Nagam got a job with the U.S. military after earning their trust by turning in Baath Party officials and Fedayeen attackers. She now makes US$3 a day cooking and cleaning for soldiers she calls her sons. “They are polite, and I see passion in their eyes that I never saw in Saddam Hussein’s guards,” she says. Hers is a disturbing story but a good example of what so many Shiites suffered under Saddam Hussein, so I have included her description in its entirety.

Four years ago, on the 20th day of Ramadan, my brothers, my husband, and my son went to Karbala. They came back and were breaking fast when someone knocked on the door.

The police smashed the door in and were armed with weapons. They told the men to stand up, and they handcuffed them and took them from the house. My sister, my children, and I stayed in the house all night, and the men didn’t reappear. The next night, too.

I asked my sister to go to the police station and ask about them, and she never came back. At the police station they told me that my sister had been sent to Baghdad National Security Center. So I went there, and the guards said my family was being charged with being members of the Dowa Party. I asked why they took my sister. She has done nothing, I said. They said that my sister was taken to the Abu Ghraib prison and tortured to death. I started yelling and swearing. They called a guard and ordered him to take me away. They’re all part of the Dowa Party, he told them.

They took me to a prison—I don’t know where—with my son, handcuffed from behind. It was there that I found out all my family had been killed. My husband, four brothers, four brothers-in-law—and my sister. When they told me the news, I fainted.

In prison, they isolated me from my son. They started torturing me every day and pulled out all my fingernails. They asked whom I knew in the Dowa Party and why I didn’t join the Baath Party.

One day, Uday Hussein came and started questioning me. I told him I’ve never been in the Dowa Party, and I don’t know anything. He told me to walk behind him, and he showed me two trees outside. He ordered the guards to take off my clothes and hang me on one tree. After that he put some oil on my body. It had a strange smell. Then they let the dogs on me. They bit me and attacked me. For three days they did this. Then they took me back to my cell. Before, I used to hear my son’s voice. But now I couldn’t hear him. At first they said they had transferred him. I begged them to tell me the truth, and finally they said they had hanged him. I gave up.

After six months Saddam Hussein ordered all the prisoners free because he was about to go to war (in 1999). After the war I began to work for the mother of Saddam Hussein’s vice president. I didn’t want to do it, but I did. I heard them talk about Americans, but I couldn’t do anything to stop them. They offered me a lot of money to put explosives at the base, but I wouldn’t do it. I refused. If you offered me all of Iraq I would never hurt the Americans. Some suspicious men, Fedayeen, were hanging around the house a lot. They spoke about explosives and killing Americans.

The woman told me she had another friend who also needed help. The same men were hanging around that house. My furniture, which had all been taken, started appearing at both these houses. One day this new woman appeared—wearing my wedding ring.

I started going to the Americans and telling them when the Fedayeen were going to hit Mosul or Baquba’a. I saw the same Fedayeen come to the house for money, so I followed them home in a taxi. I told the Americans, and they went and captured all of them. After three days I reported another Fedayeen visiting a Baath Party house. The Americans went and captured them all. I told them about car bombs, and the Americans went and found the car. Soon they started to trust me, and I began to work with them.

My opinion is that the country is in chaos because of ignorant people who do not know. They complain that the Americans are taking oil. I say, we never benefited from the oil anyway, so what are you talking about? I want Bush to rule Iraq, and I can get as many people as you want to agree with me and support him. Inshallah Bush!

I don’t dream anything for Iraq. I don’t like Iraq, and I want to leave. All I have is sadness from Iraq. I don’t like being Iraqi today. I don’t even have a nationality. They took my food rations, my identity, my family. I wish I were a foreigner.

Some Fedayeen still follow me, but they do not scare me. I am not afraid of death; I have seen worse than death.