A Middle East Meltdown Over Mere Towels: No Israelis Required

One might have thought, in these endlessly fractious sands of the Arab world, that every diplomatic dust-up required the ritual invocation of the Zionist bogeyman. Yet here we have a spectacle so exquisitely absurd it redefines the very lexicon of grievance: a row between Iraq and Jordan over pilfered linens from a hotel bathroom, which lends an unintended literalism to that old, unflattering epithet hurled at keffiyeh-clad gentlemen of being "towel-heads." 

The full farce is chronicled with admirable restraint in the Jerusalem Post.

Picture the scene: an Iraqi diplomat, one Zainab Okla Al-Saadi, departs the opulent Fairmont Hotel in Amman, only to find herself ensnared in a scandal that would make even the most petty of hotel housekeepers blush. The establishment levels the charge of filching "towels and other items" from her suite, a transgression so banal it might ordinarily warrant nothing more than a discreet billing adjustment. But no: Iraq's Foreign Affairs Ministry has seized upon the matter with the gravity of a UN Security Council resolution, while an entire Iraqi tribe has waded into the fray. This, mind you, may rank as the most preposterous contretemps to bedevil Baghdad-Amman ties in a generation, outstripping even the usual fare of water rights or border skirmishes.

The diplomat, for her part, is having none of it. "Saadi denied the allegations, accusing hotel staff of stealing her belongings and car and deliberately trying to defame her," as the website 964media reports. She has called for a "transparent and fair investigation," and, to drive the point home with theatrical flair, brandished a towel of her own during a television interview, as if to say: Behold, madam has her own supply; yours are safe, you perfidious Jordanians. 

Ah, but the sin of souvenir-swiping from hotel rooms is no mere Iraqi vice; it is a global affliction, etched into the annals of human frailty with all the profundity of a guest pilfering the complimentary shampoo. Some limit themselves to the soaps, those tiny, perfumed talismans of transience. Others graduate to towels or even the occasional bathrobe, draped like a conqueror's cloak. As Travel Weekly Asia soberly attests, towels vanish from hotel inventories with alarming frequency. Nor does the larceny end there: televisions, minibars, coat hangers, all fall prey to the wandering hand. One study claims that nearly 80% of hotels suffer this terry-cloth attrition.

In Iraq, however, the towel banditry assumes epidemic proportions. "Towel thefts are rampant in Iraq," Al Arabiya declares, as if diagnosing a national pathology. The ministry, ever vigilant, is now probing not just the alleged crime but the very leak of the story itself, which has inflamed this terry-towel tempest. "It has taken the initiative to form an investigation committee to look into the circumstances of the matter and verify all its details in accordance with the approved legal and administrative frameworks."

Ms. Saadi, undeterred, has escalated her missive to the Iraqi Ambassador to Jordan, Omar al-Barzanji, and straight to the Foreign Ministry, bewailing "the theft of towels from a prominent hotel in Amman." In her public pleas, she beseeches "immediate intervention from the ministry and the Iraqi prime minister," as though the republic's survival hinged on the swift retrieval of a few damp rags.

Could this, against all odds, burgeon into a full-blown diplomatic rupture? 

Unlikely, yet precedents whisper otherwise. Recall the last such indelible rift: in 1995, two sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein, Hussein Kamel Hassan and Saddam Kamel Hassan, fled to Jordan with the despot's daughters in tow. Lured back to Baghdad a year later, they met the traditional Iraqi welcome for defectors: a hail of bullets.

Back in the cradle of civilization, the towel saga shows no sign of drying out. Ms. Saadi enjoys the unyielding backing of the Al-Sawaed clan, that tribal bulwark against such calumnies. One shudders to imagine the blood feud that might ensue were the Fairmont to press charges.In the end, this is no trifling matter of terry cloth. It is a crusade for the dignity of Iraq, and, indeed, of every globe-trotting soul who has ever palmed a hotel soap with a flicker of illicit thrill. Pride, that most combustible of Arab virtues, hangs by a thread here. And in the Middle East, as we know all too well, even the flimsiest filament can ignite a conflagration.

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