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'The Mosque That Saddam Built'
Emad R. Al-Banna leads worshipers at Friday prayers at the Southern Maryland Islamic Center in the Prince Frederick area of Calvert County.
(Photos By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)
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It turned out that the patient was Hussein's uncle, who visited the area after the Iraqi Embassy recommended Damalouji as a doctor. After Damalouji operated, the grateful man, whose name Al-Banna said he does not remember, arranged for him to travel to Baghdad with a delegation of Iraqi Americans scheduled to meet with Hussein.
Damalouji declined to comment on that trip, saying he didn't want to attract attention to his visit with Hussein. But Al-Banna agreed to recount the story of Damalouji's encounter with Hussein, which he has heard told many times.
"What do you need over there?" Hussein casually asked the Iraqi Americans after they had arrived.
A nun from the Midwest, who was part of the delegation, stood up. "Mr. President, we need a school for our church," she said.
When he asked how much money would be needed, the nun said the project would cost $4.5 million.
"Done," Hussein said before turning to an assistant. "Get them the money right away."
Sensing an opportunity, Damalouji decided to try his luck and settled on a $500,000 request, which Hussein agreed to donate on the spot. When Damalouji returned home, his colleagues joshed him for being outbid by a nun.
"We booed him big time," Al-Banna joked. "We said, 'You dummy, why didn't you ask him for $4 million? We could have had a nice big mosque.' "
But Al-Banna realized quickly that accepting the money from Hussein presented a troubling moral dilemma, particularly given his family's long and tortured history with the tyrant.
Fearing for his safety, Al-Banna fled Iraq in 1963, shortly after Hussein's Baath Party began to rise to power. Al-Banna's father and brother had been jailed, and another sibling had been exiled to Egypt because of the family's opposition to Hussein's policies.
"He was just terrorizing everybody and killing everybody," Al-Banna said.
But Al-Banna, a longtime Republican in the United States, was also greatly influenced by Hussein's loose alliance with the Reagan administration at the time. "Saddam Hussein was a favorite son of America," Al-Banna said. "I thought if President Reagan likes him, he must be okay."
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