In bed with Fidel, Osama, Saddam and Kim...<

Ava Gardner slaps her rival to Castro

On February 27, 1959, Marita Lorenz had the opportunity to get to know the leader of Cuba much more intimately than her mother suspected. So on the spree on the deck of the MS Berlin, the 19-year-old girl showed a boldness that was hitherto unknown to her. “I dragged him between the lifeboats, under the pretext of contemplating the magnificent alignment of the buildings of Havana [... ]. We hugged, he took my face in his hands then said to me: “Te quiero, mi cielo.”

Before loosening the embrace, he took care to write down the phone number of his apartment on 87th Street in New York, and had ten tubs of coconut ice cream delivered to her. He completed the dream with a formula as suave as collected: "You will be the queen of Cuba." It was more than enough. In less than two weeks, Fidel sends his plane to New York. "I was puzzled: why had he chosen me, he who could have all the women at his feet?"

At Havana airport, 20 men in uniform are waiting to take her to the now famous room 2406 of the Hilton. Marita Lorenz is greeted in the presidential suite invaded by a thick fog of cigar smoke. Letters, papers and discs lie on the ground. It is especially small armored cars for children abandoned here and there that surprise her. She soon learns the reason: "Fidel has always remained a big kid, he likes to play with model cars or tanks." Electrified by the atmosphere, Marita waited for more than an hour for Fidel to deign to join her (...). Finally arriving, he draws the curtains, takes her hand and puts on a disc of romantic music. (...) The melody is not interrupted until five hours later, when Raúl knocks violently on the door, judging that his brother seriously lacking in state affairs. "Don't come out of this room, wait for me here. I love you”, he slips before extricating himself. The day passes, however, without his coming back.

The next day, after getting a makeover, there she is, still waiting indefinitely. Fidel, always taking advantage of the enthusiasm he provokes on the fairer sex, entrusted him with the role of private secretary. The long hours of waiting turn into selective sorting of her correspondence, not without irritation on reading letters from overly enthusiastic women.(...) One day, Marita intercepts the letter from a certain Miss Gardner, a Hollywood actress from its state. The beautiful Ava had moved to Cuba shortly after the revolution, putting her suitcases on the second floor of the Hotel Nacional.

In this spring of 1959, a meeting was organized at the Hilton and Fidel showed himself to be more than charming. He made the American go around his headquarters before installing him on the balcony to enjoy a few cocktails in his company. Ava is seduced: “She spoke emphatically about him on his return,” confides her friend Betty Sicre. "She was very impressed with him and said he was full of good ideas." Marita can't bear that this “woman of a certain age” becomes infatuated with Fidel. One morning, walking down to the hotel lobby, she comes across a visibly drunken apparition who presses all the elevator buttons. The sequel is epic: "She staggered up to me and said, 'So you're the female dog who's with Fidel and keeps him just for her?' And then slap me in the face!”

Bin Laden to his wife Najwa: “Stop thinking!”

Alone in the midst of her four boys, Najwa is sorely lacking in entertainment. One day noticing that their youngest child's blond hair is growing, she sees in these golden hairs the opportunity to satisfy her desire as a little girl. "Without thinking any further, I started braiding his hair and trying out different fancy hairstyles on him, like my husband's ponytail pigtails." The worm is in the fruit and soon the symptoms get worse. "That's how I found myself designing and sewing little girl dresses using Omar as a model for the fittings."

Osama bin Laden in 1998. Photo credits: Sygma/© Mike Stewart/Sygma/Corbis

Soon she no longer has the heart to make him leave these adorable outfits. Najwa has completely sunk. "It didn't take long for me to make her a whole girl's wardrobe." She justifies her addiction by saying to herself that he is only a baby and therefore will not remember anything. Everything will be fine until Osama gets wind of it. But after another month in Pakistan, the Peshawar warrior returns home unexpectedly. Omar enters the room, trotting towards his father, long plaited hair and a little girl's dress. "My stomach was in knots as my eyes were on my husband to see what he was going to say or do." Cautious, Osama squats down next to his son and runs his fingers over his dress and then into his capillary fantasies. Hesitantly, he looks at Omar, then his wife, again his son, then Najwa. Appreciating the seamstress talents of his wife, his reaction is most unexpected. "His long fingers flattered our son's cute dress, then he quietly announced, 'Omar, you're wearing a girl's dress, you're a boy.' He lightly brushed Omar's hair with his hand: “You have a girl's hairstyle, you're a boy.” The seconds pass like hours in the heart of the one who had never displeased her husband until then. . “Actually, I was the most submissive woman ever,” she admits, ready to accept the punishment. But far from raising his voice, Bin Laden understands the psychological fragility in which his repeated absences plunge his wife. In an even softer voice than usual, he tries to bring her back to reality: “Najwa, Omar is a boy. put him in boyish clothes and cut his long hair.” Fear served as a lesson to her, she will hold on now.

