by Jean Sasson
Mayada stood quietly, her heart breaking. The dismal truth was that every prisoner in Baladiyat was physically tortured at one time or another. Mayada trembled, knowing that her time with the ceiling hooks and foot paddles and electricity would come soon. But she could do nothing about that now, so Mayada turned her thoughts back to Samara and to the shadow women near her. As individuals, these women were defenseless against the cruel men running Baladiyat, but together, they emerged as a great comforting force, whose concerted love and care proved so powerful that they could coax one another back from the black door that led to death.
Samara moaned softly and pulled her hand away from Muna. She placed the hand atop her stomach and chest as she murmured, “The thickset guard who wears the heavy boots kicked me. I felt something give way inside me.”
Dr. Sabah and Muna exchanged an anxious look. “I know him,” Muna muttered. “That one is a beast.”
Mayada knew enough about medical care to realize that while they could soothe external injuries by massaging sore joints, or ease cigarette burns with cool water, they were powerless to minister to internal damage.
Mayada whispered, “Shouldn’t we call the guards? They can take her to the hospital.” Mayada remembered the sympathetic Dr. Hameed from her first night in Baladiyat. She knew the kind doctor would help Samara, if he could.
Dr. Sabah’s eyes closed as she shook her head. “Not yet. We call them only if we believe someone is a few steps from death. If we made a habit of calling them after every torture, they would beat us all.”
Mayada nodded in understanding—thus far, she had not witnessed even the dimmest spark of patience in a single guard here. Dr. Sabah and Muna loosened Samara’s clothes to look for signs of physical damage. Mayada stood quietly and watched.
Samara moaned and Mayada peered at her fair skin and disheveled hair, then searched into the woman’s eyes, now dark and still. Mayada experienced the woman’s pain as clearly as if it had been her own body that had endured the cigarette burns and stomach kicks and electrical shocks. While she looked into Samara’s anguished face, pieces of a long-forgotten poem written by the Englishman Thomas Gray floated forward out of Mayada’s educated past:To each his sufferings; all are men,
Condemned alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
She noticed Dr. Sabah turning her black, deep-set eyes in her direction. Mayada’s mind went blank. She wondered what she had done to draw such probing scrutiny from Dr. Sabah.
Muna smiled at Mayada’s look of astonishment. “You were quoting poetry,” she told Mayada, “speaking certain lines in English and others in Arabic. But what I heard was haunting. Who wrote it?”
“I can’t even remember speaking,” Mayada admitted in a puzzled tone, convinced that the lack of oxygen in the small cell was impairing her capacity to think clearly. She smiled faintly. “This stale air is affecting my brain. Events are vanishing in an unexplained manner.”
“I believe that you traveled back in time.” Muna shrugged as sadness gathered on her face. “You said that happiness flies away too swiftly. Happiness is a state that I can no longer remember.”
Samara groaned and whispered hoarsely, “This time I thought they had killed me.”
Mayada turned to ask one of the women to bring a glass of water.
Several women moved as one—Aliya grabbed a cup while Iman reached for the water pitcher.
Mayada held the tiny cup to Samara’s lips. “Drink.”
Samara’s hand trembled against the cup as she drank. “Thank you, dear sister.”
Relieved that Samara was now speaking, the shadow women gathered closely once again.
Dr. Sabah announced, “I have checked you closely. I do not see anything life-threatening. But we shall keep a close watch.” She touched Samara’s shoulder. “You frightened us. Now you will remain in bed for a few days.”
“If they allow it,” Samara whispered. “They are becoming more enthusiastic.” She looked at Mayada and nodded. “I heard the talk of poetry.” She paused and then said, “I know a poem, as well.”
Mayada leaned toward Samara. “Save your strength.”
“While I cannot walk, I can speak.” With a smile she closed her eyes and whispered, “At the last prison, a poem was etched in the wall. Some poor, suffering, nameless woman died there. Wishing to keep some small part of her alive, I memorized her poem. I say this poem to myself, every day.”
