I MET SADDAM HUSSEIN

   “Yes, you are right. We Iraqis are fools,” Terek Aziz burst out laughing. “Why? America would not divide us if we were intelligent.”

   “I did not mean that,” I protested. ‘What I am saying is that you may be naïve not to exploit Trump’s troubles.”

   “But what do you expect us to do?”His cube shaped head dropped a few degrees.Trump is well defended.We are just a small country which cannot even protect its oil.”

    “Let me speak to your leader,” I said. “I am in possession of weapons that can help change the balance of power.”

   We were driving in the dust storms of Tikrit that crisp afternoon .The sun was burning hot and it surprised me that the foreign minister was strong enough to withstand it. After all, he was more accustomed to air conditioning .He slammed the brakes in the parking yard of a Hotel.

   “Come,” he offered, “let’s go to the leader you asked for.”

   I followed him into the splash Tangram hotel, a hotel that eats the souls of tourists. His short stature was a disgrace to the image of a true Iraqi. But his journalist background had sharpened his mind, it cut through challenges like razor. Very few people would be happy fighting against him or without him.

   “Afternoon Mr President,” he greeted a man lounging on a sofa away from a table.

   “Hi Terek, long time Ha!”A booming voice replied to his greeting. I had never met the man in person but he was not very far from his pictures that I had seen in the newspapers. The eyes were alert, direct and clear blue like the firing squad. The mouth was a flat coil decorated by a dark moustache. His tall frame rose to walk towards the table. He carried himself with an enviable military bearing.

   “Mr President, may introduce a friend from Zambia?”Terek bowed down almost kissing the floor next to the President’s feet.

   “Stop that Terek!”The military man said helping Terek up. His moustache bristled angrily and his eyes glittered with indecision. “Don’t overdo the respect thing. We are hidden from cameras here and besides I rely on you for solid common sense. You can’t give me that if you are too respectful, can you?”

  “Terribly sorry general,” Terek lifted himself up to sit on a chair. He was a bit more reassured this time. “General, meet Mr Mackay; Zambia’s military intelligence-Tower 64.”

   “I have heard of Tower 64,” the general said. “So effective,kicked out the Americans from Africa. What is your rank in that organisation, young man?”

    “I am humbled general,” I said with a little bow.” “As to my rank, I am the Chairman on  weapons theorizing.”

    “Let’s discuss in the bug-proof section of the hotel,” the general suddenly became security conscious.       “Terek, order some cups of tea. The green tea commonly taken byJaps. No one needs to be crippled by a stroke drinking the sugar one.”

   The general studied me like a professional. “Your nails are soiled. Do you do the farming yourself?”He asked when we remained alone.

  “No. I was fumbling with the controls of one of your scud missiles and forgot to clean up,” I explained as a cup of green tea was thrust into my hands by someone who was so courteous that she felt the table would be too far from my hands. I turned to look. The sight ripped through my black heart like an arrow head.

    The silhouette of a very beautiful Arab woman clouded my eyes as she turned about serving the tea around. She had rubbed her soft hip against my shoulder-it was a warm fleshy hip. The touch generated a dangerous surge of electric current which suddenly made me a man again. I was unable to control things from then on- my glittering eyes and a pair of salivating lips gave me away. The general saw my change of temperament. The beast smiled, twisting the beautiful moustache like the mane of a lion tearing meat off an impala.

   “Salina, this is Mr Mackay,’ he was saying. “He is a very important man to us, understand?”

    Salina nodded; nodding a bit too eagerly .The nod fractionally peeled away her black hijab to reveal a pair of mischievous eyes. A pang ripped through my heart and some butterflies fluttered in my stomach. The eyes were peeping at me with some kind of dark mercy like a cobra fleeing away. Her lips parted slightly in a chest thumping smile. My ventricles were bursting as the heartbeat threw off the controls and shot skywards. As she walked away, her figure protested in wriggles against the black dress, my mind was torn away from this world. I watched her boneless curves the way one watches a movie actress without the fear of being seen.

