'Strong like Saddam'
Oct. 15, 2007 issue - Kanan al-Sadid was not yet 10 years old on the afternoon that his father opened the trunk of the family car and Saddam Hussein popped out. It was the early 1960s, and the future dictator was hiding out from the Iraqi authorities, who accused him of plotting to assassinate the country's then strongman, Gen. Abdul Karim Qassim. Kanan's uncle was a member of Saddam's revolutionary Baath Party clique; when the conspirators needed to lie low, they would disappear to the Sadid family estate near the Syrian border. Once, when Syrian soldiers came looking for the men, Saddam and the boy's father ducked into a linen closet. Another time, as the family Volkswagen approached an Iraqi Army checkpoint, Saddam ordered all the children in the car to blow on the windows, steaming them up to conceal the fugitives. While visiting a family home in Baghdad one afternoon, Kanan's father told his sons to get into the car; they were going to a park to play. But after driving around for a while, the car stopped, the boy's father opened the trunk and Saddam Hussein—curled up and dressed in a dishdasha—stepped out and walked off. Kanan's father drove away in silence. "When are we going to the park?" the deflated boy asked. "Keep your mouth shut," his father replied.
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