself, paying the fare to take the full car rather pay than the standard 250 Iraqi dinars per person and share the car with other passengers. 

During that time, this Kurdish refugee camp was administered by the United Nations with its security handled by the Ba’ath party and the Iraqi police. Both were housed within the same building at the camp’s only entrance, where there stood a large portrait of Saddam Hussein dressed in traditional Kurdish attire, gazing proudly upwards as if looking at a mountain. 

On the way, Khalid and the passenger exchanged small talk, but once they reached the entrance of the Kurdish refugee camp, they grabbed at each other’s collars. The passenger had handed Khalid a 250 dinar note, triggering a dispute between the two because they had originally agreed that the passenger would pay the price of the full car. Throwing the money back at the passenger, Khalid rejected the payment, tossing the bill to the ground and reproaching the Kurdish man for going back on their deal. He yelled, “We agreed on the full fare! How dare you give me a quarter of the amount! Are you mocking me? Are you mocking me?  Shit on it.” 

Reflecting on the incident, Khalid laughed at his own gullibility, and said,” He played me all right!” He described how the passenger picked up the 250 dinars note, looked at it, then glanced at Khalid and said in a Kurdish accent, “Shit on it! You mean shit on the President? I will report you to the police.” 

In a swift change of heart, Khalid took back the bill and kissed it playfully, competing with the Kurdish guy in reverence for Saddam Hussein to avoid any potential repercussions. Khalid ended up waving his entire fee and the rider ended up saving a thousand dinars. 

On a different uneventful night, the same Kurdish man told the story as a humorous anecdote to share with friends- just as Khalid did with me – recognising it yet another example of the cunning tricks Iraqis used to navigate the complexities of life under Saddam Hussein’s regime. 

Images of Saddam Hussein served both as a means of survival and as a potential death sentence. They presented this god-like figure of the Ba’ath Party which was omnipresent in every facet of life. In the years leading up to the regime’s downfall, the Ba’ath party printed white T-shirts bearing Saddam Hussein’s image and handed them out in schools. Images of Saddam Hussein even adorned the chests of schoolchildren.  

Once, my friend Muhannad asked for my help. He was afraid to enter our elementary school  

to deliver an egg and potato sandwich to his sister Hind, who was in the fourth grade, during hours where only women and girls were allowed. His fear was down to Miss Awatif, a staunch party comrade and strict principal. She would never allow anyone other than girls or women to enter the classroom, even if the male visitor was a member of her family. 

Although we were just boys at the time, we had already mastered the art of Iraqi trickery. I put on my white T-shirt with the President’s face, my chest swelling with a mix of pride and nervousness. Holding the sandwich, I entered the school’s premises. 

As Miss Awatif strode through the corridor, clutching her disciplinary stick, I approached her, with the sandwich in my hand and the image of Saddam Hussein on my chest.  Once she saw the President’s smiling face, she let me in, allowing me to get the sandwich to Hind. In her mind, Saddam Husseins image was greater than her strict rules, Hind’s hunger, and my own fear. That is why she let me enter the school. She recognised it as a trick. Like us, she was trapped in the game of pretense and playing along. 

On the night of the invasion, we bought a TV 

Maher Al-Akeeli

Two years before the invasion, I migrated, as an infant held in my mother’s arms, to Syria. We lived in the Yarmouk camp, which was for immigrants from many damaged countries. There was a mixture of Iraqis, Palestinians, Sudanese, and other refugees from different nationalities. 

When my mother heard the news during the invasion, her loud screams carried it from the living room into the streets. The atmosphere was filled with fear. She hurried up to the market in case there might be a sudden shortage of materials and money. At the top of her shopping list was milk for her infant, me. 

The streets were filled with the screams of news presenters in addition to patriotic songs. My mother’s shopping trip calmed her worries about the country, relatives, and fate. 

“I ran into an Iraqi man trying to speak to the owner of a stall. He was telling him he wanted a kilo of puteta, but the owner did not understand him.” In the Iraqi dialect, they say puteta for potato, while in the Levantine dialect they say batata which is why the seller did not understand what the Iraqi meant. “I told him to say batata, not puteta” she said smiling. 