At least, while he's home. Because as soon as he left for Pakistan, the detox turns out to be harder than expected and Najwa has a relapse. The clothing rebellion resumes. "My husband came home unexpectedly and caught me admiring a little pink dress on Omar, whose hair was falling in curls." Osama is silent, his eyes become menacing. “This time it would be in my interest not to tempt fate again,” she judges wisely. The little dresses are stored in a trunk awaiting the birth of a daughter.(...) Boredom gives way to anxiety. Najwa's concerns are not unreasonable, as Osama reports scars all over his body from his next trip to Afghanistan. The reunion takes place in a sort of catatonia when he admits to her that he learned to fly a helicopter. As she prepares to ask new questions, the order falls: "Najwa, stop thinking."

Saddam Hussein with his blondes

Sajida wants to be up to date. She orders clothes from women with the freedom to travel, for example the wife of Saddam's captain, Alia Salbi. But some of these delegate buyers complain; Sajida is not quick to repay them. Finally one day, the president gives his wife permission to leave the country for a few weeks, flanked by two aunts. He entrusts each member of the small family delegation with the sum of 10,000 dollars, with instructions to shop and have fun.

It is that Sajida, with "her drawn and dark eyebrows, whose very circumflex line betrays no movement", must maintain the cult of the personality of which she is the object among the women of the palace, with great reinforcement of exhibitions outfits and jewelry, and gifts to her favorites, which must be renewed frequently. At the beginning of 1981, the wife of the Iraqi president arrived in London accompanied by around twenty relatives of the palace, and swept through the luxury boutiques of Bond Street, with Hermès as their main target, spending hundreds of thousands of books.

Her thirst for rhinestones and claws quenched, she took off the following month in the company of the Iraqi ambassador to the UN aboard the brand new Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet purchased in the United States by the personal captain of Saddam. The floor is covered with a green and white carpet with presidential emblems leading to separate rooms with contemporary furniture. The raïs suite is adorned with a gigantic bed, a conference room and an office, as well as a bathroom. So here is Sajida embarked in the direction of New York, this time with a delegation of thirty compulsive buyers led by her favorite of the moment, Hussein Kamel al-Tikriti. Sajida falls in love with the Bloomingdale's store and consumes crazy amounts of money there.

The distance seems to bring the presidential couple closer together, and the spouses talk to each other on the phone every day. Perhaps Saddam is thus skilfully following the maneuvers of Hussein Kamel, whose mission in New York is to secretly buy ammunition for the war against Iran. Contracts with screen companies are signed to supply Iraq with military equipment, despite the American embargo. If Sajida does not direct the operations, she in any case makes good use of the generous tips given by the American firms as a token of welcome. What seems to be a futile addiction to luxury accessories seems rather a derivative, a distraction from the abandonment of her husband.

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At this time, in fact, the first scandal broke out around the extramarital affairs of Saddam, who preferred to his wife that of the Minister of Information and Communication, a sensual tennis player. Back in Iraq, Sajida's attempts to be a housewife like the others hardly prospered. She had decided to put some tomato plants in the ground in front of her house. But she had taken no notice of the place and had placed the young shoots under a sun without shade. The six bodyguards she delegated to their upkeep watered them in vain, but they soon faded immediately. As a result of the enterprise, she sent her incompetent horticultural guardians to cool down for ten days. (...)

Baghdad, 1969. “From now on, she is mine, and no one else has the right to look at her with interest,” Saddam orders Barzan, who accompanies him. The two Hussein brothers make a sensational entrance to the party given at Arut al-Khayat, the Armenian fashion designer of the Baghdadi elite. Saddam immediately spotted a young blonde teenager, the impulsive Parisoula Lampsos, 16 (…), who immediately noticed her blue silk suit, her snow-white shirt bringing out her very dark hair. “Never had I seen such incredible, bronze eyes. They shone like metal. She dares to share with him her discovery: “You have wild eyes, such a cold gaze.” It's Saddam, but she doesn't know it, and Saddam laughs. The effrontery of the young woman with the clear eyes pleases him, to him that everyone already fears. She is not afraid of anything, except that her mother learns that she is there dancing with strangers. (...) He approaches her, hugs her. She screams. "I was both scared and outraged." “You have beautiful eyes,” he whispers to her, letting her go. But the blonde is not Michèle Morgan, and she replies confidently that she must leave. The prey is not yet locked.(...)

