The Shoe Thrower

Just before we start, this episode discusses war, casualties of war and torture. It may not be suitable for young or sensitive listeners. This is Radio Lab, I'm Lathif Dosser and today we have a story from our reporter, Sara Kari. Um, okay, so a couple months ago, I got in the studio to do this interview that I'd been trying to make happen for close to a year. Hello. Hi, Sarah. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. I'd been trying to connect with this Iraqi guy in Baghdad, but things were not really going to plan. So we are waiting. Hmm. It turns out my interview, he was taking his time having a little tea after his lunch and then after about 45 minutes, he shows up. Yes, Ahlan. Ahlan. Oh, Sarah, did you speak Arabic? No, no, no. You don't speak Arabic? Only a little bit. We fumble through, mostly me, doing the fumbling with the help of Sarah Mace, Iraqi journalist Mace Al-Bayaat. Mace. Ahlan, was there any of you? Ahlan, big. But then we have one hour, right, Sara? So I was hoping to talk to you for longer because I want to get lots of details about your life and tell your story and I don't want to miss any details. I have a little bit of. Okay, I hope you have another question or a new question. You have a new question. It was pretty clear that he was sick of talking about the one thing that I really wanted to ask him about. And if you're feeling frustrated, just tell me. Don't worry, I won't tell you. Which is what? Well, okay, so maybe let's just start with introduce yourself and tell me why you're famous. My name is Muntadar Azzadi. And I threw my shoes at George W. Bush. Oh, yeah. Do you remember him? Yeah, I remember that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, just in case for anyone who doesn't remember, let me just do a quick refresher. Okay, yeah. It's December 14th, 2008. More than five years into the war in Iraq. And George W. Bush makes a surprise visit to Baghdad where he's giving a press conference. Thank you for your kind invitation. Next to him is Nouriel Amaliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq. And I'm looking forward to some food. Now, officially, Bush is there to sign an agreement, shake some hands. Leaving the next president with a stable foundation for the future. As he's on his way out at the end of a second term. Yeah, but he's also clearly trying to make this point that in his eyes, with the conclusion of these agreements, it is decisively on his way to being one. The war has been a success. At the end, he says, thank you in Arabic. Shukranazir. And then. Holy. So you see this guy just sort of pops out of the crowd and I'm nowhere and throws a shoe and George Bush dodges it. And then he throws a second one and Maliki tries to swap that one out of the way. Yeah. And then it was just chaos. He's tackled to the ground, they're dragging him out, and then the-- ends. Yeah. It's so quick. I know, it's so quick. And it blows up, I mean. The extraordinary things took place. You know, it's basically top of the news across the globe. And the clip. It's all over the internet. Paul at the shoe heard round the world. It's really as viral as something can be in 2008. Yeah. But even today, I feel like with most people, if you're like "Hey, that shoe thorough guy," they're like, "Oh, yeah." I remember it feeling silly. Right, I mean, and definitely there were some, like, how dare he kind of reactions, but generally. Nope. Oh!. here in the US. It's slightly painful. He was as much like late-night show fodder as it was news. Shoot me once. Shoot's on you. And for so many people, their main reaction was like. Pretty quick, moving pretty quick. George LV Bush was weirdly agile there, like props to him. He was quick on his feet, I don't remember that. And he did a little side to side. Looks like we finally found something President Bush is good at. Dodgeball! And you know, for me, when this happened, I was 14 years old. I was growing up in a very Muslim immigrant community, going to Islamic school. You know, in this post-9/11 war on terror era, very aware of like how so many people had died in Iraq. And like a lot of people, I had a very intuitive understanding of the anger and frustration that this guy was expressing. But at the same time, I'll admit, like, I just sort of thought he was like a random crazy guy. You know, I think there was that much to it. Yeah, yeah. It feels like a rash move made in anger. But fast forward to today, with everything that is happening in the world right now, and things that the US is contributing to in Gaza, in Lebanon, and now in Iran, it feels like we're in another never-ending sort of out-of-control war. Very unpopular war. Very unpopular right. I just find myself flashing back to that era. Yeah. And specifically to that guy. And so a while back, I just looked him up. And the first thing I learned was that he was a journalist, like an Iraqi journalist. Oh, I didn't know that. Same. And suddenly, I was like, oh, okay. Like this act of throwing a shoe, I mean, it's not what anybody is supposed to do, but it's especially not what journalists are supposed to do. Right, that's right, yeah. Right, you know, like even for us, like we're not supposed to protest or advocate, or even express opinions or emotions that could be seen as political. It's like literally in our job description here, yeah. Right, exactly. And for good reason, like the reason is we want people to trust what we say, the coverage we do that we're not spinning it in one way or another. We don't have a thumb on the scale. Right, no, totally. So I guess to see him not just like express his opinion, but to actually throw something at the president. Yeah. I just kept thinking like what exactly got him to that point? You know, what happened there? And what does he think of that moment now? I can smoking some cigars. Uh, I think so, as long as you stay close to the mic. My smoke without a voice, okay, don't worry. Okay, okay. And once we sort of got warmed up, actually this one interview turned