In the middle of this chaos, we did not have satellite television. Hearing the news from the market and the windows of others was not enough.  

My father called a satellite technician who was having a busy day, filled with requests to watch the war in Iraq. We had to wait our turn, which finally came at 2 am. 

The family could not sleep all night. Many Iraqis who were outside of Iraq were watching those Iraqis inside of Iraq talking about the situation and updating their loved ones. 

“They used to stand in front of the camera, take the mic from the presenter, and talk about the family updates on the television because it was the fastest way to let their relatives outside of Iraq know what has been going on with them” my dad said.  

That night, my mother stayed up late watching the news that was coming out of Iraq. Al-Firdos Square, which was now empty of the famous statues of Saddam Hussein, looked odd to her. “A man showed up in Al-Firdos Square and tried to calm his family down and said on the television: ’Do not worry about us, we are doing well. However, our sister’s house got bombed and she died’.” 

Saddam, all I wanted was Nestalas  

Yahya Esam 

When I was born, in 1984, it had been five years since Saddam Hussein began his rule of Iraq. I do not remember when I first knew this man, his name, his face, or his position. Yet, I remember the constant extreme warnings that I used to get from Mom and Dad when I was a child. They warned me not to mention him outside the house, whether it was good or bad. Not to mention him, to use the title “Mr. President” if I had to talk about him, and never say his name without using the title. 

I also remember a lesson we had in reading class; in second grade I think it was. It was called ‘Our President is visiting us’. It was a children’s story, and students were required to memories it to sharpen their spelling and reading skills. The story told of a student who returned home extremely happy. When his mother asked him the reason for his happiness, he asked her to guess. After a few failed attempts at guessing, the boy told her all her guesses were wrong. That the reason for his happiness was the visit of “Mr. President Sadam Hussein” to his school and seeing him.      

My young and weak memory of those days does not tell me if I knew Sadam Hussein before or after this lesson, but either way, I felt nothing but terror towards him. This was largely because of the constant warnings I got from my parents regarding speaking about him to anyone.  

I suppose that my parents’ warnings were the first seed planted in me for the Saddam horror that the Iraqis lived through from 1979 and till 2003. This seed grew and rooted itself with time as the horrific stories grew and grew. I heard these stories constantly. They were all about the regime’s force and methods of torture and murder. They were about how they might use these methods on people simply because they criticised Saddam or mentioned him sarcastically. 

My fear of Saddam was soon accompanied by a feeling of hatred. I hated Saddam because I had to live through the economic blockade in my childhood and teenage years.  

In the 90’s, I was deprived -like millions of Iraqis- of white bread, meat, chicken, eggs, cheese, cream, and lots of fruits. If I remember correctly, the last time I ate a banana was in 1989, and I did not taste it ever again until the end of his reign in 2003. 

I cannot forget that one day in primary school when a classmate produced a bar of chocolate- in Iraq, chocolate is called nestala– to eat during break. Students began to attack him and tried to take it by force. He ran away as quickly as he could as they chased him until the school principal stepped in and saved him from the attack. 

This particular chocolate bar was from the international Jabri brand, which was not available in Iraqi markets at the time. It was a valuable treasure that the classmate’s father had brought back with him from Jordan, where he had travelled for purposes related to his government work. 

The poor quality of life was not limited to food, snacks, and Pepsi, but included clothing, transportation, services, and educational supplies. I spent three years of middle school sitting on the ground covered with thick dirt, in classrooms with windows that had been removed with replacements, the harsh winter air filling the rooms. We were often in front of angry, tense, and resentful teachers, because when their day at school was over, they go to work in small stalls and shops, taking the disgusting Tata bus, so that they could support their families who could not live on their very low teachers’ salaries. 

At the time, there were no private electricity generators in Iraq. This meant a power outage in the summer was like spending a few hours in hell. Meanwhile Saddam and his entourage basked in the most luxurious palaces, seen by people every day from the windows of the dilapidated cars they were forced to ride. 

