September 18, 2009
This time a shoe thrower was shot and later he died
A resident of Fallujah.
A man who lived through the "cleansing" of Fallujah by occupation forces. Two battles - not one.
He saw his city burn, his friends killed, his neighbours maimed.
His mind broke, and he became imbalanced.
He roamed the streets with long unkempt hair, disheveled clothes and a wild look in his eyes.
Whenever he saw an American military convoy pass, he would shake his fists in the air and raise his voice and swear at them. He would sometimes pick up a pebble and hurl it at them.
On Wednesday he took of his sandal and threw it at a passing American military convoy.
The answer was bullet shots in his lung, very close to his heart.
Iraqi police took him to the general hospital in the city. The doctors all but gave up on him saying the injury was too close to his heart and that his lungs were in bad condition. One doctor took the chance and decided to perform the surgery, and succeeded.
Now the man from Fallujah is lying between life and death. His brother looks on, "He was a very gentle man, the best auto electrician in the city – but the war affected him in this way. He lost his mind because of the horror of what he saw. What we went through left no man or woman unchanged."
The man from Fallujah who was driven to madness by the war, picked up his sandle and threw it at an American military convoy, Wednesday - and they "returnrd fire in self defence", injuring him seriously.
He died, Thursday, in hospital.
His brother looked on, "Maybe now he is at peace."
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Shoe hurled at Musharraf
Published: February 7, 2011
Former president narrowly escapes being hit by shoe while speaking to his APML supporters in London. PHOTO: AFP
Former President Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped being hit by a shoe at a meeting with some of his supporters in London, according to several media outlets.
According to The Times of India, a man stood up about five minutes after Musharraf started speaking and hurled a shoe at him. A private television news channel reports that the shoe did not reach the stage on which the former president was standing and landed in the front row.
Musharraf was speaking at an event for his supporters organised by the All Pakistan Muslim League, the new political party created by the former military dictator to contest in electoral politics in Pakistan. The meeting was being held in the Walthamstow area of London, an area with a substantial population of people of Pakistani origin. About 1,500 people were in attendance.
The man who threw the shoe was quickly removed from the event by security personnel. The man’s identity is unclear at this stage, as is the motivation for his outburst.
He was not alone in protesting the former president, however. The Times of India reports that at least two other people also protested at the event.
The former president joins his successor, current President Asif Ali Zardari, as the second Pakistani politician to face an attempted footwear assault by a political opponent in the United Kingdom. On 7 August 2010, President Zardari was assaulted with a shoe by an attendee of one of his speeches in Birmingham, another area of the UK known to have a large population of Pakistani-origin Britons. The shoe did not hit Zardari either.
Musharraf left office in August 2008 after spending almost 9 years at the helm of affairs in Pakistan. He has since spent much of his time in self-imposed exile in London, though he has recently made trips to Dubai to meet with groups of politicians who may be interested in joining his new political party.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 7th, 2011.
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