“Tell us later,” Dr. Sabah encouraged.
“No. Let me tell you now, please.”
Mayada glanced at Dr. Sabah.
Dr. Sabah nodded. “All right. But do not tire yourself.”
Samara’s face and body twitched and she haltingly shared the verses she had so carefully memorized:“They took me away from my home
They slapped me when I cried out for my children
They imprisoned me
They accused me of crimes I had never committed
They interrogated me with their harsh accusations
They tortured me with their cruel hands
They stubbed out cigarettes on my flesh
They cut out my tongue
They raped me
They cut off my breasts
I wept alone, in pain and in fear
They sentenced me to die
They staked me to the wall
I begged for mercy
They shot me between my eyes
They dumped my body in a shallow grave
They buried me without a shroud
After my death, they discovered I was innocent.”
As she stood as one with the other shadow women, Mayada told herself that she was living a great moment in her life and that she would never forget a single word from Samara’s lips. Every flutter of Samara’s movements would be a part of her until the day she died.
She cried quietly and soon all the shadow women were crying together.
Mayada looked around and her words broke the sadness binding them all. “We are comrades-in-tears,” she said. Several shadow women chuckled wistfully.
Samara reached up to touch Mayada’s arm with her hand. “What about Saddam’s wife, you promised you would tell us more.”
“Another time,” Mayada suggested. She was no longer in the mood for storytelling, especially about Saddam Hussein.
“The waiting, the fear, the silence in this place, it creates never-ending tedium. Mayada, your stories are like a trunk filled with rare and interesting photographs,” Dr. Sabah said as she smiled.
Samara was determined. “Dr. Sabah is right. Our lives are so tedious. And now, my skin is on fire. If you share your stories, it will turn my mind to other things.”
Mayada agreed only because she could not refuse Samara anything.
The shadow women began to settle in various corners of the small cell. The shadow woman named Wafae fingered her homemade prayer beads while others looked at Mayada expectantly.
Mayada tugged on a blanket she had been given and folded it into a square. She tossed the impromptu seat onto the floor in front of Samara’s bunk, using it as a pillow of sorts; she would never become accustomed to sitting on a cement floor, but Mayada sat on the blanket and crossed her legs. Her voice was edged with a dreamy quality as she began to speak.
“My mother would never have met Saddam’s wife if my parents had fled in 1968. Everyone was surprised that my parents remained in Baghdad after the Baath Party seized power that year. Since they recalled how Baathists had targeted the intelligentsia during the party’s short-lived 1963 rule, all of our Al-Askari and Al-Husri relatives fled to safety in 1968, when for a second time the Baathists returned to power. But my father’s battle with cancer kept us tied to Baghdad. He was receiving medical treatments. After his death in 1974, relatives encouraged Mother to move out
of the country, but she didn’t. I believe Mother was in great shock after my father’s death, and she insisted it wasn’t then the time to make important decisions. At the time she was a director in the Ministry of Information. She loved our home. She had good friends in the country. My sister and I were in school in Baghdad. And Mother always felt confident she could live peacefully in Iraq, despite the fact that Baath officials did not look favorably on the intelligentsia. Mother heard from more than one Baath official that Saddam was so enamored of Sati that Sati’s daughter and granddaughters would always be safe under his rule. So she remained, hoping for the best. And she managed to have a good life, particularly during those early years.
“I stayed with her until time came for me to attend college. I followed my father’s wishes and traveled to Lebanon to attend the American University of Beirut. So I was not in Baghdad when my mother initially met Saddam’s first wife, Sajida, the mother of Saddam’s five children.
“We learned later that Saddam had encouraged Sajida to befriend Mother, to seek her advice on social issues. That’s why Mother received so many invitations to attend functions at the palace. But she was usually too occupied to bother.” Mayada chuckled quietly. “Thankfully, that was before the time when to refuse such an invitation would be cause for torture and imprisonment.” As Mayada glanced around the room in which she now found herself recounting her mother’s social successes, her voice reverberated with emotion. “One whiff of our little cell, and Salwa Al-Husri would drop dead.