   “Aha…ha..ha..Hahaaaa!”  The general yanked his mouth open. Very uncharacteristic, he was roaring in laughter with tears flooding his eyes. What is he laughing at? I wondered.

     I did not want to look like a wet blanket so I also joined laughing but the Zambian way-“Ehe..eheeeeehe!”I did not know what was tickling him that much but the way he stole glances at me…did he see the way Salina knocked me down? Was he laughing at me? The thought was uncomfortable, no intolerable.

   Suddenly, he put the cup down and looked at me directly in a business manner. Then he said, “Where is the pile?”

   The pile was a code for videos of the weapons I was selling.

 “The pile is here,” I said defensively. “But Tower-64 wants assurance that you will pay us with oil.”

  “Hey! you can carry the whole town of Basra if you can bypass the American carriers stealing oil from it.The town is floating on a vast expanse of oil.”

 “We will carry the town.Tower-64 doesn’t fear any  American carriers,” I said proudly as his big hairy hands clasped the envelop from my hands. “We sunk too many of them during the Lithuanian crisis. It would be serious deficiency in common sense if they try anything against us again.”

 “I will study this pile and then we meet exactly seven days, understood?”The general dismissed me.

   I was escorted to Dilshad Palace hotel by a tall thin military man who kept on saluting me. My disgust knew no bounds. Why send a man to accompany me? Do I look gay? I want that Salina…the Salina with world conquering curves. That Salina whose lips drip honey. Salina, a woman who forces snakes to peep out of their holes to gaze at her beauty. Why send this saluting pig with a tail dangling in front? But then his next words were unexpected.

   I can’t understand what was happening. Whether the military man was a mind reader or not I can’t tell, but his words threw my mouth agape. “Salina is not available today,” he said with a salute,” but probably next week.”

   I spent the week sightseeing the beautiful Iraqi desert resorts hopping to bump into Salina secretly, but to no avail. .Merely throwing her into my mind created ripples of excitement. My heart was bursting with bubbles of joy seeing off the time fly. The week went.

   I was about to go into the shower when an urgent knock pounded on my door. The huge man standing ahead of a detachment of heavily armed troops dropped a cigar from his big lips and extended a hand.

    “The general is waiting,” he said without introductions .The swells under his red eyes bounced as he talked. I panicked. Could this be a rival gang trying to get weapons at the general’s expense?Where is Terek Aziz?Why send this man with folded cheeks?

  The man was also a mind reader. “Salina! Come out and help the gentleman,” he howled while his eyes kept on studying me.

   My heart literally stopped pumping when the most ‘dangerous woman’ dropped from the huge Benz. She was wearing a grey bhurka and a figure-hugging dress above a pair of loose-fitting trousers. Her smile quickly scared all the dust particles-they settled down into a general calm. The help she was supposed to give me was hard to decipher because she just stood there looking at me.

    “Chemical Ali,” she said finally as she gave the huge man a smart phone.

   “Give it to him,” Chemical Ali said nodding to me. “The general wants to tell him something.”

   “I want the Batoka-22 drones,” the general did not waste time on trivialities. “Hurry. I have to use them soon. We are invading this tiny American whore Israel.”

    The Batoka-22 was a wonder in military technology, courtesy of the Batoka Silicon Valley (BSV). The drones were made to spread a magnetic field over an area which would prevent planes, missiles, bullets and even birds from passing there. They could literally close off an area to the enemy for a long period of time.

  “General,” I hesitated, “that is why I am here, to sell weapons.”

  “I said hurry, same hotel, over tea again…,”the line went dead.

   I walked towards the Benz and was ushered in by Salina. She made sure we sat on the same seat though the whole car was empty. Her heat warmed the whole vehicle. Her perfume caressed my nose with the delicate care only she could give. No need of films-she was more attractive than any Telemundo film ever invented. In the car she threw off her Hijab and God save this world from these women.

