Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein

by Jennifer Roy

  “Boys,” Mama says, “enough.” But she has a small smile on her lips.

  I finish rolling up my rug and tuck it under my arm. I’m ready to take it out of here for good.

  “President Hussein is triumphant!” a voice booms out from the radio.

  I stop.

  “Our fearless leader has stood up to George Bush and America, and stands today strong and determined, the father of his people . . .”

  “Enough,” says Baba, and turns the radio off.

  “We lost, didn’t we?” Shireen says. “We lost the war.”

  “Yes, Shireen,” says Baba. “Iraq lost the war. But we are still here.”

  And so is Saddam.

  Even the Americans couldn’t get rid of Saddam.

  What was it all for? I wonder. Forty-two days. Of battling, of bombing, of fear and hunger! And for so many families, grief and mourning. And the one man who set all this in motion is still going to be our leader, with all his palaces and luxuries and power.

  What was this all for?

  I shake my head and carry my rug to the playroom, where it will be stored in the closet, for a long time I hope. As I walk across the playroom, I trip over something. It’s the cord that connects the joystick to the Atari console.

  I don’t fall; I just stumble a little.

  Was it really just forty-two days ago that Shirzad and I sat in here playing video games?

  I kick the controller closer to the entertainment center that holds the TV. There will be no TV or video games until the electricity comes back, and who knows how long that will take?

  I clench my hands into fists. My fingers are itching to grasp a controller and press the buttons and play a game. I just want to play Atari!

  Instead I stand in the middle of the room, staring at a blank TV.

  What do I do now? It’s a strange feeling, having nothing to do. I’ve been in survival mode . . . How do I get back to living?

  “Ali!” Ahmed bursts in carrying a football.

  “Yes, Ahmed,” I say, halfheartedly.

  “Come on,” Ahmed says. “Let’s go outside and play. Shirzad says he’ll meet us down there.”

  But I am a statue. Frozen solid, I can’t seem to switch from War-Ali to War-Is-Over-Ali like that. I just can’t.

  Then Ahmed throws the ball, and I automatically lift my knee and bounce the ball in the air.

  It feels good. I bounce the ball onto the other knee.

  “Race you!” Ahmed yells and takes off running. I catch the ball in my hands and chase my little brother out the front door and into the blazing sun. I automatically look up to see if there are warplanes before I realize . . . I don’t have to anymore.

  As I kick the ball back and forth with Ahmed, I look around. In our neighborhood, nobody would know that we have just been in a war. Not one house has been hit. Yet on the radio, we heard about catastrophic damage all over Iraq.

  I can’t help but think, Why us? Why are we so lucky?

  Shirzad comes out of the house. Wordlessly, he joins us. I kick the ball around with both my brothers. I start to feel loose. It’s easy to lose myself in the rhythm . . . Kick . . . Pass . . . Kick . . . Pass . . .

  Then I see my friend Mustafa coming toward us.

  “Mustafa!” I shout. “Come play!”

  Ahmed kicks the ball, but I let it pass right by me. Mustafa has gotten near enough for me to see his face. I’m ashamed of myself; I hadn’t given a thought to my friend.

  “Your father?” I ask.

  “Not back yet,” Mustafa says.

  I focus on the word yet.

  “He’ll probably show up any time,” I reassure him. Ahmed goes to retrieve the runaway ball.

  “Yes.” Mustafa nods and tries to smile. “Not knowing . . . It’s hard.”

  Just then, Shireen comes running out into the street.

  “Boys!” she hollers. “Baba says to come in before he has to go to work!”

  “Your father is back?” Mustafa says.

  “He showed up earlier today,” I say.

  “That’s great, dude!” Mustafa looks genuinely happy for me. I’m reminded of an Iraqi proverb—​“You will discover your true friends in moments of crisis.”

  “Want to come in?” I ask.

  “No, thanks,” Mustafa says. “My grandmother wants me right back. I don’t want to give her anything more to worry about.”

  I hold out my hand, and we shake. Mustafa heads off down the street, and I follow my siblings into the house.

  My parents are right there, in the front hallway. Baba is wearing his medic uniform.

  “I’m going to the hospital,” he says.

  “I don’t want you to go, Baba!” Shireen wraps her arms around his legs.

  “I know, my little girl,” my father says. “But there are many injured people who need my help.”

  “But what if Saddam Hussein starts another war?” Shireen cries.

  We are all quiet for a moment.

  “Come on, Shireen,” I say. I take her hands and peel her off my father. “There’s no war now. And if another one comes, we’ll get through it. Together.”

  “Ali is right,” Mama says. “Now come, Shireen, let’s see what we can make for supper. Baba brought home some kindling to light the oven. I think we have a bit of grains left for lavash.” They head to the kitchen.

