Uncool things in the Middle East, as promised:

1) Conspiracy Theories: Arabs have conspiracy theories for everything. There must be some scientific psychological way to explain this kind of mass neurosis. Princess Diana was killed because the Queen refused to risk having Muslim grandchildren, for instance.

2) Anti-Semitism: While the repellent ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land continues unabated, the Jews are unfairly blamed for nearly every unsavory reality in the Arab and Muslim world, or even the world at large. Darwinism, I am told, was a depraved plot of the Jews.

3) Bullet-ridden buildings: Along the former Green Line in Beirut, you can still see many buildings bearing the scars of the two-decade civil war. The only reason we have so many warbots in the US who think tanks, guns, and bombs are so cool is because they don't know what war does to people and societies.

4) The River Nile: Egyptians have a proud saying, "If you drink of the waters of the Nile, you will one day return to Egypt." I have a saying too, if you drink of the waters of the Nile, you will never leave Egypt. The Nile is a disgusting environmental disaster that is only made to seem pure and tranquil when compared with the polluted boisterous cesspool that is urban Cairo.

5) Lack of proper lines: Amman, Jordan, I think is the worst place in the world if you believe in the principle of queuing up and taking your turn. You don't realize behavior like waiting in line has to be taught until you live in a place where people just mob the ticket window randomly. This is an area in which, please excuse my sense of national superiority, the West is undeniably better. Many apologies to my Arab readers, but you need to stand in line and wait your damned turn.

6) Sectarianism: I remember walking between Safa and Marwa in Mecca, a man bellowing and pointing at a group of Bohra Muslims, a semi-secretive Shiite denomination, calling them kafirs, or unbelievers, because their clothing was slightly different than the mandated dress of the pilgrimage. The ultra-normative nature of Islam will prove its demise.

7) Cigarette smoking: The Middle East is not the place to come if you plan to quit your cigarette addiction. Everyone over the age of eight smokes. I myself smoke about two packs a day without ever lifting a cigarette to my lips.

8) Our busted ladder: The guy downstairs borrowed our shiny new ladder for what I thought would be a quick light bulb change. Two weeks later, I went down to his apartment to find my ladder broken and covered in paint and concrete. He would not return the ladder, and could not understand why I was upset. Though an extreme example, this lack of consideration is all too common.

9) Iraq: This country now represents to me the utter moral failure of humanity, American, European, Arab, Shia, Sunni, Christian, and Jew. We have all collaborated on this project in mass barbarism, and we are all a little to blame (some more that others).

10) The Wahhabi seminarian kicking female pilgrims outside the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina to clear the area for male worshippers before the sunset prayer. I wanted to string him up by his grizzly beard and beat him round like a pinata.