into several. Like we ended up talking for it. I think something like eight hours. Wow. And there was so much about much other what happened that I had. And I think most people have no clue about. And also this act at the center of it, this act of throwing the shoe. The more I learned about it, the more it became really layered and fascinating. And weirdly, kind of perfect, huh? Okay, just to back up a little here, when did you decide to become a journalist? And why did you want to become a journalist? He grew up with big imagination. Growing up as a kid in Iraq, his mom would read to him every night before bed. Which was very inspiring to him. And he fell in love with stories and books. He used to visit any neighbors or any family members who have a library and he would just read all of the books that he can lay his hands on. And in particular, as he got older, and Saddam Hussein was at the height of his dictatorship, he started to read the work of journalists and political poets, who wrote about the plight of ordinary people under repression. Then in 1990, Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, and in reaction to the U.S. and its allies, plays sanctions on Iraq. The stakes are high. Iraq is already a rich and powerful country. And of course, the impact of that is mostly felt by the people of Iraq. It was like a counselor, eating your bones, eating your soul by some estimates, over half a million children died. A man-tother was just 14 years old at the time. We had three brothers and three sisters and his mother. So he started lining up at construction sites just looking for any job that he could get. He would work from the morning till the evening, and all of the income he would get out of it is literally to buy two bags of bread. And then, 9/11 happens at this hour. George Lee Bush. American and coalition forces are in the early days. مملكة مملكة عبارك قبل أن صدم حسين حد يقل مملكة عبارك من المملكة عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك حسنًا عبارك و أتفال طالع من الهاتف ركامه يمكنك أن تتحدث عن طريق المدينة في المدينة في المدينة في المدينة و بعد أن يتحدث عن طريق المدينة في المدينة في المدينة في حارات و كان يتحدث عن طريق المدينة بالله يا رب يمكنك أن تتحدث عن طريق المدينة و كان يتحدث عن طريق المدينة في المدينة في المدينة المتحدث عنه هو أنه يتحدث عن كل هذه المتحدثة. لا يمكنك أن تأبره. لا يمكنك أن تأبره. لا يمكنك أن تأبره. يمكنك أن تأبره من المتحدثة. لا يمكنك أن تأبره. ولكن المتحدثة من المتحدثة like Europe and America. هذه المتحدثة لا يمكنك أن تأبره. المتحدثة لا يمكنك أن تأبره. I really wanted all of this world to hear and understand the pain that people are going through. So finally one day. I was in the tech shower. and I talked to myself like what do I do? I need to do something. Yes. and that is when the idea pops into his head. I should throw a shoe at your shoe and it will push. Yes, it works. It works. OK, that's great idea. And I kept thinking about it every single day. Every day when I was going to work, I see him on TV, I say I swear. As soon as I see you, I'm going to throw my shoe at you. I don't think I fully understand how did you even get the idea to throw a shoe? I understand you were angry and all this was building up over a long period of time. But where does the idea to throw a shoe come from? From my mind, my even from Shia Tini. That loosely translates to mischief by the way. No, but there's so many ways to do Shia Tini, right? Like you could have screamed at him, you could have waved a flag, you could have asked him a really pointed question, you could have demanded that he apologize, but why shoe? Exactly, that's good point. I want to speak in Arabic to explain my idea, exactly. A key reason was the ultimate gift that you can give in the Arab culture. The whole world is roses, so it's a huge thing. And that is why, Montagar, he said, I wanted to do something completely opposite of roses. The complete opposite of that is actually what people wear in their feet, which is the shoe. This is a thing in Muslim cultures, but probably a lot of cultures around the world. Shoes are unclean, you don't bring them into the house, especially in Arab cultures. It's an insult to show someone at the bottom of your shoe. It's like here's what I think of you, you're beneath me. Exactly. For our culture, it's by far the most degrading thing to do to somebody. For example, our mothers, then you're the slippers on our children in our culture. And maybe in your culture as well, definitely. So that is where it came from. And Montagar also told me, you know, look, during the occupation, there were two types of resistance in Iraq, one which was the armed resistance, like militias that had cropped up, fighting the American troops. And then on the other hand, you had the intellectual resistance. And I felt that I want to be part of the intellectual resistance and hence why I decided to throw the shoe. I mean, throwing a shoe is not intellectual resistance. Like, did you realize you were crossing a line beyond just intellectual resistance into something else? You cannot put yourself in my shoe to know what happened in my mind in this moment. I'm actually stunned by your reaction. Because I just told you that half a million children have been killed. Many people have suffered for years and years. And you were just listening and you just acted like, it's okay, it's kind of like, it's understandable. Let me just translate for you. I just want to say, Montagar, it's not that. It's not that I don't think. I'm not obliged to kind of get a reaction according to your Western standard. Let me just please let me finish because actually he said a lot. He said, yes, I am a journalist. I've been documenting a lot. Whether it's video, audio, written pieces, no one has listened. No one has done anything. No one was a prosecutor. The Americans did not even get my stories. I wanted people to once stop and pause and ask, who is Zahra? What happened to Iraqis? Who are the people who were suffering? By this action, which was very intentional action, I made