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| Iraq | ||
| The joke’s on Saddam | ||
| 2003-03-14 | ||
| In a small dark theatre, a group of actors are performing a revue, with sketches on corrupt policemen, UN officials and a few slapstick gags involving a rubber skeleton. The auditorium is packed. The show, Parasites, has been playing to full houses for a month, and tonight, like every night, everybody is paralysed with laughter. "It was fantastic," one member of the audience, Samira Tofia, says afterwards as couples, families and small children stream outside. "At times like this it's important to keep laughing," she adds. "In California, 50 women protested the impending war with Iraq by lying on the ground naked and spelling out the word peace. Right idea, wrong president." —Jay Leno There is nothing remarkable here — apart from the fact that we are in Iraq, a country where there is seemingly not very much to laugh about. Iraqis may face the prospect of war, and massive US bombing next week, but this doesn't mean that they are unable to joke about their plight. "We'll carry on with the show even when the war starts," Mahir Hassan Rashid, Iraq's top comedian and the show's director, explains. "We'll do it in our gas masks if necessary."
"More coming out about Saddam Hussein. We now know he takes Viagra and he has as many as six mistresses. No wonder Congress is reluctant to take action against this guy — he's one of their own." —Jay Leno In the rest of Iraq nobody jokes about the president. To do so would be to invite arrest and execution. "Traditionally, the only place where we have been free to express our ideas has been the toilet cubicle," Hassan explains. "But if you walked into a cubicle and found a piece of graffiti that said, 'Fuck Saddam, his wife and daughters,' you left pretty quickly." If the Mukhabarat (Iraq's intelligence service) came in next and found you there, they would arrest you." What would happen then? "Saddam would turn you into soap," Hassan says. Saddam: "... so then I turned them into soap!" Staff: [uproarious laughter] Iraqis have lived under a totalitarian regime for a long time. Political satire only became possible after 1991, when the Kurdish opposition took control of northern Iraq following the Gulf war. Hassan and his revue team sensed that their moment had arrived, and decided to make Iraq's first comedy film about Saddam. Hassan roped in a friend, Goran Faili, who looks uncannily similar to the dictator, and dressed him in a green uniform, beret and sunglasses. He hired 50 Kurdish guerrillas to play Iraqi soldiers. The resulting film was very funny. The extras danced round singing "Long Live Saddam", in a pastiche of the dire propaganda screened nightly on Iraqi TV. In one scene, Faili, as Saddam, makes a rambling speech in Arabic to his terrified cabinet, warning them that he intends to lop their heads off. In another he discovers the Ba'ath Party slogan "Unity freedom and socialism" scrawled above a toilet. The film was screened on Kurdish television; and after decades of official repression, it was a huge hit. Saddam's vigilant agents dispatched a CD copy to Baghdad. The Iraqi president was not amused. His response, when it came, was predictable: he sent several assassins to northern Iraq to kill the entire cast. "Fortunately the guys were all arrested [by the Kurdish authorities]," Hassan recalls. "They were found carrying a list. All our names were on it." "In a bizarre move, Saddam Hussein has released all prisoners being held in Iraqi jails. Isn't that amazing? Iraq has prisoners that are still alive." —Jay Leno The episode revealed one of history's truisms — that tyrants all have the same deep psychological flaw: they can't laugh at themselves. After the film came out, Faili spent the next four years in hiding, surviving six assassination attempts. I tracked him down to a muddy housing estate in northern Iraq where he lives in retirement. He said that he got into Saddam impersonating after his parodies of the dictator went down well with friends. "There are not many people who can imitate Saddam's Tikrit accent," he said. "I used to watch videos of him. You notice that he moves very slowly." "Sorta like Al Gore, but not as stiff." What did he think of Saddam? "He is very clever at killing and murdering people. But in other respects he is completely stupid," he said. "He is a donkey." "More and more information coming out on Saddam Hussein. We now know that he has, like, 24 presidential palaces. Each one of these palaces of Saddam's has a dolphin pool and an amusement park. Well, if you didn't think this guy was creepy before — now