Saddam's doctor navigates his way to art

[October 17, 2008]  NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- As bombs fell on Baghdad one night during the first Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's bodyguards banged on Dr. Ala Bashir's door.

A chauffeur rushed Bashir through the blacked-out streets to a hospital where Saddam lay pale and bloody. The Iraqi leader had been in a car accident amid the chaos, suffering deep cuts on his face and was about to lose the tip of his finger.

Bashir went to work on Saddam, attaching his finger as the Iraqi leader held his son-in-law's hand.

"Can you avoid bandaging my face?" Saddam asked. He did not want to appear wounded on television.

Bashir, who described the incident in his 2005 book "The Insider," also treated a mysterious blond woman injured in the accident. She would later put him in a precarious position when she asked him for a facelift without seeking Saddam's permission.

As a leading plastic surgeon, Bashir navigated the violent and vain world of Saddam and his family while also treating those maimed from Saddam's wars. By night, he painted as a way to sort out the horrors he witnessed.

"It was a nightmare," Bashir said in a recent telephone interview from Britain where he lives. "At night, I see things through my insight, I see the other side of life."

Bashir, 69, fled Iraq after the American-led invasion in 2003. His oil paintings and sculptures are on display at Corvus Art Center in New Haven and have been exhibited at the United Nations and around the world.

"We're only just beginning to understand the importance of his works," said Tim Hopper, past president of the National Art Materials Trade Association.

Lesley Roy, owner of Corvus, first saw Bashir's paintings in 2005 on a trip to London and began collecting them.

"I feel that I have rescued an extraordinary slice of human history," Roy said. "Ala's personal experiences in life made his work of art all the more precious. His art is about man's struggle for freedom and sacrifice for love of others."

Despite his reputation for brutality, Saddam tolerated Bashir's paintings, which frequently showed the horrors of war. Saddam once pressured Bashir into doing a painting of himself.

"After all, Saddam did not think he was an oppressive ruler nor that Iraqis hated him," said Nada Shabout, an art history associate professor at the University of North Texas and an expert on Middle Eastern art. "Thus, art that expressed suffering and oppression was always about imperial powers and their inhuman policies against Arabs."

Perhaps Saddam didn't see Bashir's "Raven Phone," a 1999 painting depicting severed phone cords that illustrate the people who died for what they said over the phone -- or a painting of a severed head with nine men depicted like animals to symbolize hate and other deadly sins Iraqis have suffered throughout their history at the hands of dictators and foreign powers.

Bashir was also critical of the United States with a painting about a bombing that killed hundreds of children during the first Gulf war in 1991.

Another painting, "Human Cross," depicts a cross bending under the weight of people who have suffered. In a more uplifting piece, he did a sculpture of a brick wall with people fighting to break through to convey the power of the human spirit.

"He did get away with a lot," said Charles Duelfer, a friend who was the weapons inspector for the United Nations. "I find them compelling. They are not Iraqi paintings to me. They are paintings of the human condition."

Bashir first met Saddam in 1983 while accepting an award for his pioneering work as a surgeon. Saddam was impressed with his art, but the feeling was not mutual.

"He was very powerful, but he is not wise," Bashir said. "I look up to power of mind."

Saddam, who was hanged in 2006, summoned Bashir to check on his finger several times, sometimes at one of his palaces, other times at remote houses for security reasons. Bashir worried that Saddam would lose the finger to infection, but his wounds healed.

While Saddam fretted over his finger, thousands of his soldiers were dying in the war. Bashir figures the encounters were a diversion for the Iraqi leader.

"I think he wanted to escape from reality," Bashir said. "He's a very intelligent man. He knows he took the country and the people into a great tragedy."

Bashir also removed corns from Saddam's foot. He often lectured him about wearing tight shoes, but Saddam protested that he had trouble walking in big shoes. (He later went up a size).

While Saddam was often rumored to have a double, Bashir said neither he nor other doctors performed plastic surgery on anyone to make them look like the Iraqi president. He did perform a nose job on Saddam's granddaughter and other relatives, who were worried about their appearance as the rest of the country braced for the American invasion.

"They were divorced from reality," Bashir said.

The blond who wanted the facelift was Saddam's secret second wife, Bashir said. The doctor says he was shocked when Saddam showed up shortly after he finished the job.

"I told him she got some collection of fat on one side or her cheek and it has to be removed," Bashir says.

And then her face was a bit lopsided, so he did the other side.

Saddam nodded. Bashir exhaled.

Bashir said he removed a skin lesion from Saddam's first, official wife, but was horrified when he realized he forgot to give her anesthesia, he wrote in the book.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Why didn't you ask me to stop?"

"If you can put up with Saddam Hussein, you can put up with anything."

Bashir also treated women abused by Saddam's son Uday, including one who had burns from cigarette butts. After Saddam's son was shot while prowling for women, Bashir was among the doctors who performed lifesaving surgery.

Saddam visited his son, but showed little emotion, Bashir said.

"They are wrong and we are right," Saddam told his son, according to Bashir.

Bashir says he has no regrets, noting that doctors cannot choose their patients.

"I think God saved him, to let him suffer from this injury," Bashir said. "He did a lot of bad things."

[Associated Press; By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN]

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