the word ask the question. Why this shoe was a throne? Hence why it's been almost 18 years and he's still doing all of these interviews to tell the world why he threw a shoe. If anyone was doing just a question that could embarrass the American president, this is not going to be enough. Because that question would be washed away. No, I totally understand. And with other, the reason I'm asking so many questions about this is because this is why I wanted to talk to you honestly. The reason I thought of you, one night, almost two years ago, I was reading the news about Gaza. And I was feeling so angry. And I was like, in bed, I was trying to go to sleep. And I was just so, so angry. And I'm a journalist. I don't know if you have this, but here in the US, there's a lot of pressure on journalists. I was feeling like being a journalist was having handcuffs on. And I swear to God, I don't know why, but in this moment, I thought of you. I thought of what we did. And that's why I want to understand where that idea came from. There are so many different options you had, and you picked one specific option, right, which is, I'm going to throw a shoe. In some moments, I actually thought, maybe I should be like an armed resistance. For example, one time I was called by someone who told me that American soldiers raided the house and then they raped his wife and his sisters. So I went there, and I talked to the woman who were weeping, and they covered their faces because of the shame. The tears were wetting their veil. I was very angry. And actually, as soon as I walked out from the house, I saw a Humvee, and Americans were standing just outside that Humvee. Smoking, and laughing, and joking. That's true story. And I thought, honestly, if I could have a weapon, I probably would have killed them. Why did you decide not to do that? Because for me, these crimes of seeing and of cover, it's not enough to prosecute one soldier or kill one soldier. Or couple of them. At the end of the day, those are just people who are following the command. The most important thing is to go to the head of the snake, the person who is giving the orders and who actually allowed and enabled this disaster to happen. When you were thinking about what to do to George W. Bush, did you think of any other options? أتمنى لتأكد من أشياء أن تشاهدون أكثر على أكثر. لا يوجد أكثر شيء على من الحداء ترسلها إليه لا، I never thought of throwing anything but a shoe and I tell you why if I have killed the president of the United States he will become a hero he will be celebrated as a victim and as a matter it's so interesting because it's like you had to find the perfect sweet spot between the two options right one is the completely non-violent option which is like keep reporting or something ask a really tough question or something and then the other side is like do something that's actually violent and this is like somewhere in the middle and I find that very interesting it's not quite violent although maybe I don't know maybe it's more on the violent side but it's like it's somewhere in between the two options See, it's actually interesting you say about that fine line between violence and non-violent so for example, Bosconi he's Italian Prime Minister in 2009 someone is a vase at him he's actually a small statue but anyway oh this is after you 2009 2009, December maybe yeah okay and he ended up bleeding oh do you see this picture? I can't see it too clearly can you describe it? okay, wait a minute it's of the Italian Prime Minister and his face is full of a blood despite him being a corrupt Prime Minister people were sympathizing by him because he bled Bosconi was sympathizing with the fact that as an old man, he was a bleeding to me it's hard to it's kind of hard to swallow okay so tell me, Mandada, what happens next in the story? it sounds like you have this idea in like 2005 I think which is like three years before you actually do it, right? yes what happens in the meantime? hmm, no, I kept chasing Bosch in multiple occasions oh really? and I tried to attend his press conference multiple times and I did not succeed I even one time I wanted to go to service shape in order to attend the press conference in Egypt in Egypt yes and it didn't happen and so I kept I kept pursuing him and pursuing George W Bush like how did you do that? how did you figure out where he was going to be and try to track him down? I am a journalist so every single time I know there's a press conference I try to follow it and interesting enough that incident that when I threw the shoe at him I didn't even know he was going to be there no way wait okay so that's interesting story month other told me that in December of 2008 one day he's at work in the Baghdadian newsroom it's the end of the day time for him to get up to go home I think it's a class that's enough but by six o'clock one of his colleagues turns to him and says we need someone like one correspondent and two cameramen to go to cover a press conference like can you go cover this because George W Bush George W Bush is going to be there what do you think? what's your reaction? I'm shocked I'm freeze he asked his colleague to repeat himself we know Gally George W Bush like are you sure? and then he turns to this other reporter and I said you need to go with the two cameramen like you didn't want to go initially a month other? no no no really? yeah in fact him and other told me the next thing that he did was he got in his car and he went home, huh? now of course we all know how the day is going to end but the dramatic story of how it all actually goes down is coming after the break [music] hey I'm Latif this is Radio Lab and we are back with Sarekari yeah so when we left off Montagher had just found out that George W Bush was going to be at a press conference in Baghdad and instead of volunteering to go cover it he high-tailed it back home and I ran home because I was wearing a brand new shoes from Beirut that I bought from Beirut Lebanon but you didn't want to throw I want to get