Read Escape from Saddam for Free Online Page A

citizens. It was said that thousands of men and women were crammed into tiny cells and that abuse, torture, and executions were daily occurrences. The regime tested chemical and biological weapons on the inmates, and some prisoners were given nothing but scraps of shredded plastic to eat. Chunks of flesh were torn from the bodies of some prisoners and then force-fed to others. Gruesome tortures involving power tools and hungry dogs were routine, and thousands of people who entered the doors of that fearsome place were never heard of again. It was known that mass graves existed around the country, and it was known in general terms where they were situated; but of course nobody dared to hunt out the final resting places of those poor men and women who had become victims of the enthusiastic guards at Abu Ghraib, for fear of becoming one of their number.
    The four AIDS-stricken women were dealt with in a fashion brutal even by the standards of the prison. Stripped of their clothes, they were placed, alive and screaming, into an incinerator so that they and their “vile disease” could be utterly destroyed. In this way Saddam “delivered” our country from the horrific infections of the West and from the iniquities of the “evil Zionist state.” I kept quiet about my maternal grandmother’s Jewish heritage. She was one of only a handful of Jews who remained in Iraq during the great exodus of 1950. Before that time there were about 150,000 Jews living in Iraq; now there were fewer than a hundred, and it would have done me no favors if anybody suspected that I might embrace Zionism.
    Other atrocities took place more openly. As living conditions became increasingly intolerable, many women were forced into prostitution in order to make enough money to feed themselves and their families. It was an occupation deemed unacceptable by the state, punishable by death. The swift hand of justice was left to officials of the Ba’ath party, who were given orders to seek and behead all those suspected of prostitution. The standard of proof required was low, but the enthusiasm with which these officials carried out their work was high. Accompanied by two “witnesses” from the local community, they forced their way into the house of a suspect, then dragged her out into the street, where a specialist executioner was waiting with a sword. He sliced off the head of the screaming woman with one deft, well-practiced stroke. The head hung outside the woman’s house for two days, and her front door was branded with the warning “
Hathihee Al-Qahba’a.
” “This Is the Whore.”
    I remember a parade down one of the main thoroughfares of Baghdad when I was a child. The road was closed to traffic, and thousands of people joined the march, which was intended to celebrate the glory of Saddam. As the day wore on, however, a small group of insurgents became vocal in their criticism of the regime and started to shout anti-Saddam slogans. There weren’t very many—certainly only a small proportion of the crowd—but the Republican Guard was quick to react. A helicopter immediately flew overhead, and white paint was poured over the entire crowd—insurgents and noninsurgents alike. Heavily armed soldiers were then dispatched with orders to shoot anybody stained with white paint. The whole operation took less than an hour. A few lucky souls with paint only on their clothes managed to escape the crowd and change, but people with paint in their hair or on their bodies, where it was more difficult to remove, fared less well. The military scoured the area and shot dead anybody suspected of being part of the “uprising.”
    The town of Balad north of Baghdad had long been a place of neglect and oppression. Compared to Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, it suffered unbearable poverty and degradation. The people of Balad extended an official invitation to Saddam to come to the town to discuss matters. As a cultural mark of respect, the wife of one of the