Back from Blackout

The darkened New York skyline on Thursday night. (® 2003 Associated Press)

Well! That was interesting. Obviously, everybody now knows that on Thursday at about 4:11 p.m. a massive power outage hit the East Coast, sending 50 million people into the dark — including Back-to-Iraq’s server. As I remarked to my brother — when I could get a call through T-Mobile’s overloaded system — New York was now “Baghdad on the Hudson.” And in fact, the _New York Times_ ran an amusing little story on the reaction in Baghdad, which, you may have heard, has had its own problems with the occasional blackout. The generous Iraqis even offered tips to sweaty Americans, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek. My favorite: Appoint Saddam Hussein to oversee the repair of the grid.
“Saddam had the electricity back two months after the last war,” said Maythum Hatam, a computer-science student. “With his methods, you would have electricity right away, but you must expect to lose some workers.”
My only question is how do you say _schadenfreude_ in Arabic?