Saddam Hussein with family. Photo credits: Getty Images/Getty Images/AFP

That evening we savored one of the most refined dishes, a carp. In Arabic tradition, the back part of the fish's head is considered the thinnest, literally "the fisherman's gift". To offer this piece to someone means to honor them with their attention. Saddam cuts up the animal and turns to her: “Open your mouth.” The symbolism of the gesture more than the words surprises the whole assembly. The hostess, beside herself, dismisses the gourgandine. Parisoula gets up, but he doesn't hear it that way. “You are neither my husband nor my fiancé, I don't have to listen to you,” she replies in icy silence. Only Saddam's laugh keeps the guests from swallowing a bone through. The impetuous dandy follows the young woman to her doorstep. “If my mother finds you there, she will kill you, she warns him. - Let her kill me, I don't care. He laughs at her displeasure: "Don't change, stay as you are, get home quickly before I change my mind." One last look at this slinger, and she hurried across the steps. (Having learned of her affair, Parisoula's father sends her back to Lebanon. She returns a year later and settles permanently in Baghdad where she becomes the mistress of the raïs, editor's note) (...)

Soon the war with Iran breaks out. Non-Iraqi women have the choice between divorce and naturalization. This brutal measure pushes Parisoula to reach Greece. Having left several possessions behind her, she took steps with the Iraqi Embassy in Athens to recover them. “She was then summoned for an interview with two mukhabarat officers who gave her money and told her that Saddam had instructed them to organize her trip to Baghdad,” according to the chief of protocol Haitham Rashid Wihaib.

Two days later, she finds herself in Saddam's bed again. “There were evenings when I didn't say a word, letting him rest. With me, he could be himself, let doors slam in anger, or lay his head in my lap. I was just asking him if he wanted a glass of whisky." He installs her in an opulent residence within the grounds of the palace, with her two daughters, now lovely teenagers. “For six months she led the golden life of an official mistress of the president. Cars, jewelry, beautiful clothes, she lacked nothing, just freedom,” said Haitham Rashid. But through her relationship, Parisoula will confront the Tikriti clan. Nothing is more difficult in Iraq than to be Saddam's mistress. (...) If the women of the raïs are very discreet with regard to Parisoula, the men of the clan often visit her, a gratification which is not exempt from risks. (...) The frail balance with the turbulent sons of Sajida collapses one day in a confession of his daughter Elizabeth: Oudaï raped her. “Do you want me to kill him? Do you want me to kill him?" Parisoula is distraught. For several weeks, the young girl remains motionless on a chair and refuses to go to school. There were no red roses or white sheets, she would have ended up at a party on the Oudai boat, then taken to a dark corner. The need to ensure the safety of her children binds the hands of the grieving mother, who has no choice but to ignore Oudaï. but the latter is not a man to allow himself to be disdained. "Just tell me something!" he yells in his face one day. She no longer sees in him anything but the executioner of her daughter: “You no longer exist for me. I only speak with men (…) I will tell your father what happened.”

Saddam punishes Oudaï once again for his excesses, and has him imprisoned for the example, long enough to allow him to plot revenge. Shortly after his release, he begins a punitive mission in Parisoula's house. Coming home from work, she finds her servants gathered in a corner of the living room, Oudaï is on the other side. He beats the informer. At the start of 2001, she understood that she had to leave. (...) But she cannot leave the country without seeing Saddam one last time. "Bet, you've changed," he told her. "- But it's you who changed, Habibi." “- I see everything, you are no longer the Pari I knew before. I told you how many times you had to stay the way you were? She looks at him. They both changed. The situation has changed. Soon the Americans will bomb Baghdad. Oudaï will be killed, Saddam imprisoned. The Tikriti clan will be destroyed forever.

Kim Jong-il and the little women of Pyongyang

General Kim's parties always start like this. Ko Young-hee, the first lady, enters with her husband, and Kim takes care of taking off her coat himself, revealing her body now fulfilled by her two pregnancies. She then sits down beside him and pretends to be interested in the evening. The spectacle is sometimes most distressing: “Very drunk, the executives ended up jumping on a girl. Kim Jong-il forgave just about everything that happened at his parties and didn't ask questions,” one of the guests recalled.

