I’m walkin’ down the line

My feet’ll be a-flyin’

To tell you about my troubled mind.

(Bob Dylan, 1963)

 

 

IT was shoes, not feet, that went a-flying at a press conference in Baghdad’s Green Zone last week, courtesy of a journalist who had decided it would make more sense to hurl answers rather than questions at George W. Bush. The US president is used to dodging awkward questions, but he often does so clumsily; he displayed a great deal more deftness in ducking out of the flight path of the footwear. Which suggests he’s had some practice; perhaps flinging handy objects is Laura’s preferred means of deciding domestic arguments with a husband notorious for his dogged disinclination to entertain points of view that differ from his own.

 

Bush’s reaction to Muntazer Al Zaidi’s unusual behaviour was, however, not exactly unnatural. Standing next to him, Nouri Al Maliki betrayed not a glimmer of surprise, as if he’s well accustomed to watching near and dear ones cope with this sort of indignity. After a brief hesitation, his shadowy visage as expressionless as ever, he offered a meaty hand as a not particularly effective shield. That momentarily raised the prospect of a double whammy: suppose the second shoe had connected with the hand, its momentum propelling the paw towards the targeted face.

 

That was not to be, but Zaidi had made his point. “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” he yelled as he flung the first shoe. “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq,” he said as he dispatched the second one. The images went around across the world, although not every media outlet was willing to convey all of the words. Zaidi was thereafter wrestled to the ground and given a thorough pummelling. Apparently his screams could still be heard from next door even as Bush tried to turn the incident to his advantage by casting it as evidence of the triumph of democracy and free speech.

 

There would be little point in denying that anyone attempting a comparable display of dissidence in the presence of Saddam Hussein would have ended up with a bullet in his head, if not immediately then shortly afterwards. Yet Zaidi’s fate at the hands of Maliki’s goons doesn’t really conjure up the image of a textbook democracy in the making. If they had hustled him out of the chamber and then let him go, it would undoubtedly have made a much better impression – from the point of view of the occupying nation and its local auxiliaries.

 

It’s quite possible that Zaidi in that case would have become a star attraction at Iraqi demonstrations against the occupation, instead of inspiring protests throughout the Arab world and beyond calling for his release. He would have still been a hero, but now he’s also viewed as a martyr.

 

There have been contradictory reports about Zaidi’s political affiliations: some paint him as a leftist who idolizes Che Guevara, and whose family suffered at Saddam’s hands. Others hint at Baathist sympathies. Still others hint at an associate with Muqtada Al Sadr. Obviously, they can’t all be true. What’s incontrovertible, however, is his angst at the American invasion of his country and its consequences. Some colleagues at Cairo-based Al Baghdadia television have said that Zaidi had long harboured a desire to hit Bush with his shoes.

 

In that he certainly wasn’t alone, and it’s hardly surprising that the 29-year-old cameraman’s attempt to literally fulfill his desire has elevated him to a status of a hero. Although international media coverage has concentrated on empathetic demonstrations in the Arab world, in fact Zaidi’s act of defiance has lifted spirits pretty much around the globe. It has even helped, in these economically depressing times, to create 100 new jobs in Turkey, where a cobbler, claiming to have recognized his Model 271 as it was deployed as a weapon of mass disruption, has been busy recruiting new staff to meet hundreds of thousands of orders – not only from Iraq and the Middle East, but from Europe and the US – for a style of footwear that will henceforth be dubbed the Bush Shoe, or simply as Bye Bye Bush.

 

The Turkish shoemaker’s claim has been challenged by rivals in Iraq, China and elsewhere – it has been suggested that Zaidi specifically purchased an Iraqi pair of shoes for his task – but that hasn’t dampened demand for his products. Meanwhile, a Saudi businessman by the name of Mohammed Makhafa reportedly offered $10 million for just one of Zaidi’s shoes. Unfortunately for the imprisoned journalist, the sale cannot be concluded: his coveted loafers are said to have been destroyed in an effort to determine whether they carried an explosive charge.

 

They did, of course: it consisted not of dynamite but of accumulated anger and resentment. Not one man’s, but those of almost an entire nation. After quipping “I don’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole”, Bush told journalists on the flight out of Iraq: “I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq.” Did anyone say it represented a broad movement? It may have triggered off one, what with thousands of Iraqis brandishing shoes and flinging them as US convoys. But it certainly symbolized a subjugated nation’s supreme contempt for the man who exacerbated its woes and has the blood of a million or more Iraqis on his hands.

 

I can only wonder whether one of my favourite contemporary British poets, Adrian Mitchell, bore witness to the Zaidi-instigated poetry in motion before he died last Saturday at the age of 76. A lifelong pacifist, Mitchell believed that “Most people ignore poetry/ because/ most poetry ignores people”, and he sought successfully to shift the paradigm. He was responsible, over the decades, for innumerable instances of delightful verse, but a sombrely poignant example that springs to mind was his elegy to a very different kind of anti-war protester:

 

“On November 2nd 1965/ In the multi-coloured multiminded/ United beautiful States of terrible America/ Norman Morrison set himself on fire/ outside the Pentagon./ He was thirty-one, he was a Quaker … He did it in Washington where everyone could see/ because/ people were being set on fire/ in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see. … This is what Norman Morrison did./ He poured petrol over himself./ He burned. He suffered./ He died … He simply burned away his clothes,/ His passport, his pink-tinted skin,/ put on a skin of flame/ and became/ Vietnamese.”

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