mr-damon/middle east

When a pair of black leather oxfords hurled at President George W. Bush in Baghdad produced a gasp heard around the world, a Turkish cobbler had a different reaction: They were his shoes.

"We have been producing that specific style, which I personally designed, for 10 years, so I couldn't have missed it, no way," said Ramazan Baydan in Istanbul. "As a shoemaker, you understand."

Although his assertion has been impossible to verify - cobblers from Lebanon, China and Iraq have also staked claims to what is quickly becoming some of the most famous footwear in the world - orders for Baydan's shoes, formerly known as Ducati Model 271 and since renamed "The Bush Shoe," have poured in from around the world.

A new run of 15,000 pairs, destined for Iraq, went into production Thursday, he said. A British distributor has asked to become the Baydan Shoe Co.'s European sales representative, with a first order of 95,000 pairs, and a U.S. company has placed an order for 18,000 pairs. Four distributors are competing to represent the company in Iraq, where Baydan sold 19,000 pairs of this model for about $40 each last year.

Five thousand posters advertising the shoes, on their way to the Middle East and Turkey, proclaim "Goodbye Bush, Welcome Democracy" in Turkish, English and Arabic.

Barely 24 hours after the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, was tackled and arrested for his actions at a Baghdad news conference, the shoe-throwing incident was generating front-page headlines and continuing television news coverage. A thinly veiled glee could be discerned in much of the reporting, especially in the places where anti-American sentiment runs deepest.

In Sadr City, the sprawling Baghdad suburb that has seen some of the most intense fighting between insurgents and American soldiers since the 2003 invasion, thousands of people marched in his defense. In Syria, he was hailed as a hero. In Libya, he was given an award for courage.

Mr. Zaidi, a correspondent for an independent Iraqi television station, Al-Baghdadia, remained in Iraqi custody on Monday. While he has not been formally charged, Iraqi officials said he faced up to seven years in prison if convicted of committing an act of aggression against a visiting head of state.

Hitting someone with a shoe is a deep insult in the Arab world, signifying that the person being struck is as low as the dirt underneath the sole of a shoe. Compounding the insult were Mr. Zaidi's words as he hurled his footwear at President Bush: "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" While calling someone a dog is never polite, among Arabs,who traditionally consider dogs unclean, the words were an even stronger slight.

"President Bush made a valedictory visit on Sunday to Iraq, the country that will largely define his legacy, but the trip will more likely be remembered for the unscripted moment when an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at Mr. Bush's head and denounced him on live television as a "dog" who had delivered death and sorrow here from nearly six years of war...

"The Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, 28, a correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an independent Iraqi television station, stood up about 12 feet from Mr. Bush and shouted in Arabic: "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" He then threw a shoe at Mr. Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it.

"As stunned security agents and guards, officials and journalists watched, Mr. Zaidi then threw his other shoe, shouting in Arabic, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" That shoe also narrowly missed Mr. Bush as Prime Minister Maliki stuck a hand in front of the president's face to help shield him.

"Mr. Maliki's security agents jumped on the man, wrestled him to the floor and hustled him out of the room. They kicked him and beat him until "he was crying like a woman," said Mohammed Taher, a reporter for Afaq, a television station owned by the Dawa Party, which is led by Mr. Maliki. Mr. Zaidi was then detained on unspecified charges.

"Other Iraqi journalists in the front row apologized to Mr. Bush, who was uninjured and tried to brush off the incident by making a joke. "All I can report is it is a size 10," he said, continuing to take questions and noting the apologies. He also called the incident a sign of democracy, saying, "That's what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves," as the man's screaming could be heard outside...

"Hitting someone with a shoe is considered the supreme insult in Iraq. It means that the target is even lower than the shoe, which is always on the ground and dirty. Crowds hurled their shoes at the giant statue of Mr. Hussein that stood in Baghdad's Firdos Square before helping American marines pull it down on April 9, 2003, the day the capital fell. More recently in the same square, a far bigger crowd composed of Iraqis who had opposed the security agreement flung their shoes at an effigy of Mr. Bush before burning it."

The pyramids are proof of Egypt's endurance and what distinguishes it from modern confections, like Saudi Arabia, a nation founded 76 years ago, named after a family and built on oil wealth. But these monuments to Egypt's early ingenuity are also an ever-present symbol of faded glory. It is hard to escape comparisons between an Egypt that once led the world in almost everything and modern Egypt, where about 40 percent of the population lives on $2 a day.

"Can you believe our government can do nothing for us, and this thing that was built thousands of years ago is still helping me feed my family?" Ahmed Sayed Baghali, 49, said as he sat in a plastic chair selling postcards to tourists outside the Egyptian Museum here, which displays millenniums of antiquities. "Who would buy my things if they were not about the pharaohs? People come here from very far to see the pyramids, not to see Cairo."

Robert Fisk delivered a raw and eye-opening account of his experiences in the Middle East, which have spanned over 32 years, drawing attention to the "hell disaster" stretching from the borders of what once was British India to the Mediterranean.

"It's a beautiful place but it's getting more dangerous and it's getting more politically divided and it's filling with more hatred than I've ever seen in the Middle East before.

