For Iraqis, Hussein’s Arrest Not a Cure-All

When Hamid Hafidh saw the now-famous TV footage of bedraggled captive Saddam Hussein obediently opening his mouth to show a U.S. Army medic his molars, he reflexively ran his tongue over the gaps where eight of his own teeth used to be -- extracted with pincers during a torture session by Hussein’s secret police.

“I thought, ‘Well, he still has his teeth, but mine are gone,’ ” Hafidh, 55, a former political prisoner with a regal bearing and a rail-thin frame, said Tuesday. He pulled back his lips to bare his gums, where only three yellowed teeth remained in the upper row, leaning toward one another like tombstones in soft earth.

For many of those who suffered under Hussein -- enduring jail, torture, exile, loss of loved ones, religious persecution or thwarted ambitions -- the former Iraqi dictator’s ignominious capture has done little to put nightmarish memories to rest.

Now that the echo of celebratory gunfire has faded away, other ordinary Iraqis -- virtually all of them touched in some way by more than three decades of repressive rule -- are revealing that their feelings about their deposed leader are far more nuanced and complex than the initial burst of euphoria over his capture would suggest.

People are divided over whether a trial of their former leader will produce a national catharsis or merely cause old wounds to fester. Gratitude toward the Americans for capturing Hussein, so reminiscent of the rejoicing when he was toppled in April, has already begun to turn into resentment against a too-powerful occupier.

The memory of persecution -- particularly in the sphere of religion -- at the hands of Hussein left some Iraqis determined to never again submit to an outside power, whatever the cost.

Sitting in a muddy mosque courtyard, Abdel abu Sajjad, a Shiite Muslim whose uncle was killed by Hussein’s security forces, said he was overcome with happiness on hearing of Hussein’s capture.

“I actually sang and danced alone in my living room and turned up the TV as far as it would go,” said Sajjad, 30, who has a beard and intense, deep-set eyes. “But then when I became calm and thought about the future, the thought that came to me most clearly was how it has to be a future free of occupiers of any kind.”

For some Iraqis, the sense of sadness over their losses is simply too strong to be counterbalanced by whatever happiness they feel now that Hussein is behind bars.

On Tuesday, two days after word swept across Iraq that Hussein had been pulled from a tiny, filthy underground hide-out outside his hometown of Tikrit, Sadiya Marhoon was still handing out sweets to strangers -- a traditional expression of joy throughout the Arab world.

“I used to wear only black,” said the round-faced 48-year-old, gesturing at the brightly embroidered bodice of her dress. “Now I want to wear colors.” Her eyes filled with tears when she spoke of what had caused her to nurture a decades-long hatred for Hussein: the detention in 1971 of her then-fiance, who went to jail for failing to sign a loyalty oath to Hussein’s ruling Baath Party.

The fiance, who later became her husband, spent a year in jail. During that time, he developed a kidney ailment that went untreated, causing lifelong medical complications. His health failed steadily, and he died of kidney failure six years ago.

“Saddam broke my life,” she said, weeping. “Nothing can change that, nothing.”

In a nation of proud people with a deep suspicion of outsiders, the way in which Hussein was captured brought a sense of injured pride even among the ex-leader’s harshest detractors.

“When I heard what had happened, I wept, and do you know why?” said Hashim Hassan, an Iraqi journalist who was jailed, placed under house arrest and had his newspaper closed down by Hussein’s security apparatus. “Not for being sad over what happened to me, and not for being glad that he was getting what he deserved. Because it was an American soldier, not an Iraqi, doing this” -- and he mimed hauling someone upward by the scruff of the neck.

“Even after the sacrifices we made, the way so many of our lives were ruined by him, the way in which this happens makes us feel we cannot control our own destiny,” Hassan said. “In a way, we are somehow absent from our own lives.”

Among Iraq’s entrepreneurial middle class, news of the capture was swiftly overshadowed by renewed irritation with chaotic conditions that make it extremely difficult to do business.

Nazhik Yusef, who owns a clothing boutique in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood, brushed aside talk of the capture to launch into complaints about the occupation -- banking and telecommunication systems in disarray, a still-strong fear of street crime, and the widespread poverty that makes it hard for anyone to afford the ruffled blouses in her shop.

“I was able to succeed as a woman in business even under Saddam, but the Americans, they are going to put me out of business,” she said angrily. “Saddam didn’t give us the lives we deserved -- of course he didn’t. But neither are the Americans.”

In some way, Hussein and his government were enmeshed in the personal narrative of almost every living Iraqi. So for many people here, regrets over life’s ordinary disappointments and setbacks are inextricably intertwined with the anger they feel toward him.

Rahman Abdul Hussein, a well-known actor and playwright, never spent any time in Hussein’s jails, but he said the regime stifled him as an artist. “We had so many years when people could not even speak freely in front of their own children, for fear of being informed on,” said Hussein, 39, who has the voice and the countenance of a leading man. “And now that he is captured, seeing him give up without even a fight, we have to ask ourselves whether we did enough to try to fight back against him. It’s all part of the same feeling, this questioning, this looking back with a sense of shame and sadness. We see our own lives as some kind of strange pantomime.”

In the unlikeliest quarters, there was sympathy for the degrading state in which the former leader was captured and shown on videotape.

Some Iraqis said they believed Americans might have underestimated the dangers of such a display, and the backlash it could induce.

“I am a Kurd, and my people suffered greatly because of him -- of course I can’t forget that,” said Gulzar Tahar, a 30-year-old Baghdad teacher. “But when I saw these pictures, I just didn’t want to look -- I couldn’t. Because I could not endure something like this happening to me.”

As powerful as the images were, they cannot exorcise a past burned into the nation’s collective consciousness, said teacher Jamil Sakher.

“After they took him, I lectured to my class of little ones -- they are only 6 and 7 years old, and have learned all their lives about this great leader of ours,” he said. “It was an emotional thing for me, very emotional. I told them how they had been robbed of their childhood, how they didn’t have the things that children everywhere are entitled to, because he stood only for selfishness and hatred.” He paused in his recounting, looking away.

“They were happy, and they clapped their hands at what I told them, because they thought I expected them to,” he said. “But you know, I don’t think they understood anything I was saying.”