In each palace were stationed scientists from the country’s nuclear arms program. They worked in a restricted area in the basement of a palace. Access to it was only through swipe cards, whose codes changed every day. In the basement was a suite housing a powerful hospital-style X-ray machine. The scientists X-rayed each item of food. They were looking for any sign of whether it had been poisoned or exposed to previous radiation.
When nothing suspicious was detected, the food passed on to further checks. Chefs took a small portion: a morsel of lobster or fish, a sliver of meat, a nibble of cheese, a small spoonful of yogurt. Food that needed cooking was prepared. Then all the items were tastefully arranged for the waiting tasters. They were selected from some of the untold legions of prisoners in Iraq’s jails.
Watched by members of Al Himaya, Saddam’s personal bodyguards, each prisoner swallowed and displayed his open mouth to the bodyguards. The tasters were then observed for an hour to ensure they had not been poisoned. Next they were taken to a lab to have blood drawn. This was tested to make sure there was no trace of radiation in what they had digested. The prisoners were then taken to a courtyard in the palace and shot—usually with a single bullet to the back of the head.
The gunshots were a signal for Saddam Hussein that his breakfast, and the other meals he would eat during the day, were safe to consume.
This chilling ritual was one of many that governed his life.
Whichever woman shared his bed overnight was dismissed. Her fate, like those of so many others forced to sleep with him, was a matter of conjecture. Alone, Saddam made his way to his private swimming pool. For him a number of laps was an important exercise to strengthen his spinal cord. Some years before he had undergone surgery for a slipped disk. He swam naked, watched only by his bodyguards. From them there were no secrets about his physical infirmities. He had a limp, in public he would walk only a few steps before pausing. For a man so muscular in uniform, he had a belt of fatty tissue around his lower abdomen.
Swim over, there was another essential ritual to the start of his day. His barber, who traveled everywhere with him, arrived to trim Saddam’s mustache and touch up the black dye in his hair. The chemicals used in the process came from Paris, each bottle had been tested to ensure it contained no lethal agent. His hair uniformly tinted to hide any trace of gray, his nails were then buffed and manicured with a colorless polish.
Then his personal dresser took over. Saddam’s uniform was custom-made, cut to emphasize the musculature of his body. His biceps and strong thighs were the result of those early teenage years when he went camel racing. His jacket was tailored to disguise the spreading waistline he had failed to halt despite periods of strict dieting.
These vanities were in a man who was irritated by the way his wife of forty years, Sajida, allowed her hennaed hair to be less than perfect and whose body was matronly.
His physical needs attended to, Saddam Hussein was ready for another day. No one could deny his capacity for work. A twelve- to fourteen-hour day of meetings was not unusual. At the end of each session he would take a small nap in a room adjoining the office. Thirty minutes later he could be back at the top of a conference table ready to plunge himself into a new round of discussions.
Each meeting began the same way. Saddam studied an executive summary of the reports that had been prepared. Sometimes he would ask to see the full report for closer examination. No one around the table knew which report would be chosen for scrutiny. If the summary did not match the full report, he would closely question the writers of both. He then displayed a harsh, inquisitorial manner. He was a natural bully.
Every few hours—wherever he was—his closest aides knew they must arrange for him to be near water a fountain, an indoor waterfall, a flowing stream. Water is a symbol of wealth and power in the desert land of Iraq. In Saddam’s personal milieu—his social relations, the customs and culture in which he was raised—water is a prerequisite. In all his personal offices—no one knows how many there were scattered around Baghdad and beyond—there was always the sound of cascading water on a background disc.