"I have never come across so much bitterness and contempt for the West as there is now in the Middle East today. Whether we can place that all at George Bush's preposterous response to 9/11, I don't know."

The dangers as a Western journalist are very real for Fisk who has lived through kidnapping attempts.

"I think we are all frightened for our lives working out there. But we also think that we should still be working there. And thank goodness, there are millions of Muslims who try to help us and realise what we are trying to do."

While some publications, particularly American, "pussy-footed" around the reality of the so-called "war on terror", Fisk tried to get across the reality of what the Middle East was like and that it had suffered enormously, he said.

"I think you should be objective on the side of those who suffer. It's a massive human tragedy and there are very serious issues of justice and cruelty involved.

"I don't think the fear of being called anti-semitic, which many journalists are worried about, should stop you reporting to the reality about what's happening.

There is a reason so many people here talk with casual certainty -- and no embarrassment -- about the United States attacking itself to have a reason to go after Arabs and help Israel. It is a reflection of how they view government leaders, not just in Washington, but here in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. They do not believe them. The state-owned media are also distrusted. Therefore, they think that if the government is insisting that bin Laden was behind it, he must not have been.

"Mubarak says whatever the Americans want him to say, and he's lying for them, of course," Mr. Ibrahim said of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president.

Americans might better understand the region, experts here said, if they simply listen to what people are saying -- and try to understand why -- rather than taking offense. The broad view here is that even before Sept. 11, the United States was not a fair broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it then capitalized on the attacks to buttress Israel and undermine the Muslim Arab world.

The single greatest proof, in most people's eyes, was the invasion of Iraq. Trying to convince people here that it was not a quest for oil or a war on Muslims is like convincing many Americans that it was, and that the 9/11 attacks were the first step.

"It is the result of widespread mistrust, and the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States has a prejudice against them," said Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of the government-financed Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, the nation's premier research center. "So they never think the United States is well intentioned, and they always feel that whatever it does has something behind it."

Hisham Abbas, 22, studies tourism at Cairo University and hopes one day to work with foreigners for a living. But he does not give it a second thought when asked about Sept. 11. He said it made no sense at all that Mr. bin Laden could have carried out such an attack from Afghanistan. And like everyone else interviewed, he saw the events of the last seven years as proof positive that it was all a United States plan to go after Muslims.

"There are Arabs who hate America, a lot of them, but this is too much," Mr. Abbas said as he fidgeted with his cellphone. "And look at what happened after this -- the Americans invaded two Muslim countries. They used 9/11 as an excuse and went to Iraq. They killed Saddam, tortured people. How can you trust them?"

A bit of news from one of my old (and brief) stomping grounds:

Qatar has close ties with Iran, yet it also is host to one of the world's biggest American air bases. It is home both to Israeli officials and to hard-line Islamists who advocate Israel's destruction; to Al Jazeera, the controversial satellite TV station; and (at least until recently) to Saddam Hussein's widow. Saudi Arabia is a trusted ally, but so is Saudi Arabia's nemesis Syria, whose president, Bashar al-Assad, received an Airbus as a personal gift from the Qatari emir this year.

"They really put all the contradictions of the Middle East in one box," said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

The Qataris also back their diplomacy with some eclectic investments. Many Americans know about the emir's gift of $100 million to help Hurricane Katrina victims, but Qatar is also building a $1.5 billion oil refinery in Zimbabwe, a huge residential complex in Sudan and a $350 million tourist project in Syria.

Some call Qatar's policy deranged. The Qataris prefer to think of it as useful. Blessed with enormous oil and natural gas reserves, Qatar is surrounded by large and ambitious neighbors: Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Diplomacy has become a way for Qatar to protect itself and its riches, by forming alliances and by trying to stabilize the region.

"The idea is to try to keep everybody happy -- or if we can't, to keep everybody reasonably unhappy," said one former Qatari official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss foreign policy. "If that makes the Americans or the Russians a little cross, well, tough luck."

"I wanted to help," said Refaat, 28, who was slightly embarrassed when he was asked why he gave the wrong directions with such conviction. "I was actually going to tell you to ask the flower vendor on the corner. He knows all the streets."

Navigating Egypt can be a challenge of understanding, not just the language, but its culture, values and norms. A pile of trash may look like litter to a foreigner, but it is a commodity to poor people who recycle and re-use almost everything. In Egypt, it is routine, absolutely routine, to get the wrong directions.

That is not because people are mischievous, but because if you ask for help, they feel obligated to try to help - even if they send you off in the wrong direction.

There is a lesson in this confusion that has more value than merely cautioning tourists to bring a map, sociologists, political scientists and intellectuals agreed.

The United States' relations with Egypt are strained - from the man on the street, to the president, rightly or wrongly, Egyptians are feeling disrespected by Washington.

It is not just about the invasion of Iraq, or the perennial feeling of favoritism for Israel, or the mild critiques coming from Washington about Egypt's lack of democracy. It is what people here see as the demonstrated failure to understand how they think, what they value - even when those values mean sending someone off mistakenly in the wrong direction."