“Anyhow, Mother had visited me in Beirut after receiving yet another invitation from the palace. Sajida had invited her to meet with a group of ambassadors’ wives. Mother said that the invitation fell on a day that she was free, so she accepted.
“I was curious about Saddam’s wife and asked Mother to remember every detail.” Mayada smiled without realizing it. “No two women could have been more different than my mother and Sajida Khayrallah Tilfah. Their meeting was ill-fated from the start.
“As you know, Mother had led an unusual life for an Arab woman. She held a Ph.D. in political science. She even attended Oxford University in England for further studies. Her grandmother was a sultana, or princess, in the Ottoman royal family. Her father, Sati, was one of the most celebrated men in the Arab world, a man who valued knowledge and education above all things. Jido Sati owned homes in many Arab lands, so he and his family traveled constantly. From the time she was a child sitting on her father’s knee, my mother was comfortable chatting away with kings and premiers. She was so favored by King Ghazi, son of King Faisal I, that he kept a photograph of her on his desk, beside his own son’s picture.
“Saddam’s wife Sajida was the daughter of a peasant, Khayrallah Tilfah. She was raised in her father’s home on the western bank of the Tigris, in a lower-class Tikriti district. She had little education compared to my mother, and she knew nothing of the world outside Baghdad and Tikrit. Sajida was married at an early age to her father’s nephew, Saddam Hussein. She quickly had five children by Saddam. When he seized power, she was woefully ill-equipped for her new position as wife of the President of Iraq.”
Mayada pulled on the blanket and covered her bare ankles.
“Mother told me later that she detested Sajida Tilfah. It didn’t surprise me when she said their dislike was mutual.
“I asked Mother what Sajida looked like in person. Although I had seen a few pictures of Sajida, I think it’s difficult to tell a person’s true appearance in official photographs. Mother said her first impression was that she looked like a clown. Her face was covered in thick white makeup. At first glance, Mother said, she thought someone had thrown flour on the woman’s face. Sajida was an olive-skinned woman who could have been attractive, but she aspired instead to be light-skinned. And Sajida’s dark hair had been dyed repeatedly, until it was brittle and a bright yellow color.
“Mother said she felt sorry for Sajida for about five minutes, but after she heard the woman shouting abuse at her servants, her sympathy evaporated.
“After the luncheon, Sajida told Mother that she wished to purchase some silver antique pieces and that her husband Saddam had told her Salwa would recognize the best quality work. He encouraged Sajida to invite my mother to go along with her to the shops. Thinking that this was a woman who needed social guidance, Mother agreed to accompany her. Mother said she was soon sorry she agreed. The moment the two women were alone together, Sajida tugged on Mother’s fur coat and demanded to know if it was real fur. Then Sajida grabbed her hand and fingered Mother’s emerald ring. She had the nerve to ask if it was imitation. Mother sputtered in stifled exasperation. My mother is not a woman who would wear fake fur or imitation jewelry, so she was offended and angry. She tried to think of a believable reason to end their planned shopping, but she knew she was trapped. So she went into the antique store with Sajida, although she said she was ashamed to be in the company of such an uncouth woman. Mother said she didn’t know why she was invited, because the silly woman didn’t ask her advice but instead rushed through the store, grabbing every garish item available. Then she humiliated my mother further by leaving without paying, telling the worried shopkeeper that someone from the palace would arrive shortly to handle the finances.
“Mother said she learned later that every shop in Baghdad dreaded Sajida’s arrival at their store. In fact, if a shopkeeper was given notice that Sajida was on the way, most pulled down their doors, locked up and claimed a family emergency. It was a well-known fact that even with all her riches, which were basically stolen from the Iraqi people, Sajida never paid the full price. Some shop owners were known to go out of business after her visits. But who could they complain to? They would be killed for suggesting that Saddam’s wife was nothing but a common thief.
