The Dinner of the Slippery Sheep by Hussien Hunien

The Dinner of the Slippery Sheep
by Al-Witwiti

Some think Paul Bremer's visit to Diwaniya wasn't the least bit fruitful. Pessimists describe it as a disaster for several reasons, most importantly the governor’s meeting with the prominent figures of the province - and I won’t say the elites because this word which belongs to the legacy of the past regime is not very welcomed by the folks.
Optimists see it differently. A sophisticated scientific technology discussion took place that so astonished Mr. Bremer and his assistants that he decided to call NASA scientists to immediately fly in from the States. And not just NASA: Lockheed engineers, Microsoft programmers, and General Motors experts should all come down to Diwaniya to have a talk with Diwaniya’s experts that were presented by the mayor. Among those experts was the Oil and Industry Supervisor (don’t go thinking that Hussein Kamil is back!) who presented different projects to Mr. Bremer and made him feel sad about arrogant America for not knowing that one of the cities they control has so many great ideas and solutions inside it that would take a century for the biggest multinational companies to figure them out.
Mr. Bremer wanted to benefit from this as much as possible. So he also discussed the ozone hole and how to fix that. He realized he wouldn't have the rare chance to meet such gifted scientists and experts again.
He got what he wanted. We don’t need to replace freon gas. Instead we can take the advantage of the gas resulting from burning manure after mixing it with the notorious lithium brusside which results in a gas of offensive smell but does the job!
We noticed that the American gentleman was stealing a few seconds and anxiously writing down fast and short notes in his notebook after he realized that this information is worth the revenue of a rich oil well for a year and 3 months!
Still, he was having some problems understanding some of the Iraqi slang being used. The newfound scientific terms have no equivalents in English so far.
The second stage of the dialogue was after a lamb leg slipped from the hands of one of our scientists who wasn’t aware that treating lamb with free oil (as we call it here) will decrease the coefficient of startup friction dramatically. Of course, we cannot blame our scientist for this oversight. His specialization is in producing genetically modified seeds and hybridizing Sammara’s melons with the Eastern-Hamza watermelons.
The discussion was hot. And because of the imperfect combustion process, black carbon residues resulted. By the way, Iraqis call this residue 'Skham and use the phrase 'Skham Il-wijih (i.e. 'Skham of the face) when trying to describe extreme failure or embarrassment.
As the words carbon and 'skham were mentioned, one of our scientists took upon himself the task of explaining the utilization of carbon fibers in the Stealth aircraft’s body. At this point Mr. Bremer quickly wrote down the name of this scientist and promised to help him find a job as a senior advisor at Northrop or McDonald Douglas to help these companies improve their aircraft’s designs.
Actually mentioning the word "aircraft" made the scientists rush into discussing the tragic Columbia and Challenger’s space shuttles explosions.
Immediately, the Minister of Industry diagnosed the cause and said it was because of the stress corrosion caused by the acids inside the body of the shuttle. This acid is very similar in composition to the infamous lactic acid found in rouba. Mr. Bremer didn’t understand the word rouba until it was translated to him as yogurt.
Mr. Bremer wished the discussion could have lasted longer but the gentlemen were busy with more important and critical cases. (Guess what?)
Before leaving Mr. Bremer whispered to one of his assistants: "The universe envies us for the oil of Iraq. But thank God they don’t have any idea about the treasures gathered here at the feast of the slippery lamb."