Posted on 05/26/2005 10:07:11 PM PDT by nickcarraway
BAGHDAD -- When he belches around Baghdad's old quarter on his spotless Harley Davidson, Kadhem Sharif, a power-lifting champion sporting wraparound sunglasses, makes for an unlikely sight.
And the 53-year-old is fully aware that his passion for one of the most recognizable symbols of the American way of life is not to everybody's liking in post-war Iraq.
But his garage is a carbon copy of any Harley aficionado's den in the United States, complete with posters of naked "babes on bikes".
And his collection of 40-plus motorbikes provides a condensed history of 100 years of national turmoil.
"This Norton was built in 1914 and became part of the escort of King Faisal, Iraq's first monarch," says Sharif as he proudly gives a tour of his modest garage.
About half of his motorbikes are Harleys. "I was 12 when I sneaked out on my father's Harley for the first time. I bought my first one eight years later, a 1966 Fatboy," Sharif recalls.
When Saddam Hussein's feared elder son Uday helped himself to one of his favorite Harleys, "it was almost like losing a child".
"Uday came back after the 1996 assassination attempt against him and ordered me to convert the bike into a three-wheeler because he was handicapped ... I started hiding my best Harleys because I was afraid he would take more."
When Saddam's army invaded Kuwait in 1990, it returned to Iraq with the Kuwaiti police's entire fleet of 'King of the Highway' Harleys.
"I bought dozens of them. Throughout the nineties I made a good business. I would take them apart, smuggle them up north to Kurdistan and reassemble them. I would sell them mainly to Dutch expatriates living in Sulaimaniyah," he says.
"It was a bit dangerous though. I was arrested in 1995 and spent four months in prison."
Sharif readily admits that several of his bikes were stolen in neighboring countries and smuggled into Iraq.
But he also discovered some of his collection's most precious pieces by combing the countryside for vintage motorcycles rusting away in the field of an unwitting farmer.
One is a 1947 British-made BSA that he spent months repairing. The fin-like plate on the front fender reads "Anbar province", an area of western Iraq notorious for insurgent violence since the 2003 US-led invasion.
"I found it in a tiny village between Fallujah and Ramadi. But I've had to stop going to this part of the country," he explains.
Despite the intimidating size of his chest and forearms, the former Iraqi bench press champion, known to his friends as 'Mr. Muscle', now risks an icy reception in insurgent strongholds as his face has become one of the symbols of the overthrow of Saddam's regime.
On April 9, 2003, Sharif was one of the first to rush to Baghdad's Fardus Square and pictures of the burly Shia hacking away at the marble plinth of Saddam's giant statue were beamed live around the world in one of the most enduring images of the regime's ouster.
"People in the neighborhood know me. I get on with everybody. US soldiers used to block the road so they could spend some time in my garage," Sharif says.
"They sometimes bring me copies of motorcycling magazines and even bought me leather boots. I'm still in touch with one of them who is saving up all his money to buy my Harley chopper."
Very cool.
Most Americans would be amazed to read this as they have been brainwashed by the MSM to think all of Iraq is a war-torn hell-hole.
Cool story.
I remember him! Free enterprise forever!
I remember the pictures too. I am glad he is alive and hope he fares well.
Yep, wasn't he nicknamed "Bluto" on one of the threads? Always wondered what happened to him.
The strongman
Kadhem Sharif
On April 9 2003, as Saddam's regime disintegrated in Baghdad, friends pleaded with Kadhem Sharif "al-Yabani" Hussen to use his famous strength to help them break open safety deposit boxes in nearby banks. He refused, he explains, because there was something else he wanted to do. Stripped to a black vest, taut over his enormous muscles, he took a 10kg (22lb) sledgehammer and drove the few hundred metres to Firdous Square, where the now infamous statue of Saddam Hussein stood.
Wielding the hammer with ease, he swung it at the tiled plinth supporting the dictator. The tiles shattered like biscuits. The rage of years flowed through al-Yabani's arms. It was the first blow against the statue - even before the US tanks entered the square, he says.
"Sometimes I wake up suddenly in the night and I can't believe Saddam's gone, because I'm always dreaming about him," he says. "Saddam sent me to jail. He killed 11 of my relatives. I couldn't control myself ... At that moment, I felt Saddam himself was there. With every blow of my hammer, I wanted him to be there. But if he had been there, I wouldn't have used the hammer. My hands would have been enough."
So passionate was al-Yabani's wielding of the hammer that his palms bled. When the Americans arrived, they tended his wounds. "After that, one of the American soldiers climbed the statue and got the American flag, and at that time I told him: 'No,we should find our own Iraqi flag.' So I brought an Iraqi flag and put it on the head of the statue."
Hussen is known in Baghdad as "al-Yabani", "the Japanese", because of his skill with Japanese motorcycles. Bikes are a large part of his life; the other part is wrestling and bodybuilding. He is a strongman, deputy coach of the Iraqi national wrestling team. He is also a bit of a dandy. When I turn up unannounced at his bike garage in a Baghdad backstreet he is wearing a white bomber jacket and white trousers.
Gradually, after April 9, Hussen became pleasantly aware of the way television and newspapers around the world had turned his actions into part of a sacramental event. He shows me a sheaf of cuttings from English language news magazines showing his face creased in effort as he swings his hammer. He describes how an American raid on his garage, hunting for weapons, turned friendly when the US commander discovered he had helped to pull down the statue. The commander got his men to take a picture of him with al-Yabani.
