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By Charles A. Radin
Globe Staff
Boston Globe Online
http://www.boston.com/
May 16, 2003

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BAGHDAD -- Iraqi families know the best place for seriously ill children is Saddam Pediatric Hospital. When they dream of travel, they think of Saddam International Airport. When they're hungry, they cannot buy so much as a kebab without looking at a picture of the ousted President Saddam Hussein.

Hussein even coined a new word, ''Saddamia,'' to describe towns and neighborhoods he created, and he had his name baked into the bricks of the projects he ordered, from his monumental presidential palaces to the restored gates of ancient Babylon.

Hussein may be gone now, although many here doubt that. Even if he is never heard from again, it will take years, possibly decades, before the gigantic personal imprint he stamped on this society can be effaced.

''The whole of Iraq is called Saddam,'' said Tharwat Muttar, 26, a surgical nurse who waited for a taxi at the gates of the pediatric hospital. ''I live in Hai Saddam. In every place, there is something called Saddam.''

The day the dictator's statue was pulled down in Firdous Square, the staff ripped down the Saddam Pediatric Hospital sign and began calling the facility al-Iskan Hospital, after the section of Baghdad in which it is located. But the patients who bring children here from all over Iraq ''don't know this,'' she said. ''They call it Saddam.''

Millions of the Hussein pictures that the regime inserted into every nook and cranny of life here already have been defaced, literally, but his mark is deeply engraved.

The huge wads of 250 dinar notes that Iraqis carry bear his image. The bills sometimes are called ''saddams'' when Iraqis deal with Chechen pilgrims, Russian traders, and other foreigners who have difficulty coping with the devalued currency and find it easier to value goods at, say, 20 saddams rather than 5,000 dinars.

The fact that no one knows where Hussein is makes some Iraqis reluctant to go too far or too fast with de-Saddamization. Many people believe he will attempt a comeback. Those who remember him fondly and preserve his image may not be a majority, but they also are not hard to find.

''Why did you do this to Saddam?'' Nurman Mohammed Nawar, 37, owner of Zarzoor Famous Kebab Restaurant in the upscale Mansur neighborhood of western Baghdad, said to an American visitor. ''I love this man. I like his manliness, I like his courage.''

He admired Hussein's iron fist, saying, ''It wasn't Saddam, it was those dogs who worked for him who executed innocent people.''

Many Iraqis say otherwise, and they have trashed pictures and symbols of Hussein in public places around the neighborhood. But in Nawar's popular kebaberie, a vase decorated with a full-color image of a grinning Hussein remains next to the owner's chair at the cash register. Sometimes, Nawar gives it a kiss.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Hussein lived in Souk Hammada, the neighborhood was a crowded, poverty-stricken slum. In 1991, after the foundations of its tumbledown old houses were damaged in what residents call ''the war of Bush the father,'' Hussein had it evacuated and completely rebuilt.

Now the area is known as Saddamia al-Kerkh, an attractive lower middle-class neighborhood of broad, straight streets and modern homes in a prime location on the banks of the Tigris River in central Baghdad. Unlike most other communities, where the mandatory tiled portrait of Hussein at the entrance has been hacked to bits or shot and hammered beyond repair, here it has been covered with a single neat coat of gray paint that could be quickly and easily removed if, as residents hope, there is a Saddam Hussein again in their future.

''The majority in this neighborhood loves Saddam Hussein,'' said Abbas Ibrahim, 21, a student of Hebrew at Baghdad University. ''They wish he would come back. He didn't commit any injustice.''

A group of 30 residents of all ages who gathered to listen to Ibrahim enthusiastically agreed.

The Kurds of northern Iraq and the Shi'ite Muslims of the south, who were persecuted relentlessly by Hussein, would strongly oppose any attempt to bring back his regime or one like it. But in central areas of the country and in the capital, feelings are much more mixed.

''With Iraq gone, there will never be Arab unity,'' Ibrahim said. ''The only one who hit Israel was Saddam Hussein, and that made us love him more.''

But great social forces are working against the remnants of Hussein's supporters and monuments. The Kurds and the Shi'ites are more influential in the capital than ever, and the determination of many citizens to wipe out Hussein's power seems convincing.

One such citizen is Hadia Mohammed Kidaier, 50, headmistress of al-Wihda al-Arabia, a primary school for girls in the Karada neighborhood of southern Baghdad.

Few institutions were more saturated with Hussein's personality cult than Iraq's schools were. Students stood to sing choruses of ''Long live the leader Saddam Hussein'' when their teachers entered the classroom, then sang ''Long live the Ba'ath Party'' when they sat down. The president and his party were part of every morning's assembly. Photos of Hussein hung in every hall and classroom.

Kidaier went to her school on the day Baghdad fell to coalition forces and took the framed portrait of Hussein from the wall behind her desk. She had her 18 teachers do the same. Without giving orders, she encouraged everyne to say ''Salaam aleikum'' -- Arabic for ''may peace be upon you'' -- instead of the references to president and party when the teachers entered class.

Most profoundly, perhaps, she asked the students to rip out the photos of Hussein in every textbook. ''The teachers couldn't go through all the books; it would take too much time,'' she said. ''But we don't need all these pictures.''

Morning assembly now is devoted to reassuring the students that everything will be all right. Kidaier says she tells her charges -- 350 girls on Wednesday, an enrollment that is increasing daily toward the full enrollment of 479 -- that ''we have been through a war, a war that was necessary to change this bad regime that destroyed our country for 35 years.''

She is not unconcerned about the possibility Hussein might try to come back, because she sees in the continuing gunfire and lawlessness on city streets an effort by ''followers of the ex-regime . . . to spread terror and disorder so they can say, `Look, it would have been better with Saddam.' ''

Feelings about Hussein, among children and adults, are complex. Standing in front of Kidaier's desk, her 4-year-old grandson, Mohammed, suggests to a visitor, ''Let's tear the picture of Father Saddam.'' Why does he want to tear the photo of the man he calls father? ''Because,'' Mohammed says immediately, ''we don't love him.''

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