Hey, It's Saddam! And Those Are My Curtains

By Romesh Ratnesar/Baghdad

On the morning of April 6, Nada Yunis was watching an Iraqi television broadcast of a tape of Saddam Hussein meeting with his son Qusay and a small group of top advisers in what looked like someone's home. On the wall behind Saddam were maps of Iraq, marked in heavy felt pen, that appeared to indicate troop deployments. Yunis recognized the melon-colored curtains and ruffled white drapes, the design of the stone floor, the geometric pattern on the empty chair next to Qusay, even some water damage on one of the walls. Saddam, she realized, was sitting in her living room. The next afternoon, acting on intelligence that Saddam had been spotted, an American B-1 dropped four 2,000-lb. bombs over a block of buildings just off 14th Ramadan Street, half a mile north of Yunis' home. Yunis doesn't know where Saddam was at the time of the attack, but like many Iraqis, she believes Saddam survived it and is still alive.

How did Saddam end up in Yunis' house? As war loomed in late March, the garrulous businesswoman--a stout 36-year-old with bright red hair and brooding eyes--rented the place to Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, a former business associate who headed Iraq's Republican Guard. Al-Tikriti did not tell her why he wanted the house, but Yunis suspected it might be used as a storage site or meeting place. When she returned to her home two days after the strike it was empty, but official papers were strewn everywhere. She found a box of AK-47 ammunition and six touch-tone phones with labels reading HEALTH MINISTRY and REPUBLICAN GUARD. TIME visited Yunis' home, which sits across from a church in the graceful neighborhood of al-Mansur. On close examination, the handwriting on the military maps Yunis says she discovered in the house match those on the map behind Saddam on Iraqi TV. The furniture, curtains and layout of the room are identical to the room in which Saddam met with his Cabinet. "I could tell the President had been here," Yunis says. So why did the U.S. strike a target up the road? "I think," she says, "the Americans bombed the wrong house."

The U.S. is now trying to determine whether that's true. The fate of Saddam Hussein remains one of the central mysteries of the war, and the failure to kill or capture him--or even determine if he's alive--is a source of mounting frustration for the Administration. Last week, engineers from the 1st Armored Brigade began clearing up to 5,000 tons of rubble from the site of the April 7 bombing, searching for Saddam's remains. But most Pentagon officials believe he survived the raid. A longtime employee of Saddam's family who worked at their farmhouse in Tikrit told TIME the Iraqi leader phoned the house on April 8 looking for guards to launch surface-to-surface missiles. "I think he's alive," says a U.S. intelligence official in Iraq, "because if he suffered at all in that strike we probably would have heard about it by now."

Before the war, Yunis had connections with members of Saddam's inner circle, including al-Tikriti, who surrendered to U.S. forces last month, and Sayf al-Rawi, chief of the Republican Guard's Forward Command. After the war, she allowed al-Rawi's bodyguard to stay in her house for 10 days. The bodyguard told her that "all the high-ranking members used to meet here on different occasions" and that Qusay sometimes slept in her son's room.

According to Yunis, members of the leadership met at the house on April 6, but she doesn't know whether they were using it at the time of the U.S. attack. Witnesses in the neighborhood give varying accounts. Kadier Abbas, who lives next door, says that he first noticed activity around the house on April 1. "There were armed guards all around this area," he says. Abbas says he saw two Land Cruisers parked in the driveway and "a lot of high-ranking officers" coming and going from Yunis' home. Abbas also claims he saw a convoy of 10 pickup trucks, a black Opel sedan, a taxicab and four Land Cruisers roar out of the area 10 minutes after the April 7 bombing. Another neighbor, Abu Emad, says he heard car engines revving a few minutes before the bombs dropped. Yunis claims she saw Saddam walk out of her house an hour after the attack. "He looked really tired," she says. Perhaps the only safe assumption about Saddam, if he's alive, is that he's still not getting much sleep. --With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington and Michael Weisskopf/Baghdad

With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington and Michael Weisskopf/Baghdad