Close Encounter of the Arab Kind

Since our apartment has no internet connection and since the University computer lab is only open during class times, we our often forced to go to internet cafes to check our email or to do stuff online. Like now, most of my blog writing I've done in cafes. Last Sunday, as I wrote a few blog entries, I did a big no no in Arab culture.
I spent probably around four hours in the same cafe drinking Arabic coffee, tea, and smoking an argila (sorry mom) as I composed and poted online blog entries. Unfortunately I'm going to have to go slightly off topic here to explain how Arab cafes are different from American ones. First off, Arab cafes are the center of social activity here in Irbid like they are in much of the Middle East. Bars are nowhere to be found in conservative Islamic towns. Despite their name, the main thing Arab cafes serve are water pipes (arghile is apparently the Jordanian name, sheeshah is the Egyptian name. No one calls it hookah here in Jordan. Sorry. In America we get the name wrong. Hubbly Bubbly in a very thick Arabic accent is also a popular name). Typically, the cafes have a lower and upper level. The lower level is reserved for only men while the upper level is where women are permitted to sit. During the evenings, women do not usually go out that much so the upper level becomes another men's level. Right now I'm typing this from the upper level of one of Irbid's cafes at 12:40 AM (people stay up late here) and around me are men smoking sheesha and playing backgamen.
Back to last Sunday's close encounter... I was getting uncomfortable and tired after about three hours typing and sitting in the same position. To get more comfortable, since I was sitting at a couch, I put my feet up on a nearby ledge and typed laying on my back with my lap top on my stomach. Naturally, I was exposing the soles of my shoes. If you know anything about Arab mores, I was unintentionally setting myself for a cultural disaster.
After about 15 minutes laying in the way described above, four local people came upstairs to where I was sitting; two sets of couples. One of the spoke to me in very rapid colloquial which I understood absolutely none of it while the other spoke to me in excellent English asking me where I was from and blah... blah... blah... then they sat down and smoked sheesha with their wives. The one who spoke colloquial sat directle in front of me. My feet were poited at him so he could see the soles of my shoes.
After about 5 minutes, the shit hit the fan. The man sitting in front of me got up, visibly angry and tense and barraged me with a cocophany of angry colloquial that he, again, spoke ridiculously rapidly. The man who spoke to me in English (a different guy), seeing all this and looking akward, walked over to me and said: "Hi. I'm very sorry. This man thinks you are Arab for some reason. Please put your feet down. I know you don't know how we Arabs do things since things are very different in America. I apologize for his rudeness." More enlightened, I responded with about twenty apologies to the angry dude. Suprisingly, he smiled at me and said "mish mushkilah", no problem. His wife laughed a lot.
If any of you remember the famous video back in 2003 of the Iraqis tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, the Iraqis took their shoes and repeatedly struck the statue with the soles of their shoes. Exposing your sole is a huge insult to Arabs. Now I know first hand.