Hussein’s Birthday a Time for Anxiety

BAGHDAD —  Today is Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

Though the deposed leader might find it difficult to celebrate from wherever he is hiding, if he is still alive, the nation he left behind is struggling to come to terms with the fall of its ironfisted leader.

April 28 has been a national holiday in Iraq for many years. And though many people are now willing to acknowledge their dislike, or worse, for the man, that doesn’t mean they didn’t look forward to the celebration.

“The Iraqi people were in urgent need of happiness,” said Salam Abdullah, 35, who said he was a military deserter. “When we celebrated the president’s birthday, we could go outside singing, shouting, honking horns. It was cathartic for us to purge what was in our hearts.”

There won’t be any parades today to mark Hussein’s 66th birthday. There won’t be any schoolchildren marching in the streets chanting, “Yes, yes, Saddam Hussein.” This capital city won’t be decorated in paper flowers or pictures of hearts with SH written in the middle, and it won’t shut down for a big party. Instead, the day will be one of heightened anxiety, even in these already anxious times, prompting many people to ask a question that is both infuriating and disturbing to Iraqis: Where exactly is Saddam Hussein?

Many say they are worried that Hussein will return and that he has picked his birthday to reappear. Some are afraid that his followers will set off poison gas in Baghdad as revenge for their fallen president.

Rumors abound: He is hiding in Russia. America. Underneath Baghdad.

Some people say they have seen leaflets with messages from Hussein distributed in the city.

For others, April 28 has concentrated their fear that the loss of their leader, no matter how despicable he may have been, may unleash forces that will make their lives even worse.

For those who benefited from the regime, there is a bit of wishful thinking, a hope that Hussein has a plan and will unveil it on his birthday.

“He is thinking of a scheme,” said Mohammed Hussein Alwan, 30. “There will, by God’s will, be something that happens on the 28th of April. I know it.”

His brother, Karim, agreed: “Everybody expects there will be massive destruction, that chemical weapons will be used tomorrow.... I expect there will be a big surprise.”

Last year on this day, the Baath Party was in control. Members in green uniforms, often carrying weapons, reminded store owners, schoolteachers, professors and students that this was not just a holiday, but a day of adulation. Those were orders, to be disregarded at one’s peril.

Amira Kadhum, 35, had her orders. She was a math teacher at the Al Kifa Arabi Secondary School in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour neighborhood. One year ago, she ferried her students on a bus to the intersection of Mansour and the 14th of Ramadan streets. Kadhum and her students marched past one of the many reviewing stands set up around the country as Baath Party members instructed them to cheer louder, to chant the president’s name louder and to smile.

“We were obliged,” Kadhum said Sunday as she passed the reviewing stand on her way to a shop. “I told my students we must celebrate because he is the president. We must like him. If we don’t, they will take me away and I can no longer be your teacher.”

The stand still sits in the intersection, where a drawing of Hussein’s face has been blacked out with markers. A banner tells the public to return looted property: “This is the people’s property, not Saddam’s.” Another offers a message from what appears to be a fledgling political party: “We are working for the sake of a free Iraq.”

Kadhum gazed at the defiled stand, at the banners that are a new and strange element in her world. She said she thought that Hussein was hiding in tunnels under the city and that he might reemerge today. She left the conversation a bit unnerved. “The followers of Saddam Hussein exist even now,” she said before rushing off.

Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps the pending birthday, but much of what has become of Iraq -- much of what Iraqis will confront on the day that was a holiday -- suddenly converged at the intersection Sunday afternoon, under a towering, light-studded arch that rose above the street. Hanging from the apex of the arch was a huge round photograph of Hussein praying -- a portrait that had stared down on the birthday celebration year after year.

A red double-decker bus, commandeered by a Shiite group, pulled up underneath the portrait. Some of the passengers climbed onto the roof of the bus and tried to knock the portrait down with a long pole.

“He can go to hell,” screamed Khazan Hassan, 35, a clothing merchant who was part of the group. “Bye-bye, no more Saddam.”

They struggled, unsuccessfully. Then someone pulled out an AK-47 and fired into the president’s likeness. That failed too.

“Everyone says that the president will be back tomorrow,” Hassan shouted over the gunfire. “We don’t know. He escaped like a mouse.”

A moment later, a black Jeep pulled up. A Shiite religious leader stepped out and a band of men carrying automatic weapons jumped from the back of the vehicle and surrounded him. The leader, Sheik Raid Kadhimi, sent someone to fetch a cherry picker, and soon one of his followers was up in the air slicing the portrait out of its frame. Hussein came tumbling down, and in a moment his face was trampled by jeering and cheering men.

“This is the will of the creator and the will of the people,” said Kadhimi, who had returned to Iraq after the fall of Baghdad following years of exile in Syria.

The party ended, the bus drove off, and Safwan Salman Abdu Jabar stood in his currency-exchange shop across the street, shaking his head. He doesn’t like such lawlessness and calculated that such things could not have happened while Hussein was president.

“We would still respect him if he had accepted their offer to withdraw and retreat, but he didn’t,” Abdu Jabar said. “We would respect him a lot, and we could keep his pictures. But he didn’t.”

Abdu Jabar said that he doesn’t have any plans to mark the birthday and that the talk of Hussein’s return is silly.

But Mohammed Hussein Alwan, who lives in a nearby neighborhood, said he misses his president and plans to serve his friends a small cake today to honor the man he hopes will return.

“I wish Saddam Hussein would come back because of the whole situation,” he said. “No one can control Iraq like he did.”

In the Yarmuk section of Baghdad, Riad Mohammed, 42, said he found a flier in his neighborhood, signed by Hussein, that said, “God bless Iraqi people. Be patient. Iraq will be back in its time.”

Mohammed said he gave the flier to a friend, but the friend was so frightened, he burned it.

Could the message be true, could Hussein really be about to return?

“Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe,” Mohammed said.