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MICHAEL SANDLERFor a group of Iraq-born bay area residents, news of the capture is the end of an oppressive era and a cue for celebration.
LARGO - It was 6 a.m. Sunday when Dr. Hadi Hakki was roused from sleep with news he had waited decades to hear.
The phone call from his good friend Ahmad Kubba was enough to make him leap in the air. But Hakki, an Iraqi-born cardiologist, couldn't keep it to himself.
"Great news," he said, waking his wife.
"They caught Saddam?" she asked.
Hakki was puzzled. How did his wife know?
"I had a feeling," Istabrak Hakki said. "Great news would be capturing Saddam."
The sight of bearded Saddam Hussein in the custody of American soldiers brought joy and hope Sunday to many American families who waited for this moment through nine months of war.
But for Hadi Hakki, the photo of the dazed and disheveled dictator was cause for emotional celebration.
He is one of four brothers - all of them doctors - who fled Iraq during Hussein's rise. One of the brothers is a Seminole urologist who has been in Baghdad since April, helping to rebuild the Iraqi health system. A fifth brother, Majid Hakki, died in the late 1970s. The brothers say Hussein had him poisoned.
Ahmad Kubba, a real estate agent from St. Petersburg who was born in Iraq, knew his friend Hakki would want to know. So he did not hesitate to call at dawn, once he was certain the man caught was Hussein.
"I said, "I'm sorry, but I have to wake you,"' Kubba said. "It's the end of an era."
Hadi Hakki and his wife decided to throw a party.
"This is the happiest day in our lives, both as Americans and as Iraqis," said Hakki, surrounded by family and friends at his Harbor Bluffs home Sunday afternoon. He fled Iraq in 1976 as Hussein was building power.
They served baklava, pastry filled with ground pistachios or walnuts, along with tea and soft drinks. They also had two cakes. One was chocolate, iced with the words "Thank You President Bush." The other, a carrot cake, read, "Happy Birthday Iraq."
Istabrak Hakki, who immigrated to the United States in 1996, was so happy she called her father in Baghdad. But he couldn't come to the phone.
"He was in the street celebrating," said Mrs. Hakki, who instead talked to her sister. "They are shooting guns in the air, honking horns and giving each other sweets. It's all over. It has been like a nightmare. He's been there for years, torturing his own people."
One brother who did not attend was Dr. Said Hakky, a 59-year-old Seminole urologist who spells his name differently.
Since the fall of Baghdad, Hakky has served as a senior adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Health, taking an unpaid leave of absence from his post at the Bay Pines VA Medical Center.
His wife, Barbara Hakky, tried to reach him Sunday, but he was traveling in Saudi Arabia.
"We always knew the Americans would get him in the end," said Barbara Hakky. "You cut the head off the snake. Now, it's the opportunity for the Iraqis to come together and be free."