the dirty ass and the ugly ass one [music] I covered many masochers [music] by the Americans before he's so he's really thought this through oh yeah yeah like every last detail what did the shoes look like the ones you picked out? [clears throat] but since then it was very comfortable one and it was quite heavy nice [laughs] it was kind of like medical shoe you know um like like an orthopedic type of shoe like yes I bought it from Egypt okay what color? black okay but size you want to know the size? what size? my shoes same number of George W Bush president same size how did you know that? he's 43 president of United States [laughs] 43 so your size is 43 and he's the 43rd president that's exactly what you're trying to say [laughs] okay it was completely coincident [music] anyway as he was driving over to the press conference month other said he just stopped for a second [music] right on the banks of the Tigris River it was sunset so I stood by the river and I was just staring at the river at the sunset and I saw to myself this could be the last sunset I would ever see like I might there's going to be secret service there like there's a good chance I get shot and don't make it out alive so he's willing to die to do this? yeah were you thinking through a game plan in your mind? it was very simple I just wanted to throw my shoe at him and that's it can you just walk me through what happened step by step? are you curious? I'm very curious [laughs] I think you know the answer to that question yes so here goes he entered this area called the green zone that was an area where most of the Saddam Hussein palaces were it's where the Americans were based pretty locked down when I passed all of the checkpoint I saw my colleague there from the Baradagia TV station and they were kind of like oh okay you came after all no no no I'm coming here as a citizen I'm just coming here to watch and he handed them his press credentials his ID and when he entered the press conference conference room in the building of prime ministry castle somehow he was the first person in there he looked around the whole was quite massive I saw all of the Iraqi and American flags podium I saw the red carpet and Al-Qasaf Karasi in the rows of chairs he was trying to figure out where to sit in the beginning he went and sat on the first row but then he thought if I can just throw my shoe at him then I'll actually add better be a little bit behind why because I was too close because if I was on the front row and I throw the shoe then I will be shot dead straight away uh but if I am on the third row they will think before shooting at me as people were filing in once popping out of my chest he could feel his body catching up to the reality of what he was about to do excitement, fear, what is it? it's men both and then right before they all took their seats لذلك قد يدخلوا من المنجلون وهم قد يدخلوا لنا all of these orders و it was quite degrading فتشكم بإديه و they say you know what you're going to have to even be searched and when he went up to get searched لانه لجانه شخص و there were two bodyguards there was this one guard who was wearing a pilot suit and the pilot one, he was extremely rude after he was done searching somebody إلا أن يصل الآخر شي يضرب على مؤخرته ي would literally smack them on their bottoms و would slap us and say off you go go wow والله دعيت رب العالمين تلك اللح و من المتذر at this point و كانت مخلوة و if he got this guy he just didn't even know how he was going to react أنه سبحان الله قد يدخل و يدخلوا قد يدخلوا و when he's getting searched هذا الحداء نزاعتها من رجلي و when he put them back on سويتها مثل شحا I wore them like slippers because I wanted to be able to take them off easily I was laughing inside because I thought if only he knew that this is my actual weapon مقاخلت نفوت yeah wow okay فيني when month other sat back down شوي it was time دخل جوز ويبوش جوز ويبوش حوطين Thank you for your kind invitation بنش بجوز ويبوش جوز ويبوش ي start saying أنا جاي جو عان I am quite hungry الدك عشاقية عشاقية من شاء الله He was just thinking that the only thing that the president is going to taste is this truth when George Bush is giving the speech are you listening to what he's saying No no no I don't know what he said I'm in another world اقر قرآن اقرشها بتين اقر قرآن I was reciting Quran I was trying to do the whole ceremonies as if like I am leaving this world oh wow He told me it felt like like a very nasty flu and in this feverish haze he heard this voice inside and this voice in his head was saying yeah me like look at your life your chief correspondent you have your own program people love you you have a house you have a car your future is wide open do you really have to do this go a little okay and I almost backed off and I saw what am I doing but suddenly war is not over it was like he woke up and then I was talking to myself and saying if I back off now I would call myself a coward every day for the rest of my life if I lose myself respect I don't care if if the rest of the world was respect me and so it is the size of when George W Bush neared the end of his speech clearly George W Bush was a practicing a lot to say thank you in Arabic when he finished his world in an effort to be at least somewhat honorable and not take him by surprise he shouted this is my good bike is to hear your dog how far did you go? I never thought actually of saying that but I just said it in that moment oh you didn't plan to say that no no no how bad of an insult is it to call someone a dog is it a very bad insult? yes it's very bad and George W Bush when he saw I lifted my eyes I could see his face when completely hill very pale and he froze and then I threw the shoe at him and he bent forward and the shoe came above him he was taking the other shoe was that always the plan to throw both shoes? no my original plan was just one shoe because I thought that as soon as I'm going to stand up and throw one shoe I'm going to be shot dead but then when I threw the first one and there was nothing I thought okay it's