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In the year 2000, he publishes his first novel, Sabiba and the king, supposedly the author wishes to remain anonymous, but if so, his identity is the country's worst-kept secret. It's published by the ministerial firm formation, and everyone knew about it, and the next day it became a best seller in Iraq. And the worst part of it, it became a textbook for all party members in their cell meetings to be read and discussed. I mean, I always wish someone would do this from my books, that that it would be, you know, mandatory reading for everyone.

So here's this book called Sabiba and the king and it was a kind of like romance novel. It's a love story. It's set in the past in the early years of Islam and there's like a pagan king and I think he goes out writing one day and he sees this beautiful woman Sabiba. When we imagine Saddam Hussein's method of coasting wasn't very elegant. I mean, who knows, but like in in the book, he just falls in love with his woman and then he starts having sort of long conversations about state craft and religion with her and she starts to kind of change his mind about things. You know, there's profound loneliness and I think the loneliness of this king who's like isolated, he's got nobody to talk to and the only person he can really communicate with this is this young woman. And night after night he goes to talk to her. If you want to know what it's like to be a dictator with the power of life and death, but who's also terrified of being assassinated, and he's like looking around and garnering position at any moment. I think Sabiba and the king gives you a reasonable sense of what was going through Saddam's mind when he felt sort of besieged and alone.

You did not need a detective to figure out who was talking about himself, he tells you. So many stories that you can really understand how he felt about himself, about his relationship with his mother, about his connection to the land. He used the material from his own life, but then he changed it as a writer does, and so, you know, in that sense, it's like a proper novel, maybe not a great novel, but he created the novel the same way all novelists do. It's not a good book, but it's the real book.

As he had gotten older he began to fancy himself as a writer and an artist I guess you know according to a number of these senior Iraqi officials he you know in his later years of rule in the country he would disappear for days at a time and kind of lose himself in his writing you know he appeared more focused in some cases on this writing than he did on ruling.