  She started flaunting her beauty into my face. Her long nails started the torture. They caressed my heart when the hands sat motionless on her laps. The white teeth flashed in the sunlight like a security light at night. The soft skin around the neck piled up in contours every time she twisted her head…I was still studying her when the damn Benz screeched to a stop outside the Palma Palace Hotel. My tongue remained still the whole trip. It was cut by the knife of fear; fearing what the woman would say in refusal if she was not willing. I was also worried about the general’s laughter-a belly type of roar like a bear.

  Salina led the way into the Hotel and almost immediately swung her hips like a diva on the catwalk. She disappeared, gone god knows where.

  “The tea will be cold…,”Salina broke into our military talk almost with impunity some twenty minutes later.

  “You were saying…,”the general was asking, “the drones fire missiles and cadmium shells?”

  “Yes….,”how did he expect me to talk properly when my mind was rapidly dissolving in the beauty Salina was flaunting a few paces away.

  “Tell me more. What are these cadmium shells?” he was asking while taking a sip of the green tea and pointing at a computer screen on the wall.

   “Aaaaaaaaaaaa,ya cadmium shells yes …,”my eyes stared at Salina with a demeaning urgency. They danced at the slightest movement she made. Equally my mouth struggled into the crisis. Loads and loads of saliva dripped and the tongue flicked in and out like Pavlov’s dog. The general was appalled.

   “Has Salina stolen your balls..You Mr Mackay of the famed Tower-64?”

    “They are shells that can be programmed to destroy chromosome data,” Chemical Ali had walked in uninvited.   

     “What exactly is that hogwash spewing out from your lips, Majid?”

     “Put simply, someone can graft a baboon on Trump so that the two will become one body,” The man’s frog shaped nose quivered excitedly as he remembered some Bio-chemistry.

    “This is a nice weapon, truly nice weapon,” the general was excited like a schoolboy on a first date. “Imagine Trump attending the UN with a baboon grafted on his side.”

   “In this case, not just Trump alone wearing a baboon, but the whole American delegation to the UN,” I said having suddenly found my tongue when Salina left the room. 

   Suddenly two men looking exactly alike entered without knocking. They served themselves with tea and one winced in anger. “Why green tea, Daddy?”

  “Udday, take your brother home,” the general said indulgently. “Your mom will give you the tea you want. I am busy right now with matters of national security.”

    “No Daddy let’s go home..,” the young one grabbed the hand of the father and started dragging him out of the hotel. “Come with us now.”

   “Alright folks, family first,” the general dismissed the meeting. “We meet in seven days again.”

    Three days later, my morning jog was halted brutally by two heavily armed men. They grabbed my hands and frisked me up expertly before tying me to a hang glider. In no time we were airborne headed to Israel.

   “You are a mad man..,” one officer said as we dropped into a military camp outside Dimona. “Playing with such weapons, why?”

   “Our economy is in a shambles my friend,” I said. “We are trying to raise some money to balance the books.”

    “But why sell to ghosts?”The officer asked as he uncoiled a shambok. “You must be a clairvoyant.” The crack of the shambok tore my skin. The pain was horrible. I pleaded for mercy.

     “I am just a businessman. I sell to everyone who is willing to buy,” I wailed between the cracks of the shambok. “I can sell to you if you want them, please spare me.”

    “Where is the Batoka-22 with which you hope to stick baboons on everyone except yourself?”

   “Still in Zambia,” I wailed between clenched teeth. “We can only deliver when money is deposited.”

    The officer turned his nose disdainfully. “That man you were drinking tea with is Saddam Hussein. He died ten years ago.”

    “Don’t tell me I was having tea with a dead person?”The pain of the shambok was replaced with real fear of having eaten with a ghost. My heart started pumping as several scenarios played out. Has he sucked my blood? Has he stolen my s….?

    “Not a dead person, you fool, but a ghost,” the officer cut through my thoughts.

    Just then a detachment of Zambian commandoes surrounded the Dimona camp. They shot all the Israeli troops with cadmium rifles. None of them died but each of them ended up with a small baboon grafted on their side. The baboons were screaming and yelling.