The Possum Bistro

To be able to walk the earth without scorching your feet in the blistering heat of the Middle East - shoes.

Shoes can be a metaphor for flight, as seasoned competitors in various sporting arenas will swear by as the right type of footwear can determine the comfort level, frictional grip, resistance to wear-and-tear - all of which may determine split-second differences between yourself and the nearest rival. However, though sport itself may have been boosted and enhanced in terms of quality and performance levels by affluence that has blessed peoples who now partake in such events, in impoverished locales like Iraq where even the most basic of necessities is found wanting in supply, shoes are a powerful metaphor for protection and freedom.

Protection from the searing heat of the barren sand below the feet of the Iraqis; from blisters that form from trudging great distances to the nearest supplies store due to the lack of public transport; from festering sores that may erupt from these blisters and bring about infections that may grow untreated due to the abject void of reliable medical services - all these factors provide the key to freedom: freedom from infection, freedom from sickness, freedom from discomfort. They might not seem even vaguely life-threatening to us, but to Iraqis who have to deal with poverty and the lack of basic amenities, that freedom to live without the constant dread of an open wound mutating into an obscure infection that could possibly lead to worsening medical conditions - that is another reason to live, another chance for survival despite the harsh climate, both environmentally and socially.

Years ago, I had the opportunity to watch Children of Heaven, a film that depicted a pair of siblings who belonged to a poor family in the Middle East. The older brother, Ali, had lost his sister Zohre's shoes, and so is determined to get them back. Early in the film, as Zohre attends the morning session while Ali attends the afternoon session at school, both have to share one pair of shoes. The film is interlaced with clips of Zohre and Ali running almost frantically, zooming down alleyways, leaping across drains, dodging obstacles and finally slipping off the shoes so the other can slip them on and start sprinting elsewhere. Ali finally gets a chance to win a pair of shoes for Zohre when he takes part in a race at school; towards the end, when he actually wins first-place, he breaks down because only the second-place prize contains the pair of shoes that he wanted his sister to have.

In this case, that one pair of rugged, torn shoes that both Ali and Zohre shared day in, day out represented the opportunity to attend school; for Ali, those exact shoes granted him a real fighting chance at the race to provide for his sister and indirectly for his family. Just a simple everyday item such as a pair of shoes, through the perspective of this film, exemplifies how important it is to the Iraqis that contributes to their welfare, convincing them that despite the seemingly inhospitable climate that emerged post-Saddam - with all the death squads and aQ insurgents running rampant and killing citizens in an indiscriminate, grotesque fashion - we will do all we can to improve their lives, to render the most minor of inconveniences less bothersome and troubling; hopefully, so that they will realise that every little improvement will ultimately result in something far more significant for their hopes of the future - shoes paving the path to education, freedom to study and work, to earn a living and provide for the family and tribe, to protect each and every Iraqi from the debilitating, perverted and corrupted imposition of poverty and gradual process of starvation that Saddam Hussein had megalomanically engineered to fund palaces and fill up his coffers.