To make female hearts flutter in Iraq for the Iraqi Bush shoe thrower.

By Abeer Mohammed and Alissa J. Rubin / New York Times

BAGHDAD — What does it take for an Iraqi woman to fall in love with a man?
In parks and dress shops, in university halls and on picnics, Iraqi women are still smitten — three months and one new American president later — by the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi.

His conviction and sentencing for three years on Thursday, only burnished his image as someone who lives out the dream of the common man and in doing so becomes gallant and desirable.

Zainab Mahdi, a 19-year-old student sporting a red baseball cap, swung on a swing set in a riverside park on Friday as she spoke admiringly of Mr. Zaidi.
"Every Iraqi wanted to beat Bush," she said. "Muntader made our wishes comes true."

Her sister, Hanan Mahdi, 22, who was standing next to the swing set, spoke with passion in her voice. "Muntader make us proud of ourselves as Iraqis," she said.

"We were in Syria when he hurled his shoes at Bush, and we noticed the change in the way Syrian people treated us," she said. "They treated us in a better way."
Mr. Zaidi, whom Iraqi girls call informally by his first name, captured nearly everyone's imagination here when he threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a Dec. 14 news conference with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While Iraqi men have been divided over Mr. Zaidi's gesture, it was hard to find a woman who wholeheartedly disapproved of him.

In conversations with 20 women over the last several days, most expressed strikingly positive sentiments about him and much anger about the three years he must serve behind bars.

"Zaidi restored Iraqi women's dignity, which was stolen" since the 2003 American invasion, said Um Baneen, 31, a homemaker who said it was President Bush, not Mr. Zaidi, who deserved three years in prison. "No one dared to face Bush in the whole world, only Muntader al-Zaidi."

Atiyaf Mahmoud, 19, a student in her first year of medical school said, "I love Zaidi. I saw him in my dreams twice, the last one was after the trial, he was released and I went to congratulate him and shake his hand."

"I was so excited in that sweet dream," she said. "I wish to have that dream again."

Not so for Zahra Fadhil, 29, also a homemaker, who said no model man would abuse democracy the way she said Mr. Zaidi did.

"The three-year sentence is a lesson to all Iraqis who are willing to do shameful acts and pretend that it's democracy," she said.