All of this, and other things that I cannot mention, made me wonder: Who is Saddam? Why do we endure all this shit torture so he could remain a wealthy ruler, killing anyone who asks him about the cause of hunger, devastation, and the burnt men on the front lines? 

I was over the moon when Saddam’s reign ended, but I quickly began to experience the subsequent moments of chaos and sectarian power-sharing. I started saying to myself and others, “I fear that we are heading toward something worse than Saddam, or at least something that is not better than what we had.”  

Now when I watch Saddam on YouTube, I am captivated by his aura, his body language and charisma. But I always remember how he made my childhood devoid of chocolate, beautiful clothes, and toys, and full of the sounds of bombing, missiles, and sirens. 

Saddam’s toilet wasn’t made of gold! 

Hussein Fadhel 

All Iraqis have had to bite the bullet, my grandmother used to say. Everyone has had to bear witness to the brutality inflicted by the goblin and his crew, with their olive-green uniforms and thick mustaches.  

But could that woman, perpetually shrouded in cigarette smoke, ever have imagined herself in the presence of the greatest goblin of all? Saddam Hussein, the glorious leader of the revolution and the nation, the “dark cloud over our heads,” as she often lamented? 

Is it plausible to imagine her standing perplexed before his opulent toilet seat, seeking help, her sole concern being to relieve the pressure on her bladder?  

How do we narrate her story? Do we recount the humorous anecdote of our grandmother’s struggle to relieve herself on Saddam Hussein’s toilet, her laughter punctuating the absurdity of the situation as her bladder refused to cooperate? People would then wonder — was she a Ba’athist? a loyal comrade? Or a victim of unspeakable horrors inflicted by the regime? Majida, our grandmother, who bore the unbearable loss of all her children to Saddam’s wars. 

In recounting her story, do we include the detail of how my grandmother, clad in the black of mourning after the loss of her children, likened the president’s Western toilet to a torture device within his marble palace? And how did she steadfastly refuse to use it, choosing instead to endure the discomfort of holding her urine in her bladder? 

Perhaps, we quip, “Did Granny dare to squat on Saddam Hussein’s golden toilet?” And with that, we encapsulate the absurdity and tragedy of life under dictatorship, where even the most mundane acts become fraught with meaning and defiance. 

However, she was adamant. It wasn’t golden. This detail appeared to hold immense significance for her, as if it were the single most crucial truth she had taken from the experience. 

“It’s not made of gold, it’s white,” she reiterated. “Pure, sparkling white.” 

As she vividly recalled her encounter, she painted a scene of opulence, the toilet adorned with thick carpet underfoot, delicate roses embellishing both the sink and floor, and the soft glow of dim lighting reminiscent of the luxurious living rooms often portrayed on television. 

She described the simple act of navigating Saddam’s lavatory as requiring a delicate balance of caution and cunning, a skill possessed only by one who dines on venison while arrogantly defying the world. Here, she alluded to Saddam’s dietary habits and his actions as both the president of Iraq and the captor of its citizens. 

Shall we embellish my grandmother’s story of seeing Saddam’s toilet with our own additions? 

Some of us, inevitably, will lie.  

Some will claim she was arrested for protesting the Ba’ath regime after losing her son to war. Others might insist she was forcibly removed from her home, barefoot and without her medication, then coerced into serving as a human shield in Saddam’s palace. 

Yet, these are merely stories, extraneous to the core of my grandmother’s experience, details she never once shared upon her return from spending one night at Saddam’s palace in 1988. 

She just stood in front of our door with an orange in her hand.  

None of us ever saw the orange she spoke of, but her tale of that evening remains etched in our minds. She recounts how all the women and children were summoned to a dinner with Saddam, and forced to sit at a table, an event cloaked in the illusion of hospitality yet steeped in the harsh reality of oppression. 

“We didn’t eat, and we didn’t use the toilet like a human. All we got was an orange,” my grandmother reiterated, emphasizing once more that the toilet was not made from gold but was instead gleaming white, a stark contrast to the darkness that shrouded our days.