Waiting for Antar

Saddam, suicide, and cultural despair

Charles Paul Freund from the March 2004 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

One American monomyth, notable in the context of the Iraq war, was proposed in 1977 by academics Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence. They argued the narrative that most resonates with Americans involves the rescue from evil of a helpless group by a powerful outsider who eventually disappears.

In any event, Antar and other similarly brave heroes have much in common with European figures of chivalry, which shouldn't be surprising: The Arabs of Spain greatly influenced medieval song and story on the other side of the Pyrenees.

The problem is that the myth is both encouraged and exploited by regimes that would never allow it to be fulfilled, and that is a recipe for cultural despair.

Take, for example, Iraq's own case of Gen. Adnan Khairallah, a relative by marriage of Saddam's and a man with a reputation for competence and courage. Khairallah rejected privilege and chose to bear the hardships of his men, and was in turn esteemed by them.

Whether he was a modern Antar is not the point; he seems not to have been a mere posturing thug like Saddam. What happened to Khairallah? He died in a helicopter crash, one that almost everyone believes was arranged by a Saddam jealous of Khairallah's popularity.

There is a glimpse of the region's tragedy, and its despair. The problem is not that Antar cannot again be born; it is not that, once born, he cannot die with honor. Rather, too many of the region's people are invested in celebrating those who wait to kill him.

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