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Sun Apr 20, 8:00 PM ET
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BY KEVIN WHITELAW
In Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown of Tikrit, at least 35 palaces line the banks of the Tigris River. By the bizarre standards (news - web sites) of Saddam's world, none of them are particularly special, just a few more flashy mansions in his gaudy collection of exotic extravagances. One sports flying swans suspended between marble pillars from the two-story entryway. Many features seem to come standard--a movie theater, Saddam's initials dramatically carved into ceilings, and the obligatory marble-lined bathrooms, some complete with lavish sunken tubs. Other rooms boast fireplaces, with wood and kindling laid neatly, awaiting a light. Outside one palace, tied up next to a swimming pool, is a brand-new houseboat. Steps lead down to the rushing green water of the Tigris. Stone statues of kneeling maidens hold carved basins.
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One of the grandest of these palaces was built in 1994, when ordinary Iraqis were suffering under a suffocating United Nations (news - web sites) sanctions regime. Malnutrition rates for Iraqi children soared, but Saddam's building spree continued apace. Adding insult to injury, this palace, it seems, was never used. Chinese rosewood cabinets inlaid with mother-of-pearl hold elegant china teacups and crystal wineglasses--all still wrapped in their original plastic. Still, the palace chef was under orders to prepare three meals a day--just in case the president ever decided to drop by.
Saddam Hussein's secret, sybaritic world was a seemingly endless movie set of echoing marble ballrooms, luxurious dining rooms with seats for hundreds of guests, and zoos filled with lions, cheetahs, and ostriches. There were man-made lakes for boating, dozens of swimming pools for the Great Uncle's exercise, and hundreds of gold-plated bathrooms to assuage his obsession with cleanliness.
Scores of such buildings dot the Iraqi landscape--no longer endlessly scrubbed, polished, and waiting, mostly in vain, for his arrival. Saddam's two sons, Uday and Qusay, shared in the spoils of power. The notoriously violent Uday had hideaways--stocked with pricey booze and furnished with tacky art of naked women--where he met his terrified conquests.
Perhaps the megalomaniacal Iraqi leader deluded himself into thinking he was somehow improving the lives of his impoverished people by creating this ostentatious empire. Without the slightest hint of irony, an engraving inside Saddam's Republican Palace in Baghdad reads, "This palace is for the people of Iraq (news - web sites)."
Today, there are only shards of this secret world left, remnants of an oddball opulence trampled over by American marines, and small confirmations of urban lore scattered through bombed-out palaces. As the marines wander through one palace in Tikrit, they express unabashed awe. "Look, an outdoor fireplace and bar!" marvels one. Outside, they lounge on fold-up lawn chairs in front of trucks with mounted machine guns. One truck bears the handwritten sign "Margaritaville."
Just weeks ago, this was all forbidden ground for most Iraqis. Even staring into one of the palace compounds could land someone in prison. Official minders from the Information Ministry used to warn journalists not to point their cameras anywhere near the direction of the palace gates as their cars sped by. Today, Iraqis flock to the once forbidden sites--to gawk and take back some of their purloined wealth.
Maher Azawi, 36, worked as an electrician for Saddam while one of the largest Tikrit palaces was being built in 1994. Everything--the mosaics, the marble--was imported from Italy, he says. Now he tears through the palaces gleefully, flopping on beds, opening gilt cupboards, and exploring what was once off limits. He takes two crystal ashtrays for his wife. "It's a dream to come and see the palace like this," he says. "This place was built with my money and all the Iraqis' money. He took it from us and built these palaces."
Glitz. Only Arabs, Azawi says, were allowed to work in the palaces. They had to work from 6 a.m. to midnight. Sometimes, they were forced to sleep there. Each employee earned the equivalent of $1 a day. At the time, that was good money. There was something unfathomable, Azawi says, about how much Saddam spent on all those huge chandeliers, sometimes several in one room. "I once spent two weeks putting in one chandelier, and there were maybe 50 in each palace."
Once, as Azawi was working at one of the Tikrit palaces, Saddam paid a visit to inspect the progress. Workers waited outside, kept from getting close or speaking to him. Saddam looked up at the roof. "I don't like it," he said. "Do it again." Workers had to rebuild the entire thing.
The entire town of Tikrit stands as an exotic monument to Saddam. Once an inconsequential and impoverished backwater, Saddam's hometown now resembles an expensive, if not exactly classy, gated suburb. Date-palm trees and beds of well-tended rose bushes line the clean, wide roads. Along the Tigris are lush, green landscaped gardens. Exotic long-tailed birds flit through the air. From every lamppost hangs a small picture of the president, even now.