he's starting to sound like Michael Jackson." —David Letterman The Kurds have suffered most under Saddam's rule, and beneath modern Iraqi comedy you detect a lurking sense of horror. Hassan, now 40, is Iraq's answer to John Cleese — with a bit of Benny Hill thrown in. He is famous not only in Iraqi Kurdistan but also in neighbouring Syria and Iran, as well as in Europe, among the Kurdish diaspora. He first started performing sketches and plays in the mid-1980s, with a group of fellow Kurdish arts students in the city of Sulaymaniyah, then under Baghdad's control. Many of them were arrested and tortured. Three of his contemporaries disappeared. In his revue there are jokes about chemical weapons. "In a country like Iraq comedy and tragedy are never very far apart," Aso Jamal Mukhtar, who shot the Saddam comedy film, and is part of the revue team, says. "If we do comedy there will be tragic elements in it. Some people laugh at it, but others cry at it." Security officials imprisoned Mukhtar in 1986; he still has the scars on his arm from where they hung him from the ceiling. During this period Hassan and his fellow-actors had to submit their scripts to a censor from the Ba'ath party. These were returned with large chunks crossed out in red pen. Any expression of dissent — however coded — was struck out. "The latest rumor is the United States is working behind the scenes to try to find a 'safe haven' for Saddam Hussein. See if he agrees to step down and leave Iraq, we will relocate him. What a nightmare, where are you going to send a guy who thinks America is a nest of greedy imperialists intent on bleeding the third world of all their resources? I mean, besides Berkeley?" —Jay Leno In Saddam-controlled Iraq the arts scene is virtually non-existent. Only official newspapers and TV are allowed; mobile phones are banned; phonelines bugged; and email heavily restricted. Under these oppressive circumstances it is difficult to see how literature can flourish — although Iraq's most famous modern writer is, of course, none other than Saddam himself. In 2001, an anonymous debut novel, Zabibah and the King, was published in Baghdad. Saddam let it be known that the book was his — a thinly disguised allegory of America's attack on Baghdad during the Gulf war. Hassan and his team are scornful of the idea that Iraq's president could have written anything at all.
"Saddam is addressing a convention of the blind in Baghdad on the eve of the American attack. He tells them: 'God willing, you will see our victory.'" Another Saddam joke: Saddam and Ezad Duri (one of Saddam's top Ba'ath party commanders) go on a trip to Europe. They visit a brothel. Saddam sleeps with a blonde prostitute. Afterwards, Duri asks: "How was she?" Saddam replies: "Uday's mother (Uday is Saddam's son, by his ex-wife Sajira) was better." Duri then sleeps with the same prostitute. Saddam asks: "How was she?" Duri replies: "Uday's mother was better." "Saddam Hussein has told his people that U.S. troops will commit suicide when they get to the gates of Baghdad. That's when you know you have a bad army, when your only hope for victory is that the enemy's troops kill themselves." —Jay Leno | ||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #5 Yeah the wait is bad! All I want is immediate gratification---right f-----g now! |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-03-14 18:06:34 |
| #4 Do you PROMISE we are going to war this time? I've got gold options resting on it... I'd really hate for the US to stand down now! I have faith in the guts and determination of W, he seems to have some backbone, but the longer we wait the worse the opposition gets.... I am sick of waiting we have been waiting for a year and a half now! |
| Posted by: anon 2003-03-14 16:21:21 |
| #3 "F%ck Chiraq" has a nice ring to it. |
| Posted by: RW 2003-03-14 11:17:50 |
| #2 Because I can see thru the crap doesn't mean I'm a Krugman-reading lefty. You come back next week and tell me to come back the week after, ok? |
| Posted by: g wiz 2003-03-14 10:36:42 |
| #1 Let me float you this idea: Northern Kurds,and Southern Shites declare independence,are immediatlly recongnized by Britain,Spain,& And U.S.,and sign Mutual Defence Treaties(preferably in the Rose Garden). This isolates Saddam and his Bathists buddies in the center of what was Iraq and we wait them out (wouldn't think it would take long). Sticks a finger in Chiraq & Schroeders eye,tell Turkey they left us no choice.And most satisfying of all tells the U.N.in no uncertain terms that"You are irrelavant,pack your bags and go home." |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-03-14 06:11:52 |