The prisoner of Tikrit

Finally, the man has erased his own myth. He has lost his life although it hasn't been yet taken from him. He is dead alive, the ghost of his own undoing, reduced from sublime to ridicule by popping out of a spider hole like a gopher. He looked disoriented after the arrest, moving his head from side to side to cooperate with the US Army medic who examined him. His mouth glowed in the light of the torch, looking like a lit-up pumpkin on the Halloween night. There was something eerie about the whole thing. It marked the horror of a conceited life.

What do we make of Saddam Hussein now? He will be dragged from trial to trial, and might get death sentence by hanging or firing squad. His captors have given him a haircut and shaved his beard to showcase the man in his utmost likeness. He once bragged that he was never going to be caught alive. But seldom did he know that fate was going to be more ruthless than a dictator, that he was going to be captured without even firing a shot.

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There is also a moral lesson to what has happened to Saddam: one must eventually run out of luck. Here is a man who rose through the ranks to become the most powerful man in his country -- an orphan, raised by his uncle, who grew up to lead the nation. It worked for him like magic. People turned to him, obeyed him, and worshipped him, until his ambition turned him into a monster. Then he lost everything, his power, his country, his sons and now his freedom. But worst of all is the loss of dignity. That's the ultimate dismantling of a dictator, his pride swallowed every time he opened his mouth or moved his head at the disposal of his captors.

So the disheveled, dusty Saddam who came out of his hideout isn't the same Saddam who went into hiding after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Many of his supporters wished he hadn't showed up like that, that he should have taken his own life instead. The members of the Iraqi Governing Council, who went to see him after the arrest, said that Saddam wanted to take his own life when the U.S. troops raided on him. What stopped him we don't know. We don't know if the man, who called on others to lay down their lives, lost courage to pull the trigger on himself.

But he lived to remain the wreckage of an enigma. Why did it happen? Why did he become a ruthless ruler, who killed and persecuted his own people and bullied his neighbours? Why did he create the illusion of nuclear and chemical weapons, the WMDs, which he never possessed? He could still remain the ruler of Iraq if he hadn't been so reckless in his behaviour with the United States. He could still live in his palaces, his sons still alive, his wives, daughters and grandchildren still living together with him. Why did he risk everything? What was on his mind?

It doesn't make sense at all. May be he had a grand plan, which he failed to execute because his comrades betrayed him. It's so terrible to think that a formidable despot couldn't assess his situation, that he couldn't make sure people around him were on board before he took a momentous risk.

Adolf Hitler had fared far better on this score. He had gathered those like himself, unappeased outsiders, misfits, and losers. Joseph Goebbels was an unsuccessful novelist and playwright. Julius Streicher was a blackmailer. Ernst Röhm was a sadistic homosexual, who advocated violence and murder. Herman Göring was an air-force veteran without conscience. But all of them stayed with Hitler to the end.

Why didn't people stick to Saddam to the end? His top brass fell in the American hands, one by one, his family scattered and his friends vanished. How does he feel about the whole thing, weaned from power, honour and everything? He must be feeling awfully lonely, the dreary void of despair, which he absorbed in the amniotic depth of his mother's womb. His mother tried to commit suicide while she was pregnant with him. There are two accounts of this story. Saddam's father Hussein Al-Majeed divorced his wife before his birth, according to one account. But Saddam always maintained that his father had died before he was born. He seldom talked about his father, and adopted the last name from his mother's side.

By Saddam Hussein's lights, there was much to avenge. His mother got married for three more times and her fourth husband was a farmer, who was brutal to his stepson. He used to send Saddam on assignments to steal chicken and lambs from other farmers, and punished him physically if he failed.

Childhood abuses somehow work into the adult life and create an urge to assail upon the cruel world as personal grievances get blown to national proportions. An Australian civil servant named Alois Schicklgruber was born illegitimate and refused to acknowledge his origin before he was 39. In the complex psychosis of his anguish, he placed his faith in the whip to discipline the sixth of his eight children. The child under lashes, lashed out when he grew up. In his turn, Adolf Hitler took his grievances to rest of the world.

Saddam Hussein would grow up, racked by his need for recognition and the appetite for vengeance. According to Iraqi political sources, he forged his birth date to identify it with the birth date of Prophet Mohammad. A late-starter who finished high school at the age of 20, Saddam would be attracted to the name Baath, which meant " the new life after death" and joined the party.

That new life ended last week, when a bearded Saddam, with matted hairs, looked lost and resigned, too tired to die again for a new life. May be that is why he gave himself up instead of fighting back from his hellhole hideout. In his mind, Saddam Hussain may have closed the circle and reconciled with destiny. He may have given up on renewal of life and prepared for final death.

People who believed in Saddam would have liked him to die instead of being taken a prisoner. For years to come, the images of a captured Saddam will flash in their minds and sadden them. There is no sight like the sight of a detained dictator, because the irony of life is so obvious in it!

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.