samedi 13 Jan 2007, 12h26m

While being taken to his death, was there a slight hesitation in Saddam’s steps, a small stagger or fear in his eyes? I did not see any. Advancing towards the gallows, he resembled a soldier from a defeated army making inspection.

With an astounding calm, he wanted the black band prepared for closing his eyes to be wrapped around, and with the same calm he allowed the oily rope to be placed around his neck. Saddam’s way of meeting his own death can be seen as heroic to some. As a matter of fact, his family called the toppled leader’s attitude at the moment of execution “brave and heroic.” There are probably those who share this view among his former and new supporters. He did not appear that way to me. The attitude reflected on the screen resembled that of a man who did not believe in death and who was not familiar with what death meant for man. We cannot know; perhaps the psychology of the attitude that appeared to some as heroism and bravery was what is called the numbing of emotions.

Even if it was like that, it would not be incorrect to say that Saddam Hussein’s feelings had become numb long before he was caught, tried and led to his death. For the execution scene we saw was the final curtain of the spiritual state that made Saddam a dictator. We all saw in this last act that this spirit, which did not believe in man, life or even death, had other priorities.

Pride and the desire to dominate in every situation were his priorities. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Saddam Hussein saw himself as a semi-god above everything and that at least he imagined himself to be a Nebuchadnezzar. Signs of man like fear, doubt, regret, and the shadow of pain never crossed Saddam’s face even at the moment of death. Actually, the relation he established with death explains his actions during the period he was in power.

His calm attitude in the face of death

If a Saddam portrait is going to be made, I think that before any thing else it should be made from this lack of emotion in the face of death. Poisoning thousands of people at Halabca without blinking an eye is a result of this same numbness and determination. Not limiting settling accounts with his eternal enemy, the Iranians, to the ethnic cleansing he made against Shiite Arabs in his own country, his beginning a war with his neighbor Iran that would last for years and one of his last statements before his death being “Don’t trust an Iranian coalition” show the limits of his ambition and anger. Saddam probably took as his historical mission an Arab-Iranian or Sunni-Shiite conflict. Just as he saw himself as a Salahaddin fighting against the Crusaders when he opposed the West after his relations with his former supporter America broke down. We know that his notorious oppression and mercilessness shown to the Shiites and Kurds was too rough and devastating to be explained by sectarian fidelity. Saddam was not only extremely merciless to Shiites, but to Sunni Kurds as well. Who knows, perhaps this cruelty was nurtured in his mind by pre-Islamic archaic figures and archaic rage, for he lived in Babel, the heaven of the ancient world. Was it without reason that he called one unit of his army “Nebuchadnezzar” and another “Hammurabi”? Various things have been said about Saddam’s religious beliefs. However, we know by his pronouncing the Islamic testament just before he died that he had faith, but we do not know how religious he was. The half-finished second testament made his death even more tragic.

Of course, while images of the execution scene which caused me to have these thoughts were not yet available, just as everyone else opposed to capital punishment, I thought I would not be able to bear watching the moment of death. The only reason I thought like that was not the moral mistake of ending a life. Even if the one to die is a dictator and oppressor, I still think that no one should have the right to end another’s life, especially with others watching it.

In order not to be unfair to Saddam…

However, I was hopeful on behalf of Iraq that if, on the one hand, the execution should take place, Saddam’s death would have just an opposite effect. In a period when the whole world was full of hatred for things in Iraq, the smallest human reflex Saddam could give at the moment of death might create an effect of mercy and conscience on everyone who liked him and did not like him. And these reactions might make a positive contribution to the determination of the future of Iraq, which is on the border of inexplicable madness. But that did not happen. Just like the execution decision, execution scenes hurriedly appeared on our TV screens. While looking out of the corner of my eye wondering whether or not to turn off the television, I discovered in a strange way that it could be watched. So that it can be understood correctly, I am saying these without ever forgetting that Saddam was a soldier. In which of their faces does death not appear as a shadow that upsets and jolts those who are watching? That human shadow is felt even in photographs documenting the moment of death. Hesitation – that is the essential hesitation. Forget about politicians and social leaders, a common murderer cannot even bear the moment of death. But there was something different in Saddam’s death. What made Saddam’s death viewable was his disbelief in death.

Maybe he did not have the meaning of death that we have. The secret of the many murders he committed is hidden in the relation he established with death. If he had believed a little in death, perhaps the number of his murders would have been smaller. While the photograph of his greatest massacre at Halabca is still fresh in our minds, the last picture Saddam gave becomes even more meaningful. Strangely enough, there is a similarity between the two photographs. I am talking about the picture of Saddam after he was taken down from the gallows and, with bruised blood spots on his neck and cheek, he was wrapped up in a white cloth and laid face-down. In this last photograph there was a human being, not an emotionally frozen dictator. Maybe it was because the consciousness and pride that had made him an oppressor had dispersed and the innocence of sleep overcame his existence. I do not know, but maybe what made me think of all this is the resemblance between the face-down sleeping state of Saddam wrapped in a white cloth and the state of the dying man trying to protect his baby at Halabca. Unfortunately, Saddam had to die in order to reflect a human appearance. That photograph where he seems to be sleeping, wrapped in a white cloth with a spot of blood on his mouth is going to remain in my mind. I hope he is met like that where he goes, too.

01.06.2007