“Mother said that after they stepped back into the car to return to the palace, Sajida began to speak loudly and tell her about a problem she was having with an Iraqi woman named Sara, from an old aristocratic Christian family in Iraq. Sara had earlier moved to Paris, and Sajida had been staying with her every time she visited Paris. Sajida said that she had asked Sara for a ‘simple favor’ for her sister, the woman married to Saddam’s half brother, Barzan Al-Tikriti. Sajida’s sister was going to Paris for six days. While there, she needed some assistance, Sajida said. Sajida’s sister wanted her eyelashes lengthened one inch, and she wanted her hips narrowed by five inches. The sister also wanted to visit De Beers to purchase some flawless diamonds at a good price.
“Sajida didn’t believe Sara when Sara told Sajida she had never heard of a way to lengthen eyelashes. And, Sara told her, the only way to remove five inches from anyone’s hip line was through surgery, which would take a lot longer than six days for recovery. Lastly, Sara explained to Sajida that De Beers was a supply company and did not sell directly to individuals. Sajida thought Sara was lying, that the Paris-based Iraqi woman just didn’t want to help her. Sajida knew that a person living in France could have anything they wanted. All they needed was enough money. And her sister had the riches of Iraq backing her, Sajida explained to my mother needlessly.
“Sajida told Mother she was going to trick Sara into visiting Iraq. Then she would have her thrown into prison.
“Mother was dumbstruck. Like Sati, she believed that stupid people were dangerous. Mother said she mumbled something in response to Sajida’s story, saying she had no idea what modern medicine might accomplish, so she was not the appropriate person to ask. Her answer obviously angered Sajida, who moved to the corner of the automobile and refused to speak.
“Mother knew Sara, so she immediately phoned her and warned her not to visit Iraq,” Mayada told the rapt women in her cell.
Dr. Sabah muttered, “Oh, my. I had no idea Sajida was so unpleasant.”
“Indeed, she is,” Mayada explained. Other memories about Sajida followed the first. “She really is a thief,” Mayada emphasized. “Do any of you remember what happened in 1983, when Saddam said that every Iraqi family had to donate gol
d to support the Iraqi army in the war with Iran?”
Mayada saw several of the women nodding. An older woman cried out softly. “I had nothing made of gold. My husband was on the front and there was no way to get enough money to buy a gold trinket to give, so I was forced to sell my cooking stove. From that time on, I cooked over a wood fire outside.”
With her words, a shadow of pain fell across Mayada’s heart. She knew that the donations had been a sham and that most of the gold never got to its proposed destination.
“Let me tell you a true story about that proclamation. About a government minister’s wife who was a close friend of our family. Her name was Dr. Lamya, the wife of Dr. Sadoun Hammadi. He was the Prime Minister for a short time in 1991, but was soon dismissed because he was too honest to succeed in Saddam’s corrupt government. Anyhow, Dr. Lamya was not a greedy woman. She actually owned only one set of expensive jewels—a beautiful gold and sapphire collection, which included a necklace, earrings, bracelet and ring. It was a wedding gift from her husband, but her husband forced her to donate it to the cause. She claimed that she wept for a week after being forced to part with those jewels.
“Well, a year passed and Dr. Lamya was invited to a function that Sajida was attending. She couldn’t believe her eyes when Sajida walked into the room wearing her set of beautiful jewels. The very same jewels that she had donated to the cause of Iraq’s young men at war were draped around Sajida’s neck and wrist. She was so startled she couldn’t move. In her disbelief, she just stood and stared. Sajida noticed her intent look. She grew annoyed and sent one of her security men to shout at her. He ordered Dr. Lamya to take her eyes away from ‘The Lady,’ as Sajida insisted on being called.”
“Some lady,” Dr. Sabah said harshly.
“Well, now knowing that her sacrifice had meant nothing, Dr. Lamya rushed home to complain to her husband. Dr. Hammadi told her to keep quiet, saying that a complaint wouldn’t get her jewels back, but it would land them both in prison. He then stated what everyone else knew, that Sajida Tilfah had such greedy eyes that they would not be satisfied until they were filled with dirt.
