Saddam Hussein

So last Saturday I’m walking around on Grand and decide to have lunch at my favorite restaurant, the Afghan place, Sameem. I buy a paper so I’ll have something to read while I eat and I pick up the Friday edition of the Post. I’m reading the paper while I wait on my food and this Middle Eastern man sees a little wallet sized picture of Saddam’s face on the front page and comes up to me, “Oh, they killed him and he made the front page, huh?” 

I wasn’t sure what to say, so almost apologetically I said, “This is the Friday edition, there’s a much bigger picture of him on the cover of the Saturday Post.”

“Yeah, with a noose around his neck I’ll bet.” 

Again, not sure what how to respond, I say, “No, I pretty sure it’s just a bigger version of this picture.”

Now, had I been just about anywhere else and someone of any other ethnicity or lack thereof come up to me and said the same thing, I would have taken it for granted that they were glad Saddam was dead. But because it was a Middle Eastern man, I couldn’t be sure what bag he was jumping out of. Now Sameem is one of my favorite restaurants, but I hadn’t been there in months. Leave it to me to go to an Afghan restaurant on the day Saddam Hussein is killed.