Palace Wildlife, Part II

The Palace complex features a dozen or more interconnected lakes, canals and other waterways. Half the water in Iraq must be here. The largest of the lakes, however, is the one that surrounds the Al Faw Palace. Big enough to go water skiing on, it must have been some recreation spot back in the day.

Saddam Hussein's cronys who built this place also stocked the lake with a unique breed of very large, very aggressive fish. Specially bred, I'm told, they're called "Saddam Bass" though they appear to most off us to be some kind of carp. They range in size from the young about the size of your hand to monster adults the size of a human's leg. The larger ones are surprisingly large.


When you come to a particular spot along the bridge, the bass come running. That's because every day, around breakfast, lunch and dinner, the Americans come. Like Pavlovian dogs, the bass know what that means. I don't know if fish salivate. Maybe they blow bubbles instead. Either way, these fish are clearly excited.

A few of my friends - two contractors and an Air Force gal - feeding the Saddam Bass. Passers-by bring a variety of food for the fish - mostly cereal and bread. Like the geese of the Al Faw palace, the Saddam bass will eat just about anything.

The fish slowly circle, eyeing their benefactors on the bridge above. Occasionally, they poke their heads above the water and make a gasping sound, as if pleading for the succulent morsels of waffle bits, Corn Pops and Count Chocula. As excited as they become, you would think it nothing short of ambrosia that awaited them.


The food is thrown into the abyss and for a brief moment there is a tense, suspended air about the lake. Within a second, however, the still waters of the lake are transformed:

Leaping, darting, thrashing and biting, the Saddam bass tear into the precious few drops of food. The scions of a dictator's hubris, they are remoresless, brutal and violent. Breaching from the waters over the backs of slower fish, or shoving their way through the crowd like a grandma on a shopping spree, the fish zero in on the food.


The frenzy reaches its climax and the thrashing of the water is loud and constant. A lone goldfish - a foot long and sluggish - is swamped by the more aggressive Saddam bass, who push him, struggling, to the bottom, like the fat kid with glasses who perpetually receives the tormenting blows of a bully. The scene is so primitive, so viscerally brutal that first-time viewers are taken aback and stunned by the suddenness by which the placid lake is transformed into a scene from a horror movie. Pirannahs, one would think, might go hungry here.

Indeed, the very nature of Saddam's rule makes one wonder just what exactly these fish were eating before the Americans arrived. Did Saddam - whose favorite movie, by the way, was "The Godfather" perhaps feed these fish himself? Seeing the brutal carnage, one can imagine Saddam standing over a trembling, terrified minion who had displeased him. One imagines Saddam holding out a cigar cutter and asking for the man to stick out his fingers.

Haunting, disturbing perhaps, but that's the image that one of my friends called up upon seeing the Saddam bass for the first time. We laughed at the picture, but then the more we thought about it, it really didn't seem that improbable.

Either way, these fish are one of the most unusual and entertaining things in this dismal, dust-filled oven known as Baghdad. And as this diversion runs its course, we turn our backs on this acquatic "Lord of the Flies" and go back to work.