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Iraqi prostitute revels in freedom to ply trade
Saddam
jailed, executed streetwalkers
May 3, 2003
By Mitch Potter
Baghdad — With a long black abiya gown stretching shapelessly down to her
ankles, there is little to suggest Nasreem Sothba walks the streets in search
of men.
But when glances linger a fraction longer than usual, Sothba, 22, does
something that hasn't been seen in the Iraqi capital in years. She hikes the
gown to just below the knee, flashing bright floral leggings and the tiniest
glimpse of calf.
Smiling through lips painted pale pink, Sothba's subtle message is clear now:
Sex for hire.
The world's oldest profession is hardly unknown in the lands that gave rise to
the world's earliest civilization. But in the latter years of Baathist rule,
Iraqi prostitutes were subject to pogroms ordered by Saddam Hussein.
The trade continued behind closed doors, but streetwalkers faced prison or
worse.
Now, Sothba and others like her are stepping back into the lawless streets of
Baghdad, where the dangers of sporadic gunfire remain constant.
"I am happier now, to have this freedom. This is not a job I want to do
forever, but until I can get something else I have no choice. We need the
money," said Sothba under the watchful eye of her aunt, who declined to give
her name.
Part chaperone, part pimp, Sothba's aunt has been using her apartment in the
poverty-ravaged Saddam City neighbourhood as a one-woman brothel for the past
three years, secretly summoning Nasreem each time a client calls for service.
The need for secrecy was twofold; to protect themselves from the government,
and also from Sothba's husband, who remains unaware of her part-time work.
Sothba said the fact that she is married is precisely the reason she — as
opposed to one of her four unmarried sisters — chose a life of prostitution to
keep money coming in to the impoverished family.
She is not a virgin, the others are. In the eyes of Islam, she said, only she
was able to do it.
"My husband still does not know what I am doing," she said. "So when I leave
the house, I tell him I'm just going over to visit my aunt. And until now, that
was what I did — to be with customers. But now, I am free to go outside."
Prostitution flourished in Iraq in the 1990s as U.N. sanctions, imposed after
Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990, brought economic hardship, forcing many
women to offer their bodies for cash.
Government officials in BMWs and Mercedes, with pistols strapped to their
waists, used to come to see Um Jenan and about 30 other prostitutes in a drab
"Saddam Complex" of sand-coloured apartment blocks where they lived.
But it was a risky business: In her 40s, Um Jenan used to wear gold jewelry,
tight jeans and see-through blouses to attract VIP clients to her apartment in
Baghdad — until the masked men in black packed her into a minibus, drove away
and decapitated her in 1999.
When they laid out her body in front of her home the next day, Reuters reports,
she was dressed in loose-fitting sweat pants and a T-shirt. A banner on the
wall above said "God is greatest!"
Beside her lay her severed head.
Baghdad residents say such gruesome punishments were meted out on prostitutes
across the capital that year in a sudden crackdown on an illegal trade that had
been tacitly tolerated by Saddam's secular government.
Media restrictions meant Iraqis heard about the executions only by word of
mouth, and estimates vary on how many people were killed — from dozens to
hundreds.
Still, most agree on the cause of the crackdown: Foreign pornographic videos of
Iraqi prostitutes wrapped in the black, white and red national flag and,
according to many versions, dancing on top of a portrait of Saddam.
The insult sparked the attacks by Saddam's Fedayeen loyalist militia on
prostitutes, pimps and particularly anyone who was suspected of selling girls
abroad.
While Baghdad's prostitutes no longer fear attacks from the Fedayeen, the city
is fraught with new dangers.
Sothba's aunt said she will continue accompanying her niece on the stroll, to
handle the transactions — 10,000 Iraqi dinars ($7) is the going rate — and to
ensure her safety.
But both hope for the emergence of larger brothels — they say no such venue yet
exists — as a more secure place to be in the future.
Iraqi men have a single derogatory term for women in Sothba's line of work —
bitch. Much may change in this unreconstructed patriarchy in the months and
years to come, but Sothba doubts such attitudes will alter significantly.
"For now, I do this so my family will stay alive. But to do so freely is
actually an improvement over what it was like before," Sothba said.
"Two years ago the police caught one of my friends with a man. They took her to
prison and she was executed by sword," she said. "She was just 20 years old.
"I believe our lives will get better. But for now, at least I do not have to
worry about this happening to me."
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Iran:
Girls in black
6-8-2002
Over
70 prostitutes arrested in Iran
5-4-2003
Abducted,
beaten and sold into prostitution: two women's
story from an Iraq in turmoil
7-25-2004
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