Saddam Hussein's Former Doctor Paints a Different Picture

NEW HAVEN, Conn., April 28, 2006 — -- Saddam Hussein's former doctor hasn't practiced in years, but his talents still draw crowds.

Ala Bashir, a trained plastic surgeon now living in Britain, slinked around the Corvus Art Center in New Haven, Conn., for a retrospective of his work. More than 100 paintings, etchings and sculptures graced the gallery with price tags ranging from $1,000 to six figures.

Bashir wields paintbrushes as deftly as he handled scalpels, and he considers painting his new mission in life. A mission, he says, that includes bearing witness to the atrocities he observed as Saddam's trusted physician for 20 years.

"Everything in my work is an echo of events I have seen," Bashir said, describing his latest collection of paintings, entitled "Mask," as human beings' unmistakable need to hide their true selves coupled with their desire for love.

The colorful surrealist series with hints of Cubism portrays different characters hiding behind face masks.

"I discovered that the most dangerous mask is the one worn by intelligent people because they are clever at their disguise," he said. Bashir asserts that everyone wears a mask at one time or another to avoid revealing one's real intentions.

The balding 66-year-old says that his experiences inspire him to focus on life's ugliness.

"I show the consequences of hate," he said, standing in front of a painting depicting a woman with a gash in her chest and a raven picking at her eyeball.

As the Iraqi dictator's personal doctor from 1983 to 2003, Bashir became privy to countless episodes of brutality, corruption and ruthlessness.

"Saddam governed through a construct of hate," Bashir said, explaining that he rose to prominence in his native country during the Iraq-Iran war in the '80s when he performed thousands of plastic-surgery operations on wounded soldiers.

"Power corrupts people," Bashir said, referring to his boss and other 20th-century dictators. "I think anybody who misuses power has to be put on trial and judged and punished according to the law."

Bashir, the first doctor in the Middle East to have mastered hand re-implantation, caught Saddam's attention after the dictator discovered that the doctor had also painted the art he greatly admired.

Bashir joined the presidential medical corps, and continued painting and sculpting. He was at the mercy of Saddam around the clock and because of the despot's paranoia and distrust, Bashir lost all sense of freedom -- phones were bugged and he was followed everywhere.