Baghdad, Iraq - first few months of 2004. The American who most often saw the former president at his least guarded and most candid - other than his interpreter - was medic Robert "Doc" Ellis. "Act confident, don't be afraid," Ellis was told the first day he approached the dictator's cell. "This guy is good at picking up nonverbal cues." Ellis's assignment was to examine Saddam daily while he was being interrogated at Camp Cropper detention centre. Leaving no doubt as to Ellis's mission, a colonel had pulled the medic aside and emphatically explained, "Saddam Hussein cannot die in US custody. That would be a huge embarrassment to the president and the United States of America. Do whatever you have to do to keep him alive."In the evenings, Ellis would usually make the trek over to Saddam's cell alone. He didn't need an interpreter, as he recognised that Saddam's English was better than he let on. When Ellis arrived, the cell sometimes smelt of Lysol, which Saddam often used to clean up in the afternoon. The former president was always well groomed and made sure that his cell - while cluttered with books and papers - was free of dirt and dust.
It gradually became clear that Saddam had begun to see these daily medical checks as more than a formality to which he needed to submit. One night, Ellis retrieved Saddam's daily blood-pressure medication and was about to hand it to the former president when Saddam suddenly interrupted, saying "No" and waving the medication away. Saddam was sitting at his desk writing on a yellow legal pad - something he seemed to spend a lot of time doing.
Saddam said, "I know you can't understand, but I like to read this to you." He picked up the pad and began reading what he'd written in Arabic. The rhythm and cadence suggested it was a poem. After a few minutes, he finished, looking up from his creation with satisfaction, and said, "Now we do medicine."SOCIAL INTERACTION
That, Ellis observed, "was the beginning of our relationship". The scenario would be repeated in the weeks and months to come. "Saddam would read and I'd sit and listen, and then he'd try to explain to me. Basically, he wanted to socialise, and we did." Ellis viewed this social interaction as part of "treating the whole person, and not just their aches and pains". In his mind he was carrying out the colonel's broadly defined order to make sure Saddam remained healthy under his watch.On a few occasions Saddam tried to convince Ellis that cigars and coffee helped with blood pressure. Ellis knew that argument didn't hold much water, but he figured, if it helps Saddam relax it may be worth a shot. Thus it was that Ellis found himself in the peculiar position of helping to requisition some of Saddam's favoured Cohiba cigars. Saddam was visibly thrilled when Ellis, sometimes accompanied by the camp doctor, arrived, modest gift in hand.
He stood to greet them, exclaiming, "My friends, three Cohibas," waving the men from his small cell down the hall and outside to an open-air rec area. He moved a few of the plastic chairs out there, inviting them to sit and join him for a cigar in the Baghdad twilight.As they sat outside, the conversation could often be mistaken for the sort of happy-hour barroom banter that men around the world - who may not know each other particularly well but are feeling relaxed and in the mood to socialise - might engage in. Saddam's interrogators had adopted a remarkably convivial approach, and with his trial still in the distant horizon, the former president appeared untroubled and relaxed.
Predictably, during these evening cigar sessions, the conversation would sometimes turn to women (though there were few around to receive any of the men's attention). When it did, Saddam would alternate back and forth between the persona of a somewhat lecherous older man and that of a more caring and devoted husband. Although the Americans were sometimes confused about which of his multiple wives he was referring to, it was generally believed that he harboured the most affection for his second wife, Samira.Saddam sometimes tried his hand at a ribald joke. He particularly liked the story of how "one man from our village had a wife without much passion, so he went to his tribal elder, who found him a younger wife who had enough passion for an entire tribe". At that point he let out one of his deep "a ha ha ha" laughs.
Saddam's lustier side was evidenced on another occasion when he visited a clinic for a minor medical procedure and was treated by an attractive female army nurse. When the nurse asked Saddam if she could roll up his sleeve to take a blood sample, he replied in Arabic, "You may begin with the sleeves and continue as far as you want."
Saddam poured on what he regarded as his charm, relishing her attention. The story goes that after the visit, Saddam, still bewitched by the nurse's spell, resolved to grow a beard, not in an effort to appeal to Islamic extremists, as CNN pundits later speculated, but because he thought it looked better.
During one of Ellis's morning visits, Saddam asked Ellis if he had a family, to which Ellis answered that he had two sons and had recently married for a second time. Saddam seemed genuinely curious to learn more about Ellis's family, and so Ellis resolved to retrieve some pictures of them from his room to show Saddam the next time he made his evening rounds. When Ellis returned the next night, he handed the pictures to Saddam, who slowly started leafing through them, pointing to some of the people and asking who they were.
Hearty laugh
He seemed to take a particular interest in Ellis's brother-in-law, Lionel, who was an entertainer in Las Vegas and was clad in a flamboyant suit and sunglasses. Saddam kept returning to the picture, finally pointing at Lionel, sitting back, and letting out a hearty laugh. When Saddam got to a picture of Ellis's wife, Rita, he looked it over, paused, seemed to consider something for a minute, and then volunteered, "I will write a nice story for her."
Sure enough, when Ellis returned the next day, Saddam proudly handed him one of his loose sheets of yellow legal paper, on which he'd written in Arabic:
The night is defeated at the end of life
The stars are getting lost and the dawn is of joy with you
My heart has risen after winning his dream
Comfort is settling and hardship has gone away
My soul has flourished and his flower has matured
And God has blessed us for the remainder of our lives.
Ellis was amazed. But that was Saddam, a man of extreme contradictions. The man who, in an effort to extinguish threats posed by Shia militias, had ordered the systematic draining of the Mesopotamian marshes - forcing the migration of hundreds of thousands of people - would now hover over his weeds as a doting parent would his child. The man who, prior to his capture struck terror in the hearts of millions of Iraqis, would save bread crumbs from his meals and carry them outside, where he'd feed them to visiting birds.
Ellis spent one especially long day helping to fill sandbags to protect against mortar attacks. After he finished, he remembered that Saddam had requested sanitising wet wipes. Saddam was a notorious germaphobe and was constantly trying to clean and disinfect. So that evening Ellis arrived at his cell with wet wipes in hand. Saddam, Ellis recalls, "looked at the box skeptically and pulled out one wipe, holding it between his index finger and thumb". After staring at it for a few long seconds, he said, "These are kind of ... dainty."Ellis couldn't believe that the man who sometimes feigned an inability to speak English had just used such an unusual word. Struggling to keep a straight face, Ellis dutifully promised to snoop around for larger ones - "man-sized", he joked to Saddam. Ellis's wife, Rita, had recently included a box of large wet wipes in a care package she'd mailed, so the next day Ellis returned to Saddam's cell and, with not a little pride, presented them. This time he was greeted with the familiar smile of appreciation. Saddam chuckled, looked at Ellis approvingly, and said, "Papa Noel."
Ellis would sometimes wonder if he was falling prey to the same desire to please Saddam that was ubiquitous among Saddam's deputies when he was in power. He was well aware that Saddam was guilty of atrocious acts. And he recognised that the former president's apparent charm could very well be an effort to manipulate him. Watch your back, Ellis, he told himself. Don't let him get to you.
• An edited extract from 'The Prisoner in His Palace: Suddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid' by Will Bardenwerper, Simon and Schuster, R330HEIRS TO THE THRONE
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