time for me to actually do the second side so I threw the second one were you surprised at how quickly he dodged the shoes? I was mainly focusing on my own actions and I kept releasing all of the anger from all of the stories of coverage for all of the anger that I was building up inside me for years and years wearing him and his father and I kept saying that this is for all of the Iraqis they've killed, they've raped, they've affected so I'm malish actually release all of that in one time the one who stopped me it was an Iraqi journalist but then after that, they all gathered on top of me then I was taken by the security of the Iraqi Prime Minister we'll be back with the rest of the story after this quick break all right so we ended with you getting tackled to the ground for most people obviously this is the end of the story but for month-other it was not the bodyguards gathered on me they were beating me really really bad they broke my teeth, they punched me in the eye and then they were shouting "oh he's a terrorist, he's a terrorist" an Iraqi court sentenced him to three years in prison they stripped me completely and just kept me with my underwear he claims he was tortured pretty horrifically doused with cold water, shocked with electricity, beaten with iron bars Malik is a staff, kept telling me that people are resentful about what I did and that people hated me they took me in solitude confinement and they locked me there for three months three months every single day was way longer than any days that I've ever spent in my entire life on one of these days my mother was sitting in his cell I just looked at my cell's door which had two holes only, so there was barely any light coming in from it then suddenly I just saw zahra she came and she sat on the bed I knew it was zahra because her mother gave me some of her pictures when I was reporting on the story and she just looked at me and then she disappeared i was just surprised he knows that this might be sound like he was crazy but this is actually what happened he told me the next thing he remembered was two officers entering his cell two high ranking officers from Maliki's office and they were asking me why I threw the shoe on George W Bush and I just said it's because they killed zahra says that some of the guards that are sympathetic to him began to lead me some information about what was going on while he was in prison, because outside the shoothro struck a nerve. In the days after his arrest, people in multiple cities in Iraq poured out into the streets. In the news footage, you can see sees of people waving shoes in the air. And not just in Iraq or in the Middle East, but in Latin America, Europe, in the United States. I was just watching this really striking footage of these American activists throwing shoes at an effigy of bush in front of the White House, but back to him and the other. After nine months in prison, he ended up getting released. And by this point, like, a monument had been put up in his honor, one country had offered him a medal, and another country had offered him a citizenship. I'm pretty sure several people have also offered their daughter's hand in marriage to him. No way. Yeah, someone in Saudi Arabia reportedly bid $10 million for the shoes. Oh my God. Although those allegedly were destroyed. Wow. And with others' impact on the culture, it didn't even end there, because don't make a head of it. Premiere Wednesday started in the few years following. There's many people used the shoes. A speech on economics interrupted with the new fashionable protest throwing of a shoe. There's a rash of copycat shoe throwings at world leaders. Really? Yeah. The latest target of a shoe thrower is a one's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejah. You have shoe yet again. This one directed at the prime minister of India. John Howard, prime minister of Australia. Hillary Clinton was one I didn't even know about. What was that about? That somebody throwing something at me? And truly, I'm not even joking. This is scratching the surface. There's a great Wikipedia entry of all the different shoe throwings. And I actually didn't realize that there was this much of a response to the shoe at the time until I started reporting on this, which did make me wonder. Like, before a month other, there was so much protest against the Iraq war already. Like, what was it about this act that made it take on the life of its own? Yeah. And, you know, there are the obvious reasons. Like, the high-profileness of it. The fact that it was, like, directly at George W. Bush. The symbolism of the shoe that we talked about earlier. The fact that there were so many cameras in the room in this arrow where things kind of newly could go viral. Even just the timing of it all. Like, coming at this moment in the war where people were sick of what was going on. Yeah. So, it does seem like this perfect storm of things. But I do still find myself thinking back to the conversation that month other and I had earlier about that Goldilocks space between violence and nonviolence. It's really something I don't think I ever thought about or even had the words for it before I talk to him. Yeah, I'm just curious how you would describe that or what kind of name you would give that. Yeah. So, I went looking for somebody who could help me think through it. Like, what's the label we put on the shoebox? I actually don't even know how to articulate it. Well, quasi-nonviolence methods that include the use of very low levels of. I'm not really sure what the term would be. Sure. But I think there is that niche space. So, this is Jemila Rikib. I am the executive director of the Albert Einstein institution, which is an organization that studies and promotes the use of nonviolent action in conflict. And she says that niche space actually does have a rich history. There's this long history of people throwing objects at political leaders, at invaders, at occupiers. There's things like throwing eggs. Tomatoes, probably. Tomatoes, potatoes. Potatoes somehow feels more violent. And eggs and tomatoes. You know what? That's a tricky one. I think turnips, there's historical presidents for turnips. It goes back to ancient Rome. No. Where people disagreed with the policies of a particular governor and actually threw turnips at him. That sounds painful. Heavy root vegetables. Yeah, that sounds more painful, for sure. Yes, exactly. And lots of modern-day examples come to mind, too. We're at about, like, pie throwing. Glitter. Glitter. Oh, glitter. I mean, it's really hard to get off your skin. Didn't someone throw a milkshake at someone at some point? Yes, at Nigel Farage. Right. A far-right leader in the UK. Actually, important to note here also is the case of someone throwing the sandwich. Oh, I feel like I heard of that one. That was in DC, is that right? Yes, at Border Patrol. