Even when he ruled Iraq, Saddam Hussein led a nomad’s life. As President he was too paranoid to sleep in the massive, marble-lined palaces he erected all over Iraq as monuments to his power. According to close associates, he would stay instead in small houses on the edges of his various compounds, changing location every eight to 10 hours and keeping an assistant on duty around the clock to pack and unpack his suitcases. Saddam, his former secretary says, so admired the fortitude of the Bedouin tribes that wander the Iraqi wilderness that he often headed into the mountains%u2014accompanied, of course, by caravans of aides, cooks and bodyguards%u2014to bed down among them. “He lived very simply,” says the secretary. “He didn’t need much.”
That can be a useful quality when you’re running for your life. If Saddam’s circumstances are anything like those of his sons Uday and Qusay, who died in a shoot-out with U.S. forces in Mosul two weeks ago, he is traveling with only the barest essentials: money and guns. [Time Magazine]