On Raghad Hussein; a great Iranian woman; a great Russian woman; a great Spanish soprano; scenes from Halloween; and more
Now and then, Raghad Hussein surfaces in the news. Who she? The eldest of Saddam Hussein’s three daughters. She is a piece of work (and has had a lot of work done). (That is a reference to plastic surgery.) In 2016, there was this report in the Jerusalem Post:
The eldest daughter of Iraq’s infamous former leader Saddam Hussein has praised US President-elect Donald Trump as possessing a “high level of political sensibility” that sets him apart from his predecessors.
(For the full article, go here.)
More recently, she has praised the Hamas attack on Israel — but that is par for the course. You can hear no less on practically any U.S. campus. But here is a bulletin from the Agence France-Presse, dated October 22:
A Baghdad court Sunday sentenced in absentia the exiled daughter of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to seven years in prison for “promoting” her father’s outlawed Baath party.
(The full article is here.)
Where is Raghad exiled? Amman, Jordan, where she lives the high life, and long has.
She first lived in Jordan for six months in 1995 and ’96. She had fled there with her husband, a cousin of her father. Also fleeing were her sister Rana and her husband — brother of Raghad’s husband. It’s a long, complicated, and fascinating story. I tell it in a book called “Children of Monsters.”
In any case, Raghad defected, briefly. She and the others were coaxed home. The two husbands were promptly killed.
Raghad and Rana shared something with Edda Mussolini: Their adored father killed their adored husbands. That is something very few women experience. One can hardly imagine the feelings involved.
Here is an excerpt from Children of Monsters:
Raghad is a rather chic lady, a fashionplate. She looks like her father, especially in the eyes, which flash and glower. She has a penchant for designer shoes and handbags and other luxury items. One of her favorite shops in her adoptive city is Boutique de France. By all reports, she is none too polite with staff. She is still the dictator’s daughter.
Moreover,
she has taken on a political role, emerging as the defender of the Saddam Hussein legacy. She is the keeper of her father’s flame. Indeed, Raghad is called “Little Saddam,” and she has earned the name. . . .
Der Spiegel dubbed her “Terrorpatin,” or “Terror Godmother.” There is no question that Saddam would be proud, and that his daughter would be proud of that pride.
Yes.
(Bad as Raghad is, her late brothers Uday and Qusay take the cake. They were utterly monstrous. Uday startled even his father.)
• Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of those women with nearly superhuman courage and dignity. She is an Iranian human-rights lawyer, often in prison. Last week, she received the Civil Courage Prize, which is given by the Train Foundation in New York. The prize, in the words of the foundation itself, “honors the extraordinary few among us who resolutely pursue freedom for many despite the consequences to themselves.” Recipients “are people who stand between oppressors and the rest of us.”
(Past recipients include Vladimir Kara-Murza, a friend of mine, who is now imprisoned in a maximum-security penal colony in Siberia.)
A press release from the Train Foundation is headed “Nasrin Sotoudeh Beaten and Arrested in Iran Five Days After Receiving Civil Courage Prize.” She was beaten and arrested at the funeral of Armita Garvand, 17 years old, who was apparently murdered by the “morality police” over a head-scarf violation.
Here is some more, from the press release, about Sotoudeh:
She has been frequently imprisoned, including in solitary confinement, since 2010, and in March 2019 she was sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes for several national security-related offenses. In July 2021 she was granted medical furlough, and had, until October 29, 2023, remained at home under conditional release after a 46-day hunger strike led to her severely deteriorating condition . . .
The commitment that some people have to freedom is — remarkable, to say the very least.
• In recent days, I have been thinking about Olga Nazarenko. She lived in Ivanovo, Russia. Amazing woman. She was against the Ukraine war and in favor of peace and freedom — for all. She put a Ukrainian flag on her balcony. She put ribbons on her backpack — ribbons in blue and yellow (the Ukrainian colors).
Police removed the flag and the ribbons, repeatedly. She replaced those items, repeatedly. Stubborn woman. Righteous woman.
At a protest, she held up a sign that said, “All but very bad people want to live in peace.” Underneath that sentence was “God save Ukraine.”
Earlier this year, she told Novaya Gazeta Europe, “I can’t stay silent or I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror.”
