Survival skill: Can you draw a map of France?

AP: Freed Hostage Tells of Humiliations

A French television journalist, freed after four days in captivity in Iraq (news - web sites), said he was repeatedly interrogated by captors who accused him of being an Israeli spy and made him prove his nationality by drawing a map of France.

<snip>

Jordanov, 40, was freed Wednesday and taken to the French Embassy, where he collapsed from exhaustion and spent his first hours as a free man staring blankly at a ceiling.

<snip>

Sometimes, militants took Jordanov out blindfolded at night, forced him to his knees and shouted at him. "They would take you out at night and play with you," Jordanov said. The worst moment came when the kidnappers discovered an old press card he had from Israel, where he went on reporting assignments. The militants accused him of being an agent of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

Militants later demanded he prove he was French by drawing a map of the country and pointing out where small towns were located.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=8&u=/ap/iraq_freed_hostage

Time to brush up on la géographie?

could we draw a map of our home country and point out small towns? The answer is yes, if you let me choose the states the small towns are in.

I'm not sure you would have lived through the experience.

But if you were French, and a poor geography student -- that would be a bummer...

the Irish flag rather. I think I would be dead tho.

...so proving you're an American isn't going to be much better, eh?

Better to learn the maps of Canadian provinces, if you ask me.

on the theory that my captors probably couldn't either. Unless they had a Michelin, then I'd be in trouble.

The island is kidney shaped,
Bridgetown is in the lower left corner
Speightstown is in the upper left.

Barbados was pressured to join the "coalition",
but they refused.
They don't actually have an army anyway.

That's where I stayed... and Glendiary

What's a France?

They're pussies. Too busy eating mayonnaise sandwiches in the mobile home.

canada...or iceland or something

don't think it would do you much good even if you could fabricate a three-page color foldout of the US

I can do major cities...Marseille (sp), Brest, Nice, Lyon, Strasbourg, etc.

the US and I could draw a picture of it and also put states (anyway most of them) and cities in the correct place. :-)

EDIT: OPS, WRONG answer I would need to prove I wasn't American. Well I am pretty good at geography and have relatives in Canada, so I would pretend to be Canadian.

I know more than Bu$h about foreign countries. (and possibly 2/3 of Americans.)

Since I'm not French. I'd have no trouble drawing the United States, pointing out the capitals or even doing the nicknames.