Aid worker diary: Free of Saddam

Fiona Callister, of Cafod, is among a host of aid workers organising relief efforts in the Gulf. It is a task that has brought her into close contact with ordinary Iraqis.

It is hard to equate the open generous hospitality of the Iraqi families that have welcomed me into their homes with the three decades of terror that Iraq has undergone. I had expected to find a people cowed by Saddam's regime, suspicious of strangers and defensive. But everyone I have met has been keen to engage with me and many have welcomed me into their homes.

RELIEF EFFORTS

Fiona is a press officer for the Catholic aid agency, Cafod

She is part of the agency's emergency response team

Feeding ill babies

Waiting game

Into Iraq

Shattered hospital

Human cost

Safety first

Some have stopped me in the street to express their anger at what they perceive as an American occupation of Iraq, but mostly the reception has been overwhelmingly warm.

Eman, a teacher and mother, is the sister of our translator's friend. She had never met any of us but welcomed us in with open arms to her Basra home.

After making polite small talk for a while, she began to tell us about life under Saddam. Even in her own bedroom with her husband, she would not criticise the former dictator for fear that the neighbours would overhear and tell the secret police.

Even when she was talking to us, Eman spoke quietly, forcing us to crane our necks forward. She would not allow me to take notes while we talked and so I have changed her names and details.

I asked her whether she knew of any people who had disappeared under the old regime. "Many, many people," she replied, including one young woman who lived at the end of her street. This medical student was a Shia Muslim and so wore a large black headscarf that also covered her shoulders.

Shia women now wear veils without fear

While Shia Muslims are the majority population within Iraq, they were discriminated against by Saddam - a Sunni Muslim.

The tutors at her medical school told her to exchange her head-covering for one in the Sunni Muslim style, which ties tightly to the head. When she refused, the tutors marked her card as an "Islamist", she was taken to prison and hanged.

How people survived living day in and day out with such deep-rooted fear, I have no idea.

Everyone has their own individual joys about the fall of Saddam, whether it is the freedom to openly worship as a Shia Muslim, or the relief of a mother that her son no longer has to join the army.

One old woman living in the nearby town of Az Zubayr struck a lighter note, unable to contain her joy at the downfall of Saddam.

Water supply was a problem under Saddam too

Her delight came from the fact that a couple of days earlier electricity and water supplies became available around the clock for the first time ever.

"Saddam often appeared on television, telling us that we had constant electricity and water but we knew he was lying because it was only on for seven hours a day," she said.

"Now I can keep food in the refrigerator without it going off".

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