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah. Part of the power of all of these, Jamila says is. It's a very memorable moment. The sheer spectacle of it, but also. It shows that you can be anywhere at any time and someone can throw a object at you. No matter how powerful you are. Yeah, it's like one thing I think about with the shoe throw is how it ever so briefly flattens the hierarchy between one's father and George Shelby Bush, you know? Like, it's like, it's just. They're no longer a citizen and a president or whatever. It's like, it's just like a dude throwing a shoe and dude dodging a shoe. Right, exactly. It's just like all the roles fall away. Which one, you consider that one of them has the might of the world's most powerful military behind them and the other is a disenfranchised journalist in a war-torn country. It's kind of an extraordinary thing that they could even find themselves on the same plane. Yeah. Although I will say, it didn't come without a cost because when with other tried to get back to his life as a journalist. I cannot find any devastation to work with them. He couldn't find anyone to hire him. Why not? Because there are more devastation in Middle East, friends with American and friends with the Iraqi government. He claimed that in order to avoid upsetting either the Iraqi government or the American government, all of these Iraqi channels basically blacklisted him. Which, you know, is a claim that's very hard to prove. Yeah. But from multiple journalists that I've talked to who knew the media landscape around this time, it's definitely plausible. But do you think part of it is that they stop taking you seriously as a journalist? That they didn't trust you to. I don't know, be neutral and not be an activist? No, no, no, not that's the reason. Not that reason. That's not reason. I mean, it was clear that many journalists were genuinely upset by what he did. Everybody come out there for the first time. Even if you just go back to the first moments after the shoe throw. The other journalists in the room that day, specifically some of the Iraqi journalists, were immediately apologizing directly to Bush. Journalists here were very apologetic. They were, you know, they were said, "This doesn't represent the Iraqi people." But that's what happens in free societies, where people try to draw attention to themselves. When I saw it, I felt embarrassed that a journalist would have done something like that. So this is Mace Al-Baya. You've heard her already translating my conversations with Montaude. She is an Iraqi-British journalist, because this just wasn't professional. I mean, I don't think two journalists can disagree about that. I actually called her up after we were done with all of our interviews with Montaude. I think it was just hitting me that you. You have been through a lot of the same stuff as Montaude. Yeah. Like him, she was on the ground. I've been where Montaude was. I've been in the green zone. Reporting on the invasion as it was happening for multiple international news outlets. And even though she wasn't one of the Iraqi journalists in the room that day, she told me that when she saw it, I was shocked about it. No one's saying could have done that. I guess, yeah, tell me a little bit more about when I reached out to you and said, "Oh, I want to interview this guy. I don't know what, 18 years later." What did you think? What did you force your reaction to that? I was surprised, because out of all of the stories on Iraq, he would not come to my mind. It's like, you're like, there's so much more to say. What? Why him? I was genuinely surprised by your quest, but going through the interview, I got why you were interested in him. And you know what? It actually put him in a different light. How so? How did it put him in a different light for you? Because I always thought that it was just someone who was absolutely crazy and that it wasn't. spontaneous that this happened. But when I heard the story and heard about the thought process behind it, it took me back in time. I had a big flashback. Back in 2008, Mesa had been reporting on the Iraq War for five years. Like in a quiet day, it would be probably 50 people killed. And she was reporting those numbers day in and day out. But she says, she started to notice that as the years were on, it became less and less sexy, because obviously, you know, other things happened in the world fair enough. And then instead of taking a headline, it became the second big story, the third big story. And then suddenly it became page three. So she said in some sense, she understood how much other felt, because even though people were seeing her reports, they just didn't have the same power anymore. People got used to it. And I understand it. I work in the news business. I understand how how people are wired. It's like, okay, we know about this. What's the difference between what happened last month and what's happening today? Nothing. People move on. It's a number. It's statistics. It's a figure. But to me, they're not numbers. They are people. I probably even know their names or people I might be related one way or another to them. So when I had the interview