Transcript
We were in the Khan el-Khalili markets,
one of the world's oldest markets,
and I was fortunate to be there with somebody
who was actually from Cairo, who had relatives there.
And we were on the non-tourist side of the street
because he knew the local market.
You know, he was a pilot,
so he'd never seen the ground in Iraq, I don't think.
And out of the blue, everybody on the street starts just
rolling the place up, closing doors and going inside,
and it was, really, it was like
roaches when you turn the light on.
Well, to me, this means somebody found out
there's some Americans walking down the street,
and somebody is going to come through here
and blow something up,
or, you know, something bad is about to happen.
Well, these two pilots that I was hanging around with
didn't get that at all.
And I'm dragging these guys down the street,
saying "We got to go!"
And they just, they never really got it.
That was one of those situations
where it resulted in very near panic, where --
and, you know, that's actually a pretty extreme example.
You know, you're in the Middle East
and people start rolling up the carpets,
anybody who's ever seen the Middle East
and been in combat there, especially Baghdad,
is, yeah, is probably going to react the same way.
[Laughing] There was a street sweeper coming down the street.
Yeah, there was, they were bringing the street sweeper through.
It was, yeah, it was really kind of,
yeah, it was kind of dumb, but I completely overreacted.
I mean, you know, this is a market that's been there
for thousands of years, and it's in Cairo,
so, you know, it's really, as far as the Middle East goes,
it's a very safe environment.