Juggernaut

‘Anyone who incurred Uday’s rage would be seized in the night by the Mukhabarat and brought here, to Abu Ghraib. His enemies would be tortured until they confessed to imaginary crimes. Inmates would be forced to chose from a list of torments. An actual menu. Decide if they wished to be lowered into boiling water or have a cigarette stubbed out on their eye. Get raped with a Coke bottle or suffer endless electric shocks from a hand-cranked field telephone. Some were eventually released. Many were killed and dissolved in acid.

‘They tell me some of the cell floors in this prison are indelibly stained with blood. Many have inscriptions scratched on the wall. “Tomorrow I die. God have mercy.”’

‘Uday became increasingly unstable. He developed an irrational hatred of Kamel, Saddam’s food taster. I don’t know why. The argument came to a head at a party in honour of President’s Mubarak’s wife. Uday bludgeoned the man unconscious with a heavy cane. The Egyptian delegation had to stand and watch while Uday cut off the man’s head with a carving knife right there on the dance floor. I had to usher screaming guests to an adjacent room and make apologies. It was clear, from that day forward, that Uday had fallen out of favour. He was too impulsive, too easily provoked to lead the country. Saddam began to favour Qusay, his younger son, for succession.

‘One night we were at a private club. A discotheque on the roof of the Al-Mansour Melia Hotel. He danced, so we all danced. He cracked bad jokes and we laughed.

‘Uday played blackjack. He was drunk. He snorted poppers. The croupier was a young girl. She was terrified. Her hands shook so much she couldn’t deal cards. He slapped her around. He kicked her.

‘He told me to take over. I dealt cards. He lost. He kept losing. He spat. He swore. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t control the cards. Each time he drew bust he threw cards in my face. He told me to stop laughing. I wasn’t laughing. He said he would rape my mother. He would gut my father. He described how he would do it. Fresh detail each time he drew a bad card.

‘He kept drinking. He kept losing. He needed five or less. He drew ten. He finished the bottle and smashed it over my head. He kicked over the table. I was on the floor. He stood over me with his machete. I raised my arm to protect myself. I don’t remember much after that.’

‘At least the fucker is dead.’

Lucy had watched the endgame play out on Al-Jazeera. Uday and Qusay fled Baghdad after the invasion and hid in a mansion in Mosul. Someone ratted them out. 101st Airborne surrounded the villa. The brothers refused to surrender. An A10 airstrike quickly reduced the building to rubble. Their bodies were shown on TV. Bloated, bruised faces.

‘They had been sheltered by Nawaf az-Zaydan. Supposedly a loyal comrade. But, years earlier, Uday had ordered the execution of Nawaf’s brother. Nawaf saw his chance for revenge.’

‘And the chance to claim a twenty-million-dollar bounty,’ said Lucy. ‘They say Nawaf moved to California.’

Jabril shrugged.

‘The man had a family. He gave them a new life.’

He coughed long and hard.

‘I got a job as a guard at The National Museum. An old man with one arm. What else could I do? It was a fine job. The museum received few visitors. I patrolled empty rooms each day. Browsed cases of Babylonian pottery and Sumerian tablets. Relics from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. For the first time in years I was at peace. I was safe from party intrigues, the regular random purges of Uday’s entourage. Looking back, those were the happiest days of my life.’

Jabril lit a fresh cigarette.

‘We knew the Americans were coming. State television broadcast nothing but propaganda and dreadful Egyptian soap operas, but anyone with a radio could listen to the BBC World Service. We knew Bush was determined to invade. The city was ready for war. Sandbags in the streets. Anti-aircraft batteries on the rooftops. Windows taped up. Baghdad became a ghost town. Most shops, most restaurants closed. Anyone who had family outside the city packed their possessions in a car and fled.

‘I thought I was safe at the museum. I thought the conflict would pass me by. Too old to fight. I had no intention of joining a futile war.

‘We received a list. Artefacts to be retrieved from the museum basement ready to be shipped west. I assumed some effort would be made to preserve Iraq’s history. I assumed the list would include the delicate Mesopotamian sculptures and pottery that drew tourists and academics from all over the world. But the only materials scheduled for preservation were plastic bank boxes hidden in a locked basement room.’

‘Gold?’

‘Saddam’s personal wealth. Some of it. His private hoard. Had it been part of Iraq’s official reserve it would have been held in the vaults of the central bank.’

‘You saw gold? With your own eyes?

‘The cases were sealed, but one of them fell and split as we loaded it onto a pallet truck.’

‘How much in total?’