with you and him, I got his frustration. I got one. He's like no one cares, really no one cares. And he just wanted to grab attention. It changed my mind about him. I respected him more as a person who actually really wanted to make a big statement. Do you have a sense that, like, I mean, obviously he was expressing a lot of his personal anger and frustration. It seems very clear that he inspired other protests. But did him throwing the shoe have a real measurable impact, like any rock on the on the war or whatever? Yeah. So yeah, I mean, just deeply obsessed with the effectiveness question. When I called Jamila, I actually asked her that also. And he was interesting to watch her brain work through it. I think that it's more interesting how it fit into the larger puzzle of what's happening in the rest of society. She said, what you need to do is look at the shoe throw in the context of the larger struggle. In this case, the anti-occupation struggle and ask, how did this act affect not just George Bush and with other, but how did this act affect all the characters involved in this struggle? Yes. So like, for example, the military. Did it make it more difficult for them to carry out their policies, their military operations? Did it persuade them in any way? Yeah. Or say like the people of Iraq? What impact did it have on ordinary Iraqis? Did it empower them for Iraqi journalists? Did it make it harder for journalists to do their job in the future? Or even for people outside of Iraq? Did it bring more people to the cause? I'm curious. I mean, I don't know the answer to any of this. And honestly, I don't know either. I mean, in some cases, it felt hard to know definitively how a certain group was affected. And on balance, I just came out of the conversation feeling like it's just hard to imagine how this one moment changed all that much. But it did precisely what it set out to do, which is undermine the narrative that Iraqis were welcoming U.S. forces as liberators. Jamila reminded me that ending the occupation was never the goal of the shoot throw. It was always about getting people to pay attention. And in that sense, it's hard to deny the legacy of this thing. Do you know? I have more than a hundred K followers in Twitter. There's many people from America, okay? Yeah. Sister Dei from America. He said, "Montazar, we need you. America needs you. We will have an pile of shoes at your disposal. Please come through our government and your shoes." Every time the American people said, "Please come to throw Biden. Please come to throw Trump." No, I know. And I feel like I see this on the internet. Remember that dude that threw his shoes at George W. Bush? Like every couple of days someone thinks of you. I'm a big fan of so many comedians with the funniest thing that's ever happened on television in my life. Was that. Someone thinks of you, someone he and hacks the shoot throw on social media. Oh, that's funny. Someone just sent me a picture of someone on Instagram that made a ring, etched into the ring is like a panorama with others throwing the shoe. People are still thinking about and referencing this moment. Is it on George W. Bush's Wikipedia page? Oh, good question. I wonder if that is enough of that. I mean, I will say, like, it is one of the things that George W. Bush still gets asked about. Mr. President, before Donald Trump, there weren't a lot of funny clips. Like, I just found a clip of George W. Bush going on Jimmy Kimmel just a few years ago. And the first thing that Jimmy Kimmel asks him about is this clip, yeah. You have very good reflexes. And my guess is that Laura had done that before? Oh, it is on George W. Is it? Oh, no. Yeah, here's what it says. Is it a section? It's not a subheading. It's like a sub-subheading. Yeah, but it's like a little section. This is 2008 Baghdad shoe throwing incident. The word shoe comes up 14 times on this page. It's in multiple places on the Wikipedia page. So, like, you know, one could argue it has become a small part of the legacy of George W. Bush. Yeah. And even beyond that, honestly, I mean, the most powerful thing to me about the shoe throw is that it's this funny-looking Trojan horse where initially you're like, oh, ha ha, that was crazy. Boom. Next thing you know, we're talking about messed up stuff that happened in Iraq, you know? Like, to me, that's what journalism is supposed to do. It's supposed to create an opening to talk about these things, especially in a world where I don't think most of us Americans at least are eager to revisit all of the dark stuff that our country did during that time. I'm sorry, Sarah, Bob. I think I'm going to have to go by now. You have to go. Okay. Back in the interview with Muntather by this time, we were in our third sitting mace had to go. Maddie, are you okay taking over? I mean, we can try, you want to give it a try and we'll see how it goes. Yeah, yeah. That'd be great. And my producer in Baghdad, Maddie Mdoida took over for translation. Might have to like share your buds. Now, Maddie M, it so happens in addition to helping me report parts of this story is a documentary filmmaker who is making a film about Muntather. I think at one point he said to me, it's a shame. I wasn't like a counter pillar, like a counter pillar with 40 pairs of shoes. I would have just kept throwing them like one after the other. And when she first met him back in 2018, he'd gone from trying to find a job as a journalist to trying to run for parliament in Iraq. Can you tell me about him running for office? Yeah. So there was a day when I was in Iraq and I went to a market and I was just pulling people off the street. And I just said, like, hey, did you know that Muntather Zadee is running for parliament? What do you think about that? Remember, there was one woman that was like, it's like a rough translation of a phrase, but she's like, oh, I would carry him and his shoes on my head, which is like an honor statement. She said, if I have a son, I'm going to name him Muntather. So Muntather's reputation