Three years into construction, Abbas Salihy Rajab’s dream house was nearly finished when Saddam Hussein’s secret police came calling.
“We are taking this land,” Rajab, 49, remembers them saying.
Not until 14 years later, after Hussein and his regime fell last month, did Rajab and his family again set foot on the property–once a haven for the Iraqi dictator during wartime.
Rajab is among thousands of Iraqis who have returned to homes that were seized by Hussein’s government for his Baath Party, cronies, relatives and personal whims.
The reclamations, happening daily across the capital, promise to be a major headache for the new government.
Along with getting services working and ministries running, sorting out property rights figures high on the agenda of many Iraqis.
Already, several fistfights, shootings and arguments have occurred as Iraqis attempt to evict people living in their former homes.
Police, lacking authority and guns, are unable to resolve the disputes. U.S. soldiers patrolling neighborhoods are reluctant to get involved unless someone’s safety is threatened.
Mountains of official Iraqi paperwork relating to property were stolen and burned as American troops entered Baghdad in mid-April. Courts are functioning, but haphazardly, and are concentrating mostly on larceny cases.
“We have to wait until there is a system to hear our cases,” said law student Omer Jammel Mansur.
Mansur recently returned from eastern Iraq to his family’s house, which was seized 23 years ago for a neighborhood Baath headquarters.
His family was part of a pre-Iran-Iraq war purge of Iraqis with Iranian roots.
For years, Mansur drove past his house whenever in Baghdad, never daring to stop for a look inside. He never dreamed that Hussein would fall one day.
The return to his three-story house with a large garden and huge palm trees was a defining moment in his life.
“I will never give up my home again without a fight,” he said.
Mansur keeps a gun close at hand and a guard dog on a leash to ward off intruders. He doesn’t dare leave the house for even a few minutes for fear that someone else might claim it.
Throughout Baghdad, thousands of squatters have moved into vacant houses and government buildings.
They are complicating efforts by the rightful owners.
Deeds by graffiti
“The land went back to its legal owner,” reads the graffiti scrawled on many properties.
One such message is outside an ornate mansion in a pricey neighborhood where one of Hussein’s daughters lived. The man who answered a knock at the gate said he was house-sitting for the landlords, who rarely appear.
At a nearby complex once used by privileged Iraqis as a hunting lodge, graffiti again advertises a family homecoming.
“Someone just wrote it, we don’t know who,” a squatter said, adding that 10 families live there now illegally. “We assume this belongs to the people.”
Legitimate owners, returning from as far away as London and as close as the next block, have in recent weeks come clutching worn deeds they saved for more than 30 years.
Sadly, they have often found their houses stripped by looters of even the doors, electrical outlets and garden roses.
“I don’t mind, because what they took was not ours,” said Rajab, whose house is on the outskirts of Baghdad.
In 1989, as Iraq was preparing to invade Kuwait, Hussein’s agents scouted out Rajab’s property for what later turned out to be a presidential hideout during the war.
Rajab had gained title to the land because his family began farming it in the 1950s and earned ownership under Iraqi law on the basis of longevity. His title was issued in 1964. It took him years to save enough money and materials for his family to build a house by hand.
After Rajab was expelled, Hussein’s men quickly built a two-story mud wall around the property. Rajab went to live in a far-off village in a hovel too small for his family.
Several times over the years, he banged on the gate of his former property and asked to see Hussein.
Meanwhile, expensive black sedans, a hallmark of the Iraqi leader’s bodyguards, were often seen streaming in and out of the property.
In 1997, Rajab discovered why Hussein kept the land.
Standing in the yard, Hussein announced on Iraqi television that he hid on the property for 45 days during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
He called it “House of Faith” and announced he would build “the mother of all mosques” to commemorate his survival.
“That’s my house,” Rajab said to his son whenever television stations showed reruns of that event.
Prayers answered
After the ornate mosque opened in 2001, Rajab often prayed that God would return his house to him.
When Hussein was toppled, Rajab returned and found barbecue pits, a crude bunker and a huge metal door for Hussein to use to enter the mosque grounds.
U.S. soldiers recently came banging on the gates.
They were looking for weapons and any evidence of secret tunnels.
At first, the Rajab family thought they had come to seize the house.
“They can take the house,” Oday Abbas Salih, Rajab’s son, said as the soldiers questioned him. “We are used to this kind of force.”
