“See the sandals? They’re hitting the statue with their sandals,” said Harith Hamid, his voice cracking with excitement Wednesday as he watched television images of jubilant Iraqi citizens toppling a giant statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad.

The sandals are significant, he said, because in Arab cultures exposing others to your feet is rude and insulting. Hitting someone with a sandal is almost unthinkable.

“The worst, most degrading gesture you could get is to be hit with a sandal,” Hamid said.

Hamid, 48, moved to the United States from Iraq in 1991. He’s lived in Lawrence the past 10 years.

Most of his family — ranging from his 3-month-old nephew to his 82-year-old father — live in Baghdad. Hamid has not heard from any of them since the city’s communication systems were knocked out two weeks ago.

“I do not know how any of them are doing,” he said.

But Hamid said his heart was filled with a joy that most Americans could only imagine.

“Please understand that every second of this makes for the happiest moment of my life,” he said. “I have waited for and thought about this day for every hour of every day for the past 35 years. It sounds like I am exaggerating, but I am not — l have dreamed about this in my sleep.”

Turning his attention to the statue-toppling images on television, Hamid assured a Journal-World reporter that similar celebrations were going on in every liberated corner of Iraq.

A 40-foot statue of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is toppled by U.S. troops in al-Firdos (Paradise) Square in Baghdad, Iraq. The fall of the statue Wednesday has come to be a symbol of the U.S. capture of the capital city.

“It is everywhere in Iraq,” he said. “Everywhere.”

With good reason. Hamid said Saddam’s regime had killed 80,000 Iraqis a year. Few families, he said, have been spared the loss of a son or daughter.

“The way (Saddam’s forces) do it is they dump the body in front of that person’s house,” he said. “Then they knock on the door, and they force the family to give them money to cover the cost of the bullets used to kill their son or daughter. This is not fiction.”

Hamid said many of his friends had been murdered by Saddam’s forces.

“I have friends who were taken away and killed because a brother-in-law managed to escape or to flee the country — so they come and kill them,” Hamid said. “I know this to be true.”

Until a week ago, Hamid said he’d hoped Saddam was dead.

“Now I wish that he is alive — I want him to see this,” Hamid said, motioning toward the television screen depicting Iraqis celebrating the regime’s demise. “It is a cruel thing for me to say, but I wish for him to see his sons killed, just as so many mothers and fathers in Iraq have seen their sons and daughters killed.”

Totalitarian grip

¢ 6News video: Baghdad is no longer under Saddam Hussein’s control¢ More stories about the war in Iraq

Few Americans, he said, could fully comprehend Saddam’s totalitarian grip on the Iraqi citizenry. Two examples:

• “There are no cell phones in Iraq — the government may have them, but the people do not. They are not allowed,” he said. “Some houses have the Internet, but they are not allowed to send or receive e-mails.

“You cannot buy a fax machine in Iraq; you cannot operate a fax machine without a license from the government. And use of photocopying machines is very, very restricted to stop people from copying documents for getting passports or visas. Birth certificates, for example — you cannot get a copy of your birth certificate.”

Hamid said he graduated from the University of Baghdad in 1977 with a degree in civil engineering, but he cannot get a copy of his transcript.

“I tell you I’m a civil engineer,” he said. “But I cannot prove it, I have no documents.”

• “You’ve seen on the news how pictures and statutes of Saddam Hussein are everywhere — and they are,” he said. “But as a child you are taught not to look at them for any period of time because someone is always watching you, and if you are seen looking at the picture, someone will question your motives. They might think you are mocking him or questioning him.

“For that, you could be killed.”

Ready for reconstruction

Now a U.S. citizen, Hamid, a real estate developer and construction manager, said he hoped to have a hand in rebuilding Iraq.

“If I am asked, I will be glad and happy to do whatever I can do in any way, shape or form,” he said emphatically. If allowed, he said, he hopes to go to Iraq within the next few months.

In the coming weeks, Hamid said Americans would be inundated with images of Iraqi citizens welcoming American troops.

“They are welcome,” he said. “But it will be wise for them not to wear out that welcome.”

Hamid said Iraq’s move to a more democratic form of government would not be pretty.

“Democracy is something you have to be trained for,” he said. “It’s like a baby becoming an adult. It takes time and work, and along the way there will be much discouragement.”

Kansas University history professor Ted Wilson agreed with Hamid’s assessment.

“The next six months are going to tax the patience of all individuals who want what’s best for the people of Iraq,” Wilson said.

“In my view, the U.S. should fade to the background fairly quickly.”

Wilson oversees KU’s new master’s degree program in international studies.