Saddam was everywhere and nowhere in Iraq. Obsessed by secrecy and possessed of a keen instinct for self-preservation, he seldom appeared in public. But portraits and statues of him were ubiquitous and showed him in every possible guise. He was a baker, a farmer, a fighter, even a pious man deep in prayer. Many of these have been torn down or defaced. But in Tikrit, Saddam's personality cult remains somewhat intact, along with all the statues and murals. One professes, "All our love and gratefulness to Saddam Hussein." Some of the palaces are similarly frozen in time. Inside Baghdad's Republican Palace, a mosaic depicts Saddam handing bricks to a bricklayer building the palace. His name is in the gold light fixtures in the crystal chandeliers.
It is hard to get a full sense of the scale of the largest palace compounds. But the Republican Palace is really a city unto itself, with traffic lights, parks, and a hospital. Baghdad residents had to drive a mile out of their way to get around it. Most Iraqis had never even seen the main buildings, which sit more than half a mile from the outside gate. Such distance was one reason the regime survived for so long.
For most Iraqis, the wealth contained in a place like the Republican Palace was simply unimaginable. Brass doors with intricate engravings open onto a colossal domed reception room. A ballroom down the hall boasts marble floors and carved, opera-house seats from which to watch the soiree. There is even a private movie theater with reels of spy movies, mostly in Russian and Arabic, from the '70s and '80s. "He raped a whole country for this," says Staff Sgt. Charles Weaver, who has been escorting journalists on tours of the palace. "People are wondering why the Iraqis are out there looting, but they've never seen anything like this."
Controls. Saddam's famous paranoia intrudes in strange ways. The doors and windows of this palace are automated. Dozens of remote controls lie scattered throughout the palace rooms. The foyer at the main entrance can be sealed in an instant by a heavy metal door, activated by pressing a red button on the wall. The basement houses a soundproof room and two vaults equipped with ventilation systems. In another palace in the compound, U.S. troops found gold-plated guns and muskets, cartons of liquor and more weapons, explosives, and mines. Residents of Tikrit report that when Saddam came for a visit, the town's phone system would be shut down.
Soldiers are still searching for the miles of tunnels and underground bunkers that Saddam is believed to have built. But in the end, it appears the despot spent his final days in power ensconced in a nondescript Baghdad safe house. The al Jazeera television network showed video of a barren meeting room, stocked with plastic chairs, a plain white table, and the emblem of the Republic of Iraq on the wall. Someone, presumably Saddam, left behind a bottle of Cartier cologne.
The demise of Saddam's regime has exposed its decadence plainly. Tucked into the back corner of the presidential compound is a smaller palace once occupied by Saddam's elder son, Uday, the black sheep of the family, an infamous hedonist of unfathomably poor taste. Heavily bombed, and looted by journalists and soldiers hungry for a souvenir or a Cuban cigar, the villa still manages to maintain its air of laughable retro chic and sleazy splendor. The living and dining room area is outfitted with faux-Baroque sateen couches embedded in gilt frames, crystal chandeliers, and pastel-colored raw-silk draperies. Outside, the garden offers a simpleton's take on the ancient hanging gardens of Babylon. "Enter with peace" is engraved on the gilded entry gate. A sphinx squats on each side.
Like his father, Uday had his name carved into the stone railings. His clothes have been picked through, but oddments remain, with labels from some of Italy's and France's most renowned designers. There are plastic flowers and cheap Chinese vases. If there is a dominant theme, it would be kitsch.
A video room downstairs offers a glimpse of the intellectual life of the residence. A collection of VHS tapes is arranged, in alphabetical order, from Death Ride to Osaka to Puberty Blues (an Australian surfing romance flick) to When Harry Met Sally. Uday's pre-DVD tastes ran from cheesy action flicks to soft porn.
Guns and booze also abound. As in every other palace, a large collection of arms was found here--French assault rifles, Turkish Mausers, autoloader shotguns, Russian pistols. There were cases of fine wines, liquor bottles beyond number, including quite an amazing stash of Johnnie Walker Red Label.
Sex was clearly an important pursuit to the lord of the manor. Eight-by-10 glossies of Uday's female conquests were everywhere. CIA (news - web sites) officers found "truckloads of stuff" to cart off for their files, says Sgt. Paul Fox, who is now guarding the palace. "There were books and books full of pictures of women," he says. "The CIA said these were women Uday had abducted and beaten."
Violence was another pursuit, even, apparently, when it was unaccompanied by sex. Uday kept photographs chronicling his unbridled penchant for inflicting harm. Sergeant Fox described one photo: "Some family pi - - ed him off, and Uday documented himself dragging the family out and beating them."
