How the shoe became a global protest symbol

NEW DELHI: Four years ago, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist picked up his shoe and hurled it at one of the then most important men on the planet, US president George W Bush. This astonishing action was representative of the anger felt by the Iraqi populace against the US government, and it got the world thinking. Even today Al-Zaidi’s gesture gets loud applause through Arvind Gaur’s play, The Last Salute, presented by The Times of India and Promodome Films.
“It’s important to keep dissent alive, and this applause comes from feelings of anger, empathy with Al-Zaidi and a conviction for the cause,” says filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt about Gaur’s play, which is based on Al-Zaidi’s almost eponymous book, The Last Salute to President Bush.
The play begins with the US war cry of “unearthing weapons of mass destruction” from Iraq. “Can the US do nothing but bomb us?” asks an anguished Iraqi mother in the play. Seven actors express Al-Zaidi’s anger and talk about the incidents that compelled him to take the drastic step. The play revisits his journey, as a journalist as well as a volunteer at a city hospital where he witnessed atrocities of the US army.
Imran Zahid, who essays the protagonist’s role, recounts him talking about his shoe-throwing act. “At the press conference, journalists were put through rounds of security checks. And Al-Zaidi smiled because they couldn’t find any weapon on him. When the meeting got underway, and Al-Zaidi sat listening to Bush’s self-congratulatory speech, his shoe (he’d picked the pair from Egypt), became his most lethal weapon.”
Al-Zaidi’s protest made footwear a symbol of dissent the world over. “It’s with their shoe that the Iraqis showed the world their response to a nation that had turned their happy world into a battlefield,” says Gaur. Bhatt, who introduces the play by reading out a letter he wrote to the White House on the US intervention in Iraq, says The Last Salute is an experience from where you emerge feeling cleansed. “There is no anger for Al-Zaidi, only respect, for he had the guts to put his neck on the block,” says Bhatt who recently staged his play, Daddy, in Karachi. “Let’s see if we get permission to stage The Last Salute in Pakistan.”