If Jong-il watches his behavior when his wife is with him, he does not hesitate to participate in the brutal festivities when she prefers to refrain from such debauchery. Thus, her stay in France to be operated on for her breast cancer launches the start of a veritable marathon of lust at her husband's palace. In one of the residences, the party is in full swing. Five young girls from a "pleasure party" entertain the dignitaries gathered around the leader. Suddenly, an order falls from the place of honor: “Undress!” while the dancers perform timidly, an amendment completes the ukase: “Even the bra and the panties!” Here are the sylphs dancing naked in spite of themselves.

But the fun can go even further. Perky, Kim directs the maneuver, pointing to her collaborators: “You, dance with her!” These whimsical rules are strict, though: “You can dance with them, but you can't touch them. Touching is theft.” The lewdness at the head of the regime is indeed a way for Kim Jong-il to gratify his obligees, and to oblige them even more. One of the regime's most secret "institutions" is that of pleasure groups. 2000 girls are recruited at the end of high school, in all the art schools of the capital, on the condition of being barely 18 years old, of still being virgins and exempt from any disease. Once selected, the sylphids are divided into three groups, intended to enhance the bacchanalia unleashing Kim's palaces the Satisfaction Team, which delivers sexual services, the Happiness Team, responsible for massaging and relaxing officials, and the song and dance team.

Kim Jong-il Photo credits: © KCNA KCNA / Reuters/REUTERS

Jong-il has no regular partner. Two or three nymphs are usually seated by his side, ready to provide orderly satisfaction. Quickly disgusted with her husband's entertainment, Ko Young-hee spaced out her visits to these orgiastic evenings, preferring to stay in the residence on Mount Chang Kwang that he had given her. As soon as she turned on her heels, pleasure groups appeared. They preferably occur on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the principal residence of the leader. Guests are always invited at the same time, 7:30 p.m. They are served drinks while waiting for Kim to arrive at 8 p.m. It is traditional to drink as quickly as possible, and by 10 p.m. everyone is usually totally drunk.(...)

Jong-il especially wishes to show himself in an Olympic form and for this tastes the dishes most famous for their virilizing virtues. This is how one day, having received a sea lion penis, the Dear leader had it served in small pieces at his table and urged his guests to feast on it. He then gives them his instructions for the evening: "Eat the sea lion penis, and tell me how many times you've done it when you get home!" One of the regular participants told us that “this kind of party could last a week”. On the first day, the young women pay their respects to the leader. The inaugural show consists of an Indian dance performed in traditional costume revealing the navel, and wide pants. At the ankles, they wear bell bracelets and surround their bodies with a pale blue shawl. “As Kim Jong-il's face showed signs of drunkenness and the mood in the audience began to rise, the acrobatic group took the stage. Their breasts were barely hidden by their bras, and they wore a simple, not quite opaque red stole on the bottom. Without panties, they lifted their legs and repeated their strange gestures, twisting their waists.

The drunk executives, unable to take it any longer, then go up on stage to “lift the shawl and touch the discreet part”. Totally heated, Jong-il then raises his glass and asks the graces waddling in front of him to sing I am ugly, a South Korean song. The next day, the situation worsens. The acrobatics group once again occupies the stage in an even more provocative costume, a small waistcoat revealing their thin bra completely, and a simple thong for the bottom. “They danced like debauchees. Kim then complimented them on their high loyalty.”

The sudden obscenity of the fun group costumes and dances has an explanation. This troupe has just returned from a month's trip to Europe paid for by Kim Jong-il. Their destination: the Lido, in Paris. Memorizing the choreographies and obtaining the same outfits, they offer on their return a spectacle which delights their patron, "they performed barely hiding their nipples with a shiny thread, and simply covering the important part for the bottom". Moved by such devotion to the country, Jong-il summoned the dancers of the group as well as their choreographer and ordered that they be registered as partisans on the spot. He so appreciates this exotic dance brought back from the suburbs of Paris that he decides to set up a review himself. He proudly presents his ambitious project to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during her visit in October 2000: he himself choreographed the great Las Vegas-style revue that will be held in her honor that very evening.

Women 2 dictator, by Diane Ducret, Perrin, 383 p., 21 eur.

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