Escape from Saddam Read Online Free PDF

that was one of the few remaining links I had with the West disappeared for good, to be replaced by a poor fizzy approximation made from dates.
    When that happened, though, the lack of Coca-Cola became the least of our worries. During the first Gulf War, the water tanks were bombed, and water itself became scarce. Families had to make do with what they needed merely to survive. Hair-washing, for example, became a thing of the past. After a few months, however, children began to develop head lice. Gasoline was considerably cheaper than water—you could fill up your car for the equivalent of less than a few American cents—so gasoline was used to kill the head lice. Scrupulous mothers then used rough washing powder to remove the gas from their children’s hair. You could always tell who had received this type of shampoo—the strange cocktail flecked people’s hair with a ruddy orange color when they went out into the sun.
    For now, though, I could pretend: pretend that I lived a life that at least bore some small resemblance to the life I had enjoyed in England; pretend that hanging around the stalls where unscrupulous merchants made a living pirating cassettes of Western music to order was a good alternative to being able to turn on the radio at will and listen to Michael Jackson; pretend that I was not living in a country where, at every turn, I was told by a domineering regime what to do, what to say, and what to think.
    Hakim and I did not expect that afternoon to be different from any other. Perhaps we would wander down Al-Mansour Street and I would visit the animals in the pet shops I loved so much, only to be chased out by the shopkeepers when they saw me: they knew that I seldom had any money to buy anything. Perhaps we would loiter around one of the pirate cassette shops hoping to hear some Western music. Occasionally I had enough money to buy a cassette, but not today.
    If Hakim and I found ourselves in a residential area, we might watch men at the front of their houses cajoling their roosters to fight. Perhaps we would see a young woman being followed by a potential suitor. For a young man to approach a woman in the street would have been most unseemly—such was not the Arab way—but if his intentions were to be encouraged, the girl would nonchalantly drop to the ground a scrap of paper with her phone number scrawled on it. If the relationship thrived across the telephone wires, perhaps they might be permitted to meet in person. And if the sun was setting, we might see young Iraqi women sprinkling water on the front driveways—to cool down the house, certainly, but also to make sure that they were on show, ready to attract the attention of any young men who were passing.
    On this particular day we happened to be outside
Al Multakaa
—The Meeting, Baghdad’s answer to McDonald’s—when three black Mercedes stopped. The traffic slowed as the cars blocked an entire lane. The rear doors opened, and four men wearing the distinctive uniform of the Special Republican Guard and carrying AK-47s swiftly alighted and surrounded the front car. A fifth guard entered the fast-food restaurant and quickly came back carrying a milkshake. As the front passenger door of the first car opened, Hakim tugged on my sleeve. “L…Sarmed,” he said conspiratorially with his characteristic stutter. “It’s U…U…Uday.”
    I looked closely. The man in the front seat, perhaps in his late twenties, was tall and wore a close-cropped beard. His short hair shone and appeared expensively groomed. He wore a black suit with an open collar and sat with one foot inside the car and the other on the pavement. In his right hand he held a large cigar, in his left the milkshake that he had just been given. He surveyed the street with an arrogant look, clearly aware that people shuffling by were avoiding his gaze. Hakim was right: it was Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son.
    Uday’s reputation was fearsome. He was known throughout Baghdad for his