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4 Years After Hussein's Fall, Regret in Iraq
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When he passes Firdaus Square these days, he says, he feels a mix of happiness and sorrow. He has no plans to celebrate on Monday.
"It is an ordinary day," he said.
Jubouri, a father of four, said he once serviced classic motorcycles owned by Hussein and his son Uday. They included a British-made 1937 Norton that Hussein rode to flee Iraq in 1959 after he took part in a failed attempt to assassinate the then-prime minister, Gen. Abdul Karim Qassem. Hussein later housed the bike in a museum that proclaimed his glory.
Jubouri bought up Harleys that Iraqi soldiers had stolen in Kuwait after Iraq invaded the neighboring country in August 1990, triggering the first Persian Gulf War.
"I would dismember them and smuggle them out" to Lebanon and Turkey, said Jubouri, wearing a white T-shirt printed with an Iraqi flag and the slogan "King of Harley."
In the mid-1990s, he was jailed for a year and a half for criticizing the government, he said. A few years later, workers began installing Hussein's statue in Firdaus Square, not far from a gym where Jubouri was a member.
"I told myself that my hope in life is to bring that statue down," Jubouri said.
On April 9, 2003, when it was clear that American forces had taken control of the capital and Hussein had fled, he took a sledgehammer from his garage and made his way to the square.
"As I hit the statue, I was out of my mind. I was full of hatred," Jubouri recalled. "When it fell, I was so happy. I thought things were going to improve."
Initially, life did get better. Under Hussein, average Iraqis could not import or export motorcycles. Suddenly, Jubouri could buy them from Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon by calling his suppliers on once-unavailable cellphones. The Syrian border was easier to cross, too, he said.
"I bought Mafia-smuggled motorcycles from Syria," he said. "The borders are so open you can even bring TNT."
Jubouri sold Harleys to American diplomats, and some months earned as much as $5,000, he said. Whenever U.S. soldiers entered Battaween, a rough, industrial neighborhood in central Baghdad known as a hangout for prostitutes and thieves, the Americans would stop at his garage to admire his Harleys, he said.
