Volume 38, Number 14 · August 15, 1991
Can Saddam Survive?
By Michael Massing
I arrived in Baghdad on the eve of the Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, a four-day holiday in late June. A sort of Muslim equivalent of Christmas, the Eid is a popular time for weddings, and as I walked into the al-Rasheed Hotel, exhausted and grimy after a fourteen-hour, 550-mile overland trip from Amman, Jordan (no planes fly into Iraq these days), I found the lobby full of women elaborately dressed in puffy white gowns and mustachioed men in smartly flaring suits. Some ninety couples would check into the hotel that evening to celebrate their wedding night in style. On the morning after, each husband, following an Iraqi custom, would take the sheet from the wedding bed and present it to his parents as proof of their new daughter-in-law's virtue. Should the mark of rapture be absent, the girl can by rights be put to death. Fortunately, small vials of crimson dye are available if needed, so such extreme action is a rare occurrence in modernday Iraq. Certainly on this night the atmosphere in the lobby was festive as families and friends sang, danced, and ululated in an uninhibited display of joy.
Feature, 8839 words
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