WE have been at war with a regime but this week we have learned something about the customs of the country.

The most extraordinary of the week's unforgettable scenes featured angry men hopping up to fallen statues and broken pictures of Saddam. They used the shoe they had removed from their foot to vigorously thwack Saddam in the face. This, we learn, is the ultimate Arabic insult.

American troops leaving for the Middle East were given two tips on local etiquette. One, never take anything from an Arab with your left hand, because the left hand is the one - apparently - that you carry out your messy toilet ablutions with. Therefore it is unclean.

The second tip was that you should never sit with the sole of your shoe showing - for instance, never rest your feet on a table. The sole is the dirtiest part of the body because it treads on the dirty, dusty streets. That is why Muslims remove their shoes before entering a mosque.

The sole is also symbolic. If you show it to someone, it suggests that you regard that person as beneath the dirtiest part of your body. When Saddam lost the 1991 Gulf War he sought solace by installing a giant portrait of George Bush Senior on the foyer floor of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. All visitors had to walk over daddy Bush's face, showing how they were superior to him.

So to hit someone with the sole of your shoe is the ultimate insult. It shows derision and contempt. And to hit someone on the nose with the sole of your shoe is the pinnacle of the ultimate insult.

OF COURSE, it was the magnificent Iraqi Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, who introduced us to this concept.

It was he who declared of Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush: ''Those only deserve to be hit with shoes.'' And it was he who declared that Britain ''is not worth an old shoe''. Then, with one last defiant statement that "God is grilling the Americans' stomachs in hell", he disappeared.

The Arab world fondly knows him as "the Scheherazade of Baghdad" which is a reference to the Arabian Nights. The book is about King Shahryar of Persia, who believes all women are unfaithful. He marries virgins and the morning after his wedding night, before they can be unfaithful to him, he has them executed.

Young Scheherazade has a cunning plan, and to avoid execution she tells the king a captivating tale. Every morning, just before dawn, she stops her spinning, and the king is so entranced he spares her life so he can hear the end of the story.

This goes on for 1,001 days and nights until finally Shahryar is cured of his suspicion and they all live happily ever after.

Sadly, the life expectancy of Mohammed Saeed al-Sharaf, is not so great. This, then, was one of his more accurate pieces of information:

"It is all lies that Sunderland will be relegated."