did get him a lot of attention in the election. But I think the shoe throw only took him so far, because come election day, he did get some votes, but not enough to win the seat. On some level, it does feel like for a lot of the world, the image of him did just get paused on him throwing the shoe. How about now? What are you doing these days? What's happening in your day-to-day life? I'm just to write something in social media about the corruptions. I'm following the news for the dumb drum. What happened in our club? He does a lot of political commentating, cooking at home, playing the piano, which he does a lot, lighting candles. His favorite songs are Gardina and Vanilla. And I'm studying now. Oh. Today, I have a new specialised interior design. Interior design? And university. Oh wow. Yes. What makes you want to do that? I have more skills. It seems like he's also left the door open to maybe running for office again, but yeah, I would say like the shoe throw was, it didn't improve his life in the way I think a lot of people expected. No, the thing I want to know is like, do you miss being a journalist? Yes, he's trying to say it's worth it. It's worth it? Yes. Why was it worth it? The text he paid was worth it for what he did, even though he lost a lot, for example, like working in the field of media, which he loves even up until this day. Yeah. This makes me think about, so as I was telling you, [BLANK_AUDIO] on the other. The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I've been having all of this anger and frustration about things that are happening in the world that I feel like I can't change. And I don't know what to do with it. You know? Yes, I get you. You get me? I get you. If you do like me, maybe you will without a job. Yeah, if you want a career change, you know what to do. I get you. I don't know. If I'm being honest with myself, I do wonder sometimes if I should continue being a journalist or maybe I should leave journalism and go do something else like be an activist or work in politics or, you know, something different. No, don't leave journalism. I don't want you to leave your work, but your work should be for a cause and you can help to support in one way or another. Mental health told me he still thinks that journalists do actually have real power to cause change, especially in today's world and especially in the US. He's talking about you in the third person and he said yes, because she has more freedom of speech, more freedom of movement, more freedom of influence. And there is a difference because you're in the heart of decision making in America. The thing he said to me was like, look, within the constraints of my life, I was trying to figure out what worked for me, how I could make a difference. Essentially, he was like, you're in very different circumstances. Everybody's case is different. Find something that works for you the way that throwing a shoe worked for me. But I guess the thing I was wondering as much as anything else was when he found that thing and did it, did it work for him? Did it actually help him as a person? You know, when we were talking before, you were telling me about the anger and the frustration that was building up inside of you, right? Like that you had about Zahra or seeing that bombing. I guess I just want to know, did throwing the shoe help with any of those feelings? Yes, of course, it was an expression of my feelings. He told me he does still, of course, carry around a lot of those memories from the war. When I think of Zahra, I feel grief. I was thinking the other day when I was talking to you, if she was alive, she could be a student today or married or something. But at the same time, he told me this other story too, when I saw Zahra's mom at the house, she told me that when I threw the shoe, she felt like I got the literal translation would be like, I got my daughter's rights, but I think it's like, I guess it would be the equivalent of revenge. Revenge, revenge, revenge. It's something along lines of justice revenge. No, no, revenge, revenge, revenge. Okay, I think that's all the questions that I have, preem until then. Are you sure? Yeah, I think so. This episode was reported by Zahra Kari with help from Mariam Dwaydar. Translation by Mace Albaya and Mariam Dwaydar, it was produced by Zahra Kari, sound design contributed by Zahra Kari with mixing from Jeremy Bloom and fact-checking by Emily Krieger and Hibba El Orbani. If you want to know more about Mediam's work and believe me when I say her documentary about Montather is going to be amazing, keep an eye out for it, or Mace's incredible journalism about Iraq, I will link to both of those and their social media in the episode description. Special thanks also to Azmat Khan and Mustafa Saleem. If you like this episode and want to hear more deep dives into the Bush era war on terror, check out our episode 60 Words or our series The Other Latif. To find those, search for 60 Words Radio Lab or The Other Latif Radio Lab on your favorite streaming platform. Okay, and just before we go, if you liked what you heard, you want more, you want in on that sweet, sweet radio lab bonus content, you are in luck. We have a newsletter, usually comes out on Saturdays. There's all kinds of things in that newsletter, recommendations from the staff. It just random things we like that don't fit in a podcast format, like one thing we love that we put in there was a rejection letter we received from Werner Hurtog that was especially floored and hilarious. Stuff we have coming up, like the live show that correspondent Dr. Vier Mietra and executive editor, Thorin Wheeler just did together. Yeah, it's just fun stuff. Subscribe at radiolab.org/newsletter. Um, yeah. Hi, I'm Joan Kuhl and I'm from Brooklyn and here's the fact credits. Radio Lab is hosted by Lulimela and Latif Masa. Thorin Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Wolters. Dylan Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Blue, W. 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