December 5, 2006
Last week, I looked at Saddam Hussein's photo in the
newspaper and had this little feeling for him. It
was for a very short moment, and I quickly forced
myself to stop looking at him. Who exactly did I see
in the picture? I saw a man, with salt-and-pepper
beard and hair, a broken face with slightly swollen
eyelids, a sense of loss on his face, a sort of
fatherly manner sparking from his eyes. When I
joined his face with the fact that he had been once
a leader of a country, I felt some sort of empathy
for him.
Many people in the Middle East might have the same
feeling for Saddam as I, for a moment, had. Their
feelings for him might be a little less
disappointing, for they haven't lived under his
rule. As for me, I felt that I've been deceived.
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I am a Kurd from Iraqi Kurdistan. I am one of those
who have been gassed, genocided, raped, murdered,
whose land had been occupied and destroyed by Saddam
Hussein's presidential orders. It took me four
schools to finish my first grade (I actually
couldn't quite finish it at all) hiding from the
regime. I lived four years of my childhood in exile
under Iranian Red Crescent tents. I spent my
adolescence under a brutal economical embargo
because of him. For me, Saddam Hussein had been the
devil himself, the villain of all nightmares. For me
as a kid, no one was worse than Saddam Hussein, and
comparisons for that matter were always made with
him. Compared to most other Kurdish children and
families, my family and I had been among the
luckiest.
Then why did I have sympathy for him, if even for
few seconds? If this was my case, then what about
those to whom Saddam Hussein had been the powerful
leader and the "Sword of the Arab Nation?"
When I look at Saddam's trial photos, I try hard to
see the face that I best know of him and not his
current one. A handsome man with coal-dyed moustache
and clean chin, a proud smile full of grace and
power, a smoking Cuban between his lips, full-bodied
in a green military uniform surrounded by
bodyguards, waving with his left hand to thousands
of hopping "supporters" who filled the sky with
shouts: "We ransom our blood; we sacrifice our lives
for you Saddam."
This was how Iraqis have known Saddam Hussein. This
was the man who had destroyed the Iraqi people. This
was the figure of villainy I knew as a child.
Saddam Hussein knows well how he looked back then
and how he imprinted his image in the mind of the
Iraqis as well as of the rest of the world. Now he
has changed his image. He is not shaving his chin,
not wearing the uniform, his vicious smile no longer
on his lips. Not only that, he has a copy of the
Noble Quran on his lap, reading it from time to
time, shouting "God is great" when he is aggravated.
His co-defendants are wearing typical Arabic
outfits, and show themselves as innocent lambs, as
symbols of the Arab nation that are trialed by the
occupying forces. Those defendants know well that
empathetic people are watching them. They know that
the oppressed people of the Middle East are eager to
follow anything that moves, anyone that says
something, which might soothe their hearts a little.
They compare Saddam, waving his index finger in the
face of the judges while shouting fiery statements
against the occupation, to their own deaf-and-dumb
leaders who bark on and bite only their own people.
Even under trial, Saddam Hussein's use of media for
deceit hasn't stopped. Only the other week someone
asked me about the trial and said, "What if Saddam
repented for what he has done?"
My answer to him was a blank smile and a raging, yet
disappointed, heart.
the-mass-media com
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