I got a chance to visit another FOB, on which sits one of Chemical Ali’s homes, or more descriptively, villas. This villa was one of several in the area belonging to the former thug. It sat on top of a small hill, more a rise than a hill, kind of a high point in the undulating terrain. Still, it presented a nice view of the surrounding countryside.
The villa was composed of two 2-story structures, flat-topped and painted a sandy orange. The hillside up to the houses had an orange grove on one side and an olive grove on another. A three-tiered fountain, dry now, was surrounded by what must have been a formal garden. Each tier of the fountain was shaped like a water pitcher, so that water must have poured out of the pitcher, down its side, and into the pitcher below.
Just outside the villa a large and deep swimming pool, probably 12 feet at its deepest and dry now, served to hold soldiers’ drying laundry, strung across the pool on a rope. The desert camouflage flapped in the breeze over the blue tile.
Inside the main structure the soldiers were playing ping pong and watching TV Looking up at the ceiling, I saw the usual rebar hook protruding. Almost every Iraqi building I’ve been has such a hook hanging down from the ceiling. Just a 10 inch length of rebar sticking through the ceiling, and bent into a hook. In this case there were several hooks, and they held a large metal +. The rumor is that this was part of a device used for torture, to string people up from. Since it would have been in, essentially, the front room, it's hard to imagine torture happening there. Who knows?
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