Dim lights, discreet location, good food. The combination suited Saddam Hussein's sons and secret agents who frequented Lanterns restaurant in Baghdad.

Uday and Qusay Hussein often dined here with their cousin Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's weapons programmes until he briefly defected to Jordan and was murdered on his return.

Saddam's sinister sons would order cordon bleu escalope -- without the ham -- while a Charles Aznavour tape crooned in the background, Lanterns owner Saad al-Khodeiri recalls.

"No customer dared leaving when Uday was here. I don't think he would have minded though. He was soft-spoken and tipped generously," Khodeiri said.

"They occasionally had a cigar after dinner, usually a Havana or a Cohiba. Qusay's character was different, somehow one could tell he was the one with cooler nerves."

Uday first came to Lanterns in the mid-1980s when he was vice-president of the Football Federation. His father later made him president of the National Olympic Committee, which Uday used as cover for a sprawling business empire that extorted money and tortured anyone who fell foul of the boss.

Uday appeared less in public, and never returned to Lanterns, after a 1996 assassination attempt that nearly cost him his life. But the restaurant remained a popular eating spot for the intelligence men who served him and his father.

They would sit in separate groups in wood-panelled booths, talking in low tones or scribbling messages on paper.

"They did not want the officers in the next booth to hear. All eight or so intelligence divisions were spying on each other. That's how Saddam kept his grip on Iraq," Khodeiri said.

Such men were part of a generation that began patronising Lanterns after Iraqi oil revenue flooded in after 1973.

OLD UPPER CRUST

An earlier clientele consisted of diplomats, artists, people from established families and survivors from a merchant class ravaged by the 1958 revolution against the monarchy.

"Iraq sank in money that went to the wrong people," Khodeiri said of the 1970s oil boom.

"The elite could not cohabit with the nouveaux riches. They left Lanterns and many left Iraq. Independent businessmen became liable to extermination at any moment."

The new customers, senior members of the Baath party and Saddam's entourage, were generally less cultured, though Khodeiri recalls exceptions such as Saadoun Hamadi, former oil minister and later parliament speaker, and former foreign minister and deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz.

Both men are now captives of the US-led invasion forces that ended Saddam's 24-year rule on April 9.

Aziz, the silver-haired, cigar-smoking diplomat who long served as Saddam's mouthpiece to the world, began his career as an English teacher. He came here with his sons Ziad and Saddam.

"Aziz is an intellectual. He taught me English and was the best teacher," Khodeiri said.

He recalls some of his other clients with distaste.

Kamel, for instance, would arrive in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, a far cry from his days as a military driver.

"Hussein Kamel used to drive by the restaurant in the 1970s in a Renault 16. He appeared on television in 1980 standing behind Saddam. I was shocked," Khodeiri said.

Kamel rose rapidly in the Baathist firmament, becoming minister of military industrialisation and winning the hand of Saddam's daughter Rana. That family bond did not save him from the president's vengeance on his return from Amman, where he had disclosed information about Iraqi arms programmes.

ILL-GOTTEN GAINS

In the 1990s, the clientele at Lanterns became even sleazier, as the restaurant filled with men whose links to the ruling clique allowed them to make fortunes from oil smuggling and other trade outlawed by UN sanctions on Iraq.

"They came in white Toyota Land Cruisers. They were thugs," Khodeiri said, wrinkling his nose.

The menu was modified to cater for the less discerning customers. No more French cuisine or fine wines.

Lunch was geared for businessmen, offering a set menu of soup, ouzi (a lamb dish), dessert and coffee. Now diners wash down their Lebanese-style starters and main course with beer.

Khodeiri's father Zeid opened Lanterns in 1966, hiring a head waiter who had worked at a British airbase near the southern city of Basra. Iraqi architect Medhat Ali Mathloum designed the decor, featuring lanterns hung on crimson walls.

"The Iraq we fell in love with is long gone. Those who left will find it hard to come back," Khodeiri said.

"We have become an amoral society. I hear the going rate for a contract killing is $300." 

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