8. The ‘Butcher of Baghdad’ Penned Poetry and Maudlin Romances
“The Butcher of Baghdad”, Saddam Hussein (1937 – 2006), ruled Iraq from 1979 until his ouster in 2003, a period marked by extreme brutality, repression, and corruption at home, plus costly wars against his neighbors. At least a quarter of a million Iraqis were killed in a variety of purges and genocides by Saddam’s security services. Hundreds of thousands more Iraqis were killed in Saddam’s invasions of Iran and Kuwait.
He was also a smooth operator who knew how to lay on the charm when he wanted to. Indeed, on the day he was led to his execution, most of Saddam’s American guards had tears in their eyes at the impending death of the kindly old man they had come to know. Odder yet, Saddam had a maudlin streak, writing four steamy romance novels, plus numerous poems and poetry collections.
His best known novel is Zabibah and the King, a convoluted love story set in 7th century Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown. It revolves around the beautiful and brilliant Zabibah; her perverted husband; and a handsome ruler named Hussein. Each night, Zabibah is summoned to Hussein’s palace, where she fobs off Hussein by giving long political speeches.
Hussein eventually gets the hots for Zabibah’s, and sexual tension builds up between the duo. Her husband, fond of orgies and money and deviant sexual practices, is unhappy with the budding relationship between his wife and handsome Hussein. So hubby disguises himself and rapes Zabibah as she walks home from the palace one night in order to shame her. However, Hussein loves Zabibah too much to let that destroy the romance, so he goes after the perpetrator. After various adventures, Zabibah leads an army and is mortally wounded in battle, dying while proclaiming Arab nationalism with her last breath. Hussein kills the rapist, avenging Zabibah’s honor.
The novel was as unsubtle an allegory as it gets. Zabibah represents the Iraqi people. The rapist husband represents America. The rape represents the United States’ ousting of Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, and is dated January 17th – the same date as the commencement of Operation Desert Storm. The heroic king Hussein is Saddam Hussein.
Knowing that they had better, Iraqi critics praised Zabibah as a literary masterpiece. It became a domestic best seller, with over a million copies flying off the shelves, and a musical appeared in Iraqi theaters. Saddam’s sycophants in the Iraqi Ministry of Information turned the novel into a twenty part television series, which aired on and was frequently rerun on Iraqi TV.