Harems. Uday maintained several getaways--homes in residential neighborhoods where he met with his consorts. Empty watch boxes from Patek Philippe, Rolex, and Versace and jewelry boxes from Harry Winston hint at his tastes in personal adornment. The love nest's decor belies his father's public campaign to Islamicize Iraq by closing nightclubs and banning public drinking. A wooden statue shows a naked man kneeling in front of a naked woman. Pictures (one of them velvet) of naked women with bouffant hairdos and poised like 1950s centerfolds adorn the walls. The brass doors were carved with ornate images of the harems of old Baghdad. Clues to Uday's amorous adventures remain, too--cassette tapes like The Best of the Bee Gees and a compilation called Midnight Love Songs. Receipts for food and liquor ran into the thousands of dollars.
Violence, evidently, wasn't the only kind of pain Uday inflicted. A love letter written to him by his wife, a cousin he married when she was 15, was left among the refuse in one residence. Writing in pink ink on pink paper, she pleaded with Uday to stop his womanizing ways. "As now my tears are burning my cheeks, that proves my love and jealousy that I'm suffering towards you," she wrote. "I want you to know that you've hurt me severely--you can not believe the stab inside me as I wake in the middle of the night and find that you're not there." The letter was written in English so that Uday's guards would be unable to read it.
Beneath the gold-plated surface of Saddam's regime lay the immense apparatus of surveillance and repression that kept the self-proclaimed Beloved Leader in power. Saddam's Iraq was riddled with informants and security agents who seem to have spent as much time spying on one another as they did on ordinary Iraqis. Iraq's bureaucracy kept many records, some of which managed to escape attempts to burn them. A political prison in Basra still contains photographs of prisoners in various stages of torture, including their death. One Baath Party headquarters maintained files on local residents, records of bribes, and plans for a myriad of parades for Saddam. Basements of homes used by the secret police in wealthy Baghdad neighborhoods are filled with ancient bugging equipment.
Torture chambers. U.S. soldiers have also uncovered several suspected torture centers, including one in Nasiriyah where a dark cell still has a battery connected to an iron rod, presumably for delivering electric shocks. In Karbala, residents told al Jazeera that Shiite prisoners were tortured in groups of 15 while hung upside down with their hands tied behind their backs.
In Baghdad, the most famous prison is Abu Ghraib. Some of its former inmates are starting to return for a look. Radi Ismael Mekhedi spent 10 years behind bars. Last week, he wandered through the looted prison and stood behind the red bars of his former cell for the first time in over 10 years. "I was severely tortured during my imprisonment because I was considered a traitor to my country. I never believed a person could be subjected to such treatment by another human being," Mekhedi says. "Life was already painful under Saddam, and if you came to the prison, you were always in fear for your life."
A stone wall with a large portrait of Saddam greets visitors at one entrance; locals say the other side of the wall was used for point-blank executions. One of the buildings contains twin gallows for simultaneous hangings. Mekhedi was sent to Abu Ghraib, he says, in 1981 under a life sentence because he had refused to take up arms against fellow Shiites in the Iran-Iraq War. Deemed a traitor, Mekhedi was locked up in the cell with about 45 other men. The windows were boarded. A fluorescent light burned 24 hours a day. They were held in a section of the prison compound reserved for "political prisoners," who were defined, as Mekhedi put it, as anyone "against Saddam."
When asked what kind of torture he went through, Mekhedi gets tears in his eyes and looks away. After collecting himself, he says only that in this section of the prison, the guards doled out electric shock and, if the prisoner resisted, severe beatings. "Of course, it is very painful for me to come back and remember, but being back also makes me enthusiastic for the future and gives me the desire to survive," he says, smiling somewhat ruefully.
The massive prison cast a shadow over the entire neighborhood. Yehiye Ahmed, 17, grew up nearby. The prison guards were his neighbors; the inmates' screams were the soundtrack of his young life. "I could hear the prisoners crying all the time, especially when someone was killed. I could hear everything from my house or when we played soccer behind the prison," says Yehiye, a quiet boy, with large, haunted brown eyes and a body that suggests malnourishment.
Yehiye and his friends would often go inside the Abu Ghraib compound to sell sandwiches and cigarettes to visitors, guards, and sometimes even prisoners. "I saw three guards beat a man to death with sticks and cables. When they got tired, the guards would switch with other guards," he recalls. "I could only watch for a minute without getting caught, but I heard the screams, and it went on for an hour."
Saddam's legacy lives on in Yehiye's young, scarred mind. Looking at the placards behind him, with mud caked on Saddam's scratched-out face, Yehiye says, "I won't believe that Saddam is gone until I see that he is dead with my own eyes."