  “I’ll go collect some dates from the tree!” says Ahmed, rushing out the door.

  “We’ll take care of things here, Baba,” says Shirzad.

  My father picks up his medical bag and says quietly, to just the two of us, “You boys stay close to home. There are many people in Basra who are angry and upset. There may be trouble in the streets.”

  “Yes, sir,” Shirzad and I say together. We watch our father leave.

  “I’m going to my room,” my brother says. “Now that it’s mine again. This morning I stepped on one of Ahmed’s army men, and I found a baby doll wedged between the wall and my bed.”

  I laugh and follow Shirzad up the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I enter my bedroom, I sigh. Three of my comics gone, casualties of the war. But everything else looks the same.

  I grab a comic and take it to my bed. I lie down and flip it open. I don’t know what will happen to us in the days ahead. In the comics, the good guys always win. In real life? It’s not always so obvious who the good guys are. The world may see only Saddam Hussein. But we Iraqis are so much more than that.

  Whatever happens next, as my father says, we’ll get through it together.

  Thirty-Two

  Fourteen Years Later

  I CAN’T ESCAPE HIS EYES.

  Saddam Hussein is looking at me. Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, the Butcher of Baghdad, the man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people. My own people.

  I am falling back in time. Back to when I was a boy whose world seemed nearly always to be at war. Where people were terrorized and tortured and starved and gassed . . .

  I take a deep breath and remind myself that I am no longer that boy. I am now a grown man, here in Iraq, with an important job working for the American State Department. I am part of a team in the Iraqi High Tribunal that is prosecuting Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity.

  Saddam is sitting in the defendant’s cage—​an area surrounded by wooden railings. And security. Plenty of security. But even with the cage and armed guards and justice on my side, I am rattled. When an evil dictator focuses his laser-beam eyes on you, it feels like Satan is staring into your soul.

  “I—” I begin to translate Saddam’s Arabic speech into English. “I am not going to answer to this so-called court!” My words go into a microphone and up to the second floor, where behind the mirrored windows sit the Americans.

  Only Iraqis are allowed in the main courtroom. The Americans who are helping to prosecute Saddam Hussein through democratic procedures stay behind the scenes, watching and listening and advising.

  The judge has jus
t told Saddam to stop yelling.

  “You are nobody!” Saddam shouts, getting to his feet. “I am the leader of the Iraqi people!”

  I translate Saddam’s outburst, while thinking, This man has no remorse! He’s crazy!

  Finally Saddam sits down, and the trial continues.

  I listen to the witness on the stand speak. He is telling a heart-wrenching story about his family being killed during the chemical attacks. That was the first phase of a genocide campaign called Al-Anfal.

  It’s difficult, but I keep my composure. I have a job to do.

  I translate the witness’s words from Kurdish to English so that the Americans can understand.

  I am a professional translator. I was hired by the U.S. government to help bring Saddam to some kind of justice, finally.

  I am twenty-eight years old. It has been quite a few years since Saddam retreated from Kuwait. I spent my teenage years living with the economic sanctions that were imposed on my country. We remained hungry, powerless, and silenced. All along, however, I kept learning and practicing my English. The language seemed to come instinctively to me, even though I had been unable to leave Iraq to visit America.

  And then, in 2003, there was another war, the Second Gulf War. This time, the government of Saddam Hussein was overthrown. But still Saddam was not killed. He went into hiding for many months. Finally he was yanked out of his hiding place, a hole in the ground, which was known as Saddam’s spider hole, in his hometown of Tikrik in a raid by U.S. troops. The Saddam they captured looked like a disheveled old man with an overgrown gray beard and bloody scrapes.

  The Saddam who is in this courtroom is neatly groomed, and dressed in a white-collared shirt and dark suit. And as dictator-like as ever. He smiles, he smirks, he reprimands and shouts when he gets angry or feels insulted. He gives orders.

  Except this time, no one is following his orders. He is the prisoner.

  The Kurdish witness finishes his testimony. The defense team asks him some questions.

  I translate it all.

  And then it is time for court to be adjourned for the day.

  I watch the Iraqi security guards escort Saddam to the doorway, where they hand him off to the U.S. Marshals Service, a federal law enforcement agency within the U.S. Department of Justice. Saddam will be taken downstairs to his prison cell. He is currently on a hunger strike to protest the trial.

  Everyone in Iraq knows about Saddam’s hunger strike. Millions of Iraqis are glued to their television sets. The trial is being televised almost live.

  I look up at the high ceiling. I can see many of the cameras that are taping the trial. They beam their images to the control room, where a U.S. production company that also films the American Super Bowl works to edit out some faces and names before airing the trial. So the world sees everything on a thirty-minute delay.

