In 2008, during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi took off his shoes and threw them at me, one by one. I was unharmed by the incident, and as the culprit was removed from the room, I continued my press conference alongside Iraq’s prime minister. But when it was time for me to leave, I grabbed one of the shoes and put it in my pocket. And when I got to my hotel room that night, I ate it.
Yep. I ate that shoe that was thrown at me. Laces and all.
Apparently, among the Iraqi people, it’s a great sign of disrespect to throw a shoe at someone. But I didn’t feel disrespected whatsoever. The journalist gave me a shoe, and the shoe gave me dinner. It tasted like rubber and dust, which I quite enjoyed. It reminded me of when you don’t feel like being fussy while eating ribs, so you just eat the bones too.
If you haven’t eaten a shoe before, you probably don’t know that it can take almost two episodes of Seinfeld to eat it. The shoe was size 10, so I was pretty full afterwards. I think all I ate after it was some chips.
I could tell that Dick Cheney wanted a bite but I lied and told him there was gluten in it so I wouldn’t have to share. I remember thinking, “If Dick wants to eat a shoe, he can find one himself.” Whatever made that guy throw the shoes at me, I don’t know, but I earned my meal, fair and square.
Would you like to hear a joke I thought of? OK. It goes: “Talk Abottagood shoe to eat!”
I don’t have many regrets when I look back on my life. Do I wish we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Of course, but I don’t regret my decision to look for them. Do I take joy in the bloodshed caused by the war in Iraq? Certainly not, but I was making the best decisions I could with the information that I had. No, the only thing I regret in my life is that I didn’t eat the other shoe, too.
To this day, I’m not sure what made me eat the shoe. My guess is quite simply that it looked tasty, because it was. I haven’t eaten other shoes before or since. Just something I did once. Thought I’d share.
