Cohen to adapt Saddam Hussein’s romance novel

Book appears to be simple folk tale but contains pools of hidden meanings, was intended to be read as allegory.

LOS ANGELES: Sacha Baron Cohen’s on-screen antics have paired him up with everyone from Pamela Anderson to Janet Jackson to US presidential candidate Ron Paul. But his next film provides the Borat star with his most outlandish collaborator to date: the former Iraqi dictator and  the reputed romantic novelist - Saddam Hussein .

Baron Cohen, 39, will star in a Hollywood adaptation of Zabibah and the King, the tender tale of a wise and good Iraqi leader who falls in love with a humble peasant girl. Now, the book is being adapted to produce a film that has been re-titled as The Dictator.

The $58 million project will be directed by “Seinfeld” veteran Larry Charles, who featured Baron Cohen in the comic blockbusters, Borat and Bruno. Baron Cohen has taken personal interest in the film and has written the script along with Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel.

Baron Cohen was reportedly amidst controversy with his 2006 faux-documentary Borat, in which he played an anti-Semitic reporter from Kazakhstan who interacts with Americans unaware that they were being set up. And although the film grossed $260 million worldwide, it stirred massive debate in the process.

His career then followed up with Bruno, in which he played a homosexual Austrian fashionista and earned about $140 million.

Given his previous roles, there’s only one question that leaves many perplexed and that is whether this will be a ‘mockumentary’ or a serious look at Hussein’s work? However,it is important to note that Cohen is not the first star to poke fun at dictators, Charlie Chaplin anyone?

The mysterious book by Saddam Hussein, Zabibah and the King was first published anonymously in the year 2000 and brought with it a complete strap-line that promised royalties would be distributed as charity, “to the poor, the orphans, the miserable and the needy.”

However, within the native bounds of Iraq it is widely accepted that the book was penned by Saddam Hussein, and although the CIA later concluded that it was probably produced by ghost-writers, acting under direct instruction from the Iraqi leader, the natives of Iraq still believe it was the dictator who primarily authored the book.

The book charts the chaste love affair between a medieval monarch and the soulful Zabibah, who lives unhappily with her abusive husband. But what appears, at first glance, to be a sweet, simple folk tale actually contains pools of hidden meanings. It was intended to be read as an allegory for Iraq in the years following the first Gulf war, with the king representing Saddam, Zabibah embodying the Iraqi people and her husband standing in for the cruel and evil US forces.

Hussein’s drama hits its crescendo when Zabibah is sexually assaulted by a mysterious figure who turns out to be her spouse. “Rape is the most serious of crimes,”explains Zabibah’s character in the book. The story unfolds with Zabibah tragically killed on January 17, the date of the first aerial bombardment of Baghdad in 1991. The Dictator is currently being shot and has been scheduled to release on May 11, 2012.

This is not the first time the 2000’s bestselling book is being adapted. It was previously staged a musical and a 20 episode television mini- series. Unfortunately, the tale’s rumoured author will be unavailable to endorse this latest incarnation, much less attend the premiere, following his conviction for war crimes and execution in December 2006.

If audiences like The Dictator, perhaps Hussein’s three other novels will be put into production? The Fortified Castle, Men and the City, and Begone, Demons were also penned under the same author and assumed to be Hussein’s handiwork.  Who knows perhaps Saddam Hussein could be the next Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer?

GUARDIAN.CO.UK

WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM ALLVOICES.COM AND E! ONLINE

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22nd, 2011.