  Well, not everything. They don’t see me—​or the other translators. They only hear our voices. If they showed my face, I would be dead. Saddam’s supporters—​mostly Sunni Muslims—​would consider me a traitor working with the Americans.

  When I talk to my family and friends, whom I’m not allowed to see during the trial, they are excited to hear my voice.

  I am in the heavily fortified area called the Green Zone. It’s mostly secure—​except the occasional bomb that gets through from Saddam’s supporters outside. Inside are Americans and Iraqis working to give Saddam Hussein a fair and democratic trial.

  Many of us are learning how democracy works.

  “Ali!” A man’s voice reaches me from the courtroom’s entryway. “Are you coming?”

  I stand up and respond in English.

  “Yes, Mr. D. I’m coming.”

  I head over to the exit. Time to shake off the day. And shake Mr. D.’s hand.

  Mr. D is one of three American attorneys who are helping to prosecute Saddam Hussein.

  “Good job today,” he tells me. He sips a cup of coffee in his right hand as we walk down the hallway.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “No, really,” he says. “That was some pretty intense stuff in there. You translate so fast, but you still manage to convey emotion. Where did you learn English?”

  “Television,” I say. “Movies.”

  He laughs.

  “Some schooling,” I add. “But I always watched and listened to any English I could find.”

  “Well, it’s certainly paid off,” says Mr. D.

  “Literally,” I joke. “Although to be honest, I would do this job even if I didn’t get paid. It’s something I can be proud of for the rest of my life.”

  “You’re a good translator and a good man,” says Mr. D. “But don’t tell the State Department that you’d do this for free. They would take you up on it. So you grew up here in Iraq?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Mostly in Basra, with my family.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “As well as can be expected,” I say. “My parents are healthy. My mother teaches mathematics and my father’s a dentist.

  “I am very fortunate,” I continue. “We have all lived through three wars. Most families in Iraq are not so lucky.”

  Mr. D. drinks the last of his coffee and drops the cup in a nearby receptacle.

  We shake hands. The attorney heads toward the gym. I make a stop before going back to my trailer. Into the game room.

  Where I beat the previous high score on the retro Ms. Pac-Man arcade game.

  “A-L-I,” I spell out on the high score board. And I smile.

  Epilogue

  Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging after he was convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi High Tribunal. He was executed on Saturday, December 30, 2006.

  After the trial, Ali returned to Basra, his hometown. In 2008, with help from Mr. D., one of the prosecuting attorneys in the trial of Saddam Hussein, Ali moved to the United States, and his siblings followed in 2009.

  Ali moved to Columbus, Ohio. One night, he had dinner with Mr. D. and his family, including Mr. D’s sister-in-law, Jennifer Roy, who later became Ali’s coauthor in writing this story.

  On November 12, 2013, Ali Fadhil became a citizen of the United States of America.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Ali Fadhil, a true ambassador and hero.

  Thank you to my twin sister, the author Julia DeVillers, and to David DeVillers for connecting me to Ali and giving me the opportunity to tell this story.

  Thank you to my amazing editor, Elizabeth Bewley, and the entire team at HMH. Thank you to designer Sharismar Rodriguez and illustrator Patrick Leger for the book’s stunning cover.

  Thank you to my patient and brilliant agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin at Trident Media.

  Thanks to my family—​my mother, Robin Rozines; Sylvia Perlmutter Rozines; Greg Roy; Quinn DeVillers; Jack DeVillers; Gwen Rudnick.

  Thank you to Jeff Walter and the Walter family. Also thanks to my friends Sharon Aibel, Julie Tellstone, and Kelly Stiles.

  And a special thank-you to my indispensable son, Adam Roy.

  —​Jennifer Roy

  Thank you to Jennifer Roy for being flexible and having patience when I took forever to answer your questions.

  Thank you to David DeVillers and his family. David: You brought a tyrant to justice. Not a lot of people get to claim that.

  Thank you to Lieutenant Colonel Hugh McNeely (U.S. Army, Ret.): You taught me that everyone belongs here.

  Thank you to my late cousin Sameer, who gave the ultimate sacrifice while fighting ISIS. You are not forgotten.

  —​Ali Fadhil

  MiddleGradeMania.com

  About the Authors

  JENNIFER ROY is the author of the highly acclaimed book Yellow Star, which was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book for excellence in children’s literature, an ALA Notable Book, a 2006 School Library Journal Best Book, and a New York Public Library Top Book. She is also the author of Cordially Uninvited and Mindblind and the coauthor of the Trading F
aces series.

  Learn more at www.jenniferroy.com

  ALI FADHIL grew up in Basra, Iraq, and became an interpreter during the trial of Saddam Hussein. He now lives in Dublin, Ohio.

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