Waiting for It to Snow

Last Saturday, I was waiting in line to get into the Democratic Senatorial Convention in Houston. It took over an hour for the line to get to the entrance gate and I found myself having a marvelous conversation with a fellow who had seen a lot of the world when he was a teenager. His dad was a teacher and used his credentials to satisfy his wanderlust to see the world. Brian, the fellow to whom I was talking, told me he lived in Cairo during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

While the war was going on, he said there was a story going around Cairo about who were the greatest soldiers in the world. It went something like this.

"Who are the greatest soldiers in the world? The very best soldiers are the Russians. Think about it. They let Napolean march all the way to Moscow. They waited for the snow to come and when the Russian winter had settled in, they drove out the French."

"Okay, who are the second best soldiers in the world? Again, the Russians. Why? They let the German armies march into Russia during WW II and the Russian army waited for the snow to come. And when the terrible Russian winter settled in, they attacked the Germans and drove them out."

"Well, then, who are the third greatest soldiers in the world? Why, the Egyptian soldiers, of course. The Egyptians have let the Israeli army march all the way to the Suez Canal, and now they are waiting for it to snow."

In a way, it is a good thing to know the Egyptian people can laugh at themselves... that they have a sense of humor. That puts a more human face on folks we know about mostly through highly filtered and distorted news reports. Maybe in a lot of ways, the Egyptian people aren't all that different from us after all.