How I got a free ride from Saddam Hussein

Right, so what the conversation in the previous post reminded me (where I write of the Iranians trying to protect their ancient treasures from the American Empire's barbarian hordes*) was the time I went to the International Federation of Library Associations' 2002 conference. (I get to do the most interesting things in my work.)

This conference was being held in Glasgow, Scotland at the big conference centre which was quite a distance from the town centre's railway station, hotels, etc. So this meant that delegates had to take taxis into town and we often shared cabs.

One one occasion I happened to be sharing a cab with an Iraqi librarian and her political minder. (I assume she was a political minder, 'cause she wasn't a librarian). The Iraqi librarian seemed nice enough (and in fact the Minder was pleasant, too) and we began chatting on the ride back to town. Turns out the Iraqi Librarian worked in the big central library in Baghdad and she was in charge of ancient scrolls and documents. That's got to be a cool job on the librarian scale of coolness. Baghdad was a seat of ancient learning, so there are bound to be lots of important and neat scrolls and old documents to look after.

Well, this was during the summer that George W Bush's War on Iraq plans were starting to become clear and invasion certainly looked highly likely, if not inevitable, and I am surely the mistress of the inappropriate comment:

Me: So your document storage must be pretty secure.
Iraqi Libarian: Oh, yes (Minder looks a bit nervous) it is good storage for documents.
Me: And are you taking any special precautions? (Minder begins to look quite nervous.)
IL: What do you mean, special precautions?
Me: Umm, you know, uh, in case anything bad happens, uh…
IL: Bad?

Then the Minder and the Librarian switch to Arabic for a few moments, and when they switch back to English they've clearly decided to change the subject and ask me what I was doing at the conference. Then they ask: Are you Scottish?

Well the taxi driver starts to get nervous then. He's been listening to the whole thing, and he darn well knows I'm American, and he's afraid of having an international incident right there in his cab.

Me: Am I Scottish, no, I live in London.

The cabbie lets out an audible sigh of relief, they seem to accept my answer, and then the cab ride's over. I feel bad about kind of teasing them, with the Librarian so clueless about what's about to happen to her city and her library and her collection of ancient scrolls, so I (on expenses) pay the whole fare, despite their protests. But of course, now I wish I had let them pay, so for the rest of my life I could say that I got a free ride from Saddam Hussein.

*sarcasm