Years ago when I worked at a San Francisco fabric store, there was an Egyptian Jewish guy by the name of Raul whom I worked with who taught me many Arabic cuss words. We would jokingly cuss at each other and call each other horrible names. Then one day when I said something to him, he jokingly took off one of his loafer shoes like he was going to hit me with it and I would do the same thing. Until now I never realized the full significance of this with the shoes, which is that in Arab culture the person throwing the shoes or hitting someone with a shoe, is telling the receiving person that he is a piece of dirt as in the case of the journalist who threw his shoes at Bush.

Walter