Up to the moment of the toppling of the statue, al-Yabani's relationship with Saddam's family was long and intimate. Less with Saddam himself, to be precise, than with the deposed president's late son, Uday, the violent, sadistic murderer, who first achieved infamy in 1988 for beating his father's food-taster to death. As a world-class wrestler and weightlifter, al-Yabani endured the wrath and whims of Uday's leadership of Iraqi sports. Every time the team did badly, they would return to have their heads and eyebrows shaved on Uday's orders. On at least one occasion, they were put in prison.
As a champion bodybuilder, al-Yabani became Uday's personal trainer. He helped to design a gym for him - "the best gym in the Middle East," says al-Yabani, worth a million dollars. With doctors, he drew up a course of weights and diet supplements for Uday, to build up his arms, shoulders and chest. According to al-Yabani, Uday spent a quarter of a million dollars on muscle-building pills, which, he claims, included anabolic steroids. "Steroids affected him," says al-Yabani. "He became an addict. The doctors said he should not mix alcohol and steroids, but he did and it drove him mad. He was trying to be a hero by taking more and more tablets. But he failed."
The two men had a shared passion for powerful motorbikes. Uday had a big collection, and al-Yabani used to service them. After the most serious of a sequence of assassination attempts on Uday, in 1996, the murderous playboy was no longer able to ride a regular motorcycle, and al-Yabani's workshop converted some of his prized two-wheelers into high-powered tricycles.
Al-Yabani already had cause to hate the Hussein family. Ten members of his aunt's family died in the failed anti-Saddam uprising of 1991, a cousin was executed in 1993, and his brother, a communist, had to flee the country to the Netherlands in the 1980s. His most intimate grievance, however, concerned motorbikes. Evading US sanctions, he imported two Harley Davidsons from Beirut, paying $12,000 for them. When Uday heard about the rare machines, he became jealous, and sent his people around. Al-Yabani was forced to sell the bikes to Uday for $5,000.
In retaliation, al-Yabani stopped repairing Uday's collection. To Uday, this was disrespect, and could not be tolerated. Before long, al-Yabani found himself before a judge, on what he claims was a trumped-up charge of stealing an engine. He got nine years. Because of an amnesty and his good behaviour, he was released in 1998, after only two years, but he never forgave the Saddam regime.
In his garage, a year after the toppling of the statue, al-Yabani replays his moment of fame in a way that might appear vain in a more worldly man, but in him seems innocent. According to his version of events, he orchestrated the whole operation; even the spanking of the toppled statue by Iraqis with their shoes was directed by him, he declares. He is happy. He loves the Americans; he loves their motorbikes; he doesn't want them to leave yet. "The Americans did us a great favour," he says. "With them we got rid of Saddam, his party and his criminals. For that, we can put up with anything."
In the wake of Saddam's fall, al-Yabani's garage filled up with trophies. All Uday's monster three-wheeled invalid motorcycles are there, and the Harleys, and, in pride of place, a 1957 British Norton motorcycle that Saddam Hussein the revolutionary rode when on the run after the assassination of Abd al Karim Qasim half a century ago. It is in perfect condition. Al-Yabani starts it for me: it growls into life.
He is a bit unclear as to how these motorcycles came here, and what is going to happen to them. Saddam's motorbike actually belongs in the notoriously looted national museum. At our first meeting, al-Yabani tells me he bought it from looters for $700, and is just keeping it safe. The second time we see him, he doesn't mention the looters. The other bikes, he says, always belonged to him - Uday just had them on loan.
I had arranged to see al-Yabani a third time, but when I arrive at his garage, he isn't there. He has gone to a funeral in Hilla, I am told. One of his associates asks if I know how much a 1957 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, formerly the property of the Emir of Kuwait, is worth. Oh, of course, they are planning to give it back to the emir. Still, it would be interesting to know how much it is worth.
There was no funeral. It transpired later that al-Yabani had been arrested on suspicion of possessing and attempting to fence looted motorbikes. They came for him in large numbers; the Iraqi police, backed up by a small convoy of flak-jacketed, helmeted, tooled-up American soldiers in Humvees. They took him away to prison, where he sits, awaiting judicial process. At one point during the raid, the Iraqi police used a heavy sledgehammer to try to break open one of his lock-ups.
"There is an absence of security, but we are really comfortable right now, because we got rid of this dictatorial terrorist family," said al-Yabani the last time I saw him. "We've got some problems, like the electricity, but we're really pleased we got rid of Saddam and his sons, thank God." JM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1173186,00.html
Hope US Biker mags do a hundred stories on this guy.
I wonder if he would start a cable show called : Baghdad Coppers and invite Paul , Paul Jr and Mike Teutul to build a copper in Baghdad.
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Ok, picking nits here - the first Fat Boy was the 1990 model, painted in gray-on-gray with a few yellow highlights, as seen in Terminator 2.
Mine's a '97, by the way, in black-and-silver. And damn, it's a fine-lookin' scoot. IMHO, one of the very best motorcycle designs of all time.
Ok, not to pick, but that was the first factory Fatboy. The Fatboy wasn't an original concept, but rather a factory version of what was being pieced together in garages, and even dealerships for almost 30 years. It wasn't unusual to take just about any FXS, and occasionally an FXR, swap out some parts with a FL, and viola a fatboy. The MOCO even stole the name.
"Baghdad City Chopper" on the Discovery Channel bump.
Thanks for sharing this interesting information, and I learned something new today. Harleys in Baghdad was not something I had expected.
And the 53-year-old is fully aware that his passion for one of the most recognizable symbols of the American way of life is not to everybody's liking in post-war Iraq.
Yeah, that's why I sometimes hear American rock music coming from the cafes on the streets and why the Iraqis are thrilled beyond measure when we give them T-shirts and sports jerseys from the U.S.
I won't be happy until I have 'em all wearing Houston Texans shirts and jerseys. ;-)
I want a picture of you on one of his bikes before you come home!
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