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We first encountered this item in April 2003, during the early days of the war in Iraq, and since then it has been passed from inbox to inbox variously titled Ann Rea's Son, Rea's Son, and Letter from a Mom. It has also been circulated in variants that change the nationalities of those involved from American to Canadian, British, and Australian: Is it a true story? There was little in it that lent itself to independent verification: other than the protagonist's being identified as Ann Rea's son in some tellings (and, much later, as Hunter Green's son), the serviceman was not named, and neither his base nor his unit was mentioned. Likewise, none of the other characters in the story had a name or was in any other way identifiable: not the patriotic cashier, the burqa-clad woman, or the outspoken older man. Indeed, neither the name of the store nor the city where the incident purportedly took place was provided. Some readers questioned the anecdote on the basis of its key figure being described as garbed in a burqa (a head-to-toe covering worn by women in some Islamic traditions), pointing out that someone from Iraq would be unlikely to don such a garment given that Iraq is a far more secular part of the Muslim world than the nations in which women commonly wear burqas (such as Afghanistan and Pakistan) are. They correctly point out that in the U.S. a woman clad in such a garment would be a rare sight indeed and that anyone so garbed would be unlikely to be found shopping unaccompanied by her husband or other male relative, or to be addressing those she encountered in the outspoken manner attributed to the woman in this story. Yet it is possible that the story's author confused one unfamiliar article of clothing for another, describing the woman as clad in a burqa when he meant she was wearing a chador (a quite different kind of robe) or a hijab (a head scarf), the latter more commonly donned by Muslim women in the U.S. (Later versions of the story changed the complaining woman from an Iraqi to a generic Muslim.) As far as we known, in all the years since this story first made the rounds no one has stepped forward to claim authorship of it or to say Yes, I was that soldier or My mother was that cashier or I was another customer in the store that day and saw the confrontation. When confirming evidence is lacking, one should strive to remain skeptical of what are presented as real-life accounts that state in narrative form things people are predisposed to believe, especially those tales wherein wrongdoers get their comeuppance through being told off by others. The ungrateful Iraqi read the riot act over her lack of appreciation for the sacrifices Americans are making for her is too neat an illustration of a concept held too dearly by too many not to be viewed with a dose of suspicion.
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