What is “Europe” doing at the end of “Novaya Gazeta”? Putin has banned independent media in Russia, of course. The paper has to operate where and how it can. Six correspondents for Novaya Gazeta have been murdered.
Olga Nazarenko has now died. She was 48. She died two weeks after sustaining injuries. She leaves a husband and two children.
“Doctors say the injuries she suffered suggested a severe beating and falling from a great height,” reported Novaya Gazeta Europe. During Soviet times, some of the bravest people on earth were Russian. It’s still true.
• Reading an obit, I thought of Kevin Williamson. Anita A. Summers, an economist, has died at 98. She was the mother of another economist: Lawrence Summers, who became the youngest tenured professor in the history of Harvard. Later, he was Treasury secretary, then president of Harvard.
Have a paragraph from the above-linked obit:
She was unsentimental about vanishing industries, and she encouraged policymakers to focus their energies on new sectors. When the local shipbuilding facility, once a cornerstone of the regional economy, shut down in the early 1990s, she told The Washington Post that “the question to ask is not why the Philadelphia shipyard is closing, but why it took so long.”
A Williamsonian point indeed — and true.
• Robert Brustein, the theater director, theater critic, and theater pretty-much-everything, has died at 96. I would like to quote from his obit:
“The basic aim of the commercial theater is to make a profit,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1990. “The basic aim of noncommercial theater, in its ideal form, is to create the condition whereby works of art can be known. And I don’t think these are compatible aims.”
My immediate thought, on reading that: Much the same can be said on the subject of classical music. “The condition whereby works of art can be known.” That is a wonderful sentence, or partial sentence. A wonderful notion.
A piano trio by Justin Dello Joio, for example, will never be popular. But please: Let it be known.
• Speaking of music — I have a podcast for you, a Music for a While: here.
• More music? Next month — on the 2nd — we will have the centennial of Maria Callas. The centennial of her birth. I have written a piece about Callas for the forthcoming print edition of National Review. But on November 1? We had the centennial of another great soprano: Victoria de los Angeles, the Spaniard.
When I was a youth, I had a “personal moment” with her. I wrote about it, here in Impromptus, in January 2005, on her passing. Allow me to paste the relevant section of that column:
Many years ago, de los Angeles and the pianist Alicia de Larrocha gave a joint recital in my hometown. (De los Angeles and de Larrocha were longtime friends and fellow Barcelonans.) I went to hear only my idol, de Larrocha, caring nothing for singers, thinking them dumb and not really musicians (as most young instrumentalists do). Afterward, I went back to the green room, to shake de Larrocha’s hand. She was standing between two men — managerial types. They were all holding drinks, I remember. I could not get de Larrocha’s attention. I stood there for a while, but — no luck.
I turned to leave, and I heard this voice behind me, beckoning me. The sound I heard was the sound a Mediterranean woman would make if she wanted to stop and call you, but didn’t know your language: “Eh . . .” It was de los Angeles.
She had witnessed the whole scene, between de Larrocha and me. The soprano was seated at a large vanity, whose mirror was outlined by bright round lightbulbs. I went to her. She hugged me and kissed me. (I was young and cute.) I remember that she smelled good; she had been sweating, and her makeup had run a little. She took my program — unasked; I was never an autograph-seeker — and signed her name, her signature being as flowery and beautiful as her name: “Victoria de los Angeles.” Then she patted my head and sent me on my way.
I grew to love her.
I did. And singing. And vocal music.
Shall we have a clip? A track? I loved de los Angeles in many, many songs — none more than in this one, however: “De los álamos vengo, madre,” by Rodrigo.
• I’d like to throw some pictures at you — beginning with the Intrepid. I thought it looked formidable, in early evening the other night:
Those unfamiliar with the Intrepid may wish to consult a Wikipedia entry, here.
• The Romneys got dressed up for Halloween. Pretty neat, I thought.
The Romney Halloween costume this year is Travis Kelce and T Swift: pic.twitter.com/sKb7Z9naGZ
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) October 31, 2023
• Speaking of Halloween: Kids besieged my apartment building. Take a look at the horde, waiting for their candy. Marvelous little beings.
Have a happy weekend, y’all.
If you would like to receive Impromptus by e-mail — links to new columns — write to jnordlinger@nationalreview.com.