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Writers tell of Saddam's wrath
28/04/2003 15:50 - (SA)
Baghdad - Some of Iraq's most celebrated writers and thinkers met openly for the first time here on Monday since the fall of Saddam Hussein and told how the ousted regime treated them as criminals.
More than 50 writers, poets and intellectuals gathered at the shabby one-room building which formerly housed the official writers' union to elect a committee to make contact with colleagues across the country.
"We are here to revive the writing and poetry that was banned by the regime," said white-bearded playwright Aziz Abdul Sahib at the building they have renamed the Union of Free Iraqi Writers and Thinkers.
"The writers who praised Saddam would get treated well. The members of the Ba'ath party were always watching the others.
"There were always security members at my plays and sometimes they (the plays) were not allowed."
Sahib said he had been selling his writings at a public market once a week "just so I could eat".
But, he never thought of faking praise for the dictator. "I saw all these crimes and I would feel I was part of it," he said.
Poet Imad Kadhum told of how he went underground for seven years after he ran away from Iraq's compulsory military service and his wife, a telecommunications engineer, supported their family.
He said he had been terrified that Ba'ath members would inform on him and that several friends were arrested for offending Saddam, who was himself credited with penning several self-aggrandising novels.
Disliked writers put in jail
"All the writers here refused Saddam Hussein and many were in trouble if we did not praise him in our poetry or stories," he said.
"We never accepted that we were criminals. If our work was disliked by Saddam or (eldest son) Uday, then we would be placed in jail."
"A lot (of writers) may have been killed, and to this day we don't know what has happened to them," Kadhum said.
He said the new grouping would remain above the political fray as the country struggled to regain its feet after the ousting of the regime and the installation of the United States administration running post-war Iraq.
He added that Iraqi writers now would probably find a new subject for their work: "We say thank you to the USA for liberating the Iraqis, but they should leave our country."
- AFX
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