Everything Reminds Me of Him (Saddam Hussein Hiding Spot)

By Ogenna Oraedu | Photo by Tara Mullaney

Ha ha. Very funny. You think it’s easy seeing your lover everywhere you go after they’ve been gone for nearly two decades? Every crevice. Every time someone lies down. Everything reminds me of Saddam Hussein hiding spot. 

And to all you liberals who think I’m romanticizing the actual Saddam Hussein, you’re surely mistaken. I am an American, and I do not condone terrorism! But there is something so sensual about the skinny little hole. The wind from the fan blowing atop your hair, getting it all wild. It’s such a tight fit, and you have to slip into it just right, making sure you’re positioned in a specific spot to just-

Sorry. Got a little carried away there, but you catch my drift. Saddam Hussein hiding spot is a feeling, a principle even. I think about it day and night. When I’m making breakfast, and some pancake batter dribbles on the countertop in a shape identical to the hideaway. A soap splatter in the shower. A puddle on the sidewalk. A fallen scarf.

I try to control my urges. I try to remind myself that it’s literally a spiderhole near a farmhouse in the village of Ad Dawr, close to Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, Iraq. That Hussein hid there, evading the United States government for 235 days in 2003. That the hole was six to eight feet deep. That it housed literally Saddam Hussein. 

Now it’s like everyone is laughing at me. “Oh haha, this is kinda giving Saddam Hussein hiding spot.” But they just don’t get it.  I dream of crawling in there and hiding from the world. 

Something like this maybe…