The main palace sits overlooking an expansive man-made lake, surrounded by extravagant villas and boathouses. The central building appears complete (on it is a plaque with Arabic script and two dates: “1998/12/17” and “2000/8/8”), but vast, multi-floored extensions remain unfinished, still trussed with scaffolding. As you approach the main entrance, you wind through clusters of date palms until you reach an arched driveway made of stone and marble. Pass through enormous brass doors and you enter an airy foyer with marble floors. Turn left down a hallway covered with baby-blue-and-white-striped wallpaper, past two sitting rooms. There you’ll find an eight-inch-thick steel door on your right.
Enter it, and you descend 17 dark and musty steps, past a security camera mounted on the wall, to another eight-inch thick steel door. Outside is a sign in both Arabic and English. “WAIT! Wait 30 minutes in this decontamination room before entering in the shelter if outside air is contaminated. CLOSE THE DOORS.” Inside you’ll find an elegantly appointed, hermetically sealed haven, apparently designed to guard against a chemical attack. It’s the only such shelter U.S. soldiers–some of whom have taken up residence at the palace–have found on the grounds. A dozen people could stay here comfortably. There are three large rooms, two bathrooms, one kitchen, and a half-dozen small rooms with a variety of electronic and mechanical equipment. Halfway into the shelter, the entrance to another eight-inch steel door bears a second sign in Arabic and English–identical to the first one except for the stipulated waiting time: 25 minutes.
The rooms in the shelter can be accessed off two main hallways that form a “V” and are interrupted at numerous points by additional steel doors. Two of the large rooms are rectangular, about 12 feet by 18 feet. The third large room is full of oblique angles, but appears to be about one-and-a-half times the size of the other two. All are decorated in the same fashion: carved wooden doors with a circular insignia in Arabic script, gold matted wallpaper on the walls and ceiling, fluorescent lights, and stainless steel floors. None have furniture. The bathroom sinks and bathtubs are marble, as are the kitchen sink and countertop. In the kitchen, a water sterilization system made in Switzerland by Katadyn Produkte AG shows 515 hours of usage. Though there’s no indication that the facility was used recently, it’s difficult to tell: much of it is coated in dense black soot giving off an acrid smell, possibly from charges that U.S. soldiers used to clear the shelter.
The remaining rooms house electronic and mechanical equipment, all of which appears to be in good condition and probably dates from the 1980s. One room seems to be a security post. It contains an orange control panel with two television screens and a variety of multi-colored buttons labeled in English: “Generator,” “Door 1,” “Lighting Entrance 1,” “Water Chiller,” “Waste Water Pump Alarm.” Another room includes an air filtration system, a generator with 373 hours of usage marked on a meter, a telephone distribution box and a pump pressure system. One big blue box labeled “Air Handling Unit” in English has a gauge that measures “Room Overpressure,” which would ensure that if one of the steel entrance doors were to open, air would rush out rather than in. All of the equipment was made by the company Luwa in Zurich, Switzerland; some labels bear the manufacturing dates 1983 and 1984.
An adjoining room holds two stout cylindrical generators that are about five feet long. At the end of another hallway, a small room contains water tanks, diesel fuel tanks, and an aeration pipe, all labeled in English and of apparently Swiss origin. It all makes for a protective, self-sustaining, and not altogether unpleasant environment.
To leave the shelter, you can ascend a second staircase–the only other access point–that opens into the palace. In this case, the outside of the steel door is masked by faux wooden panels to give it the look of a coat closet. Leaving this exit, you pass by the palace’s library. There on the floor lies a messy pile of red-brown books, all covered with portraits of Saddam. They’ve been discarded like so much rubbish.
