Salam Pax: The Baghdad Blog

Anonymous
Text $23.00

Monday, 20 October 2003, 1.32pm

Picked up a book; a collection of weblogs (or blogs for short) written by a 29-year-old Iraqi man who works as an architect in Baghdad (chief target in the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. or big fat phantom chemical warheads as I'd like to refer to them).

This is his diary of events leading up to the recent war on Iraq.

Tuesday, 21 October 2003, 2.32pm

In the first two dozen entries, I count at least 20 Western cultural references.

He listens to Coldplay, Lamb, David Bowie, Aphex Twin, Deftones, BRMC amongst others. He reads New Republic, the New York Times, The Economist, Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.

He loves playing The Sims.

He has watched Dancer in the Dark at least twice and, 'loves Björk'.

He watches music videos on VH1 as well as Dharma & Greg.

He makes reference to Meg Ryan (who he thinks would be perfect in a movie revolving around the liberation of Iraq).

He has been on ebay and is thinking of trading old Sumerian relics. which he refers to as 'Sumerian thingees'. (Do I smell a whiff of capitalism?)

His cousin watches WWF Smackdown.

The irony does not need to be spelt out.

Wednesday, 23 October 2003, 10.32pm

Salam's weblog evokes mixed feelings; it's clumsy at times, brilliant at others; cringe-worthy juvenile rants sit alongside subtle observations of lives at war.

On the 23 October 2002, Salam wrote:

Draft of the US-British Resolution on Iraq: '.in order to restore international peace and security.'

Peace and Security. Ha. Bomb us, already. Stop pussyfooting.

On the 11 February 2003:

.you know the band BUSH? DJs on the English-language radio station in Baghdad (Voice of Youth) are not allowed to say the name of the band. They have to spell it: "Bee yu ess etch have yet another single out." I bet all DJs there thank God there isn't a band called Schwartzkopf.

The blog would fare much better if he went all out to be a complete bastard instead of 'pussyfooting' around trying to be nice and erudite yet tough and smart-alecky. Enough of those 'hate Bush' diatribes... I hear that at my local coffeshop every morning. Just be a mean-spirited, vituperative wanker, I say.

Thursday, 24 October 2003, 8.15am

The beauty of Salam's blog is the way it slaps readers in the face. It gives a face to the homogenous Iraqis we see on tv. It strips away the polish and coldness of the media. His entries replace statistics and euphemisms with the mundaneness and fear that war brings about.

And we soon realize that Iraqis lead a life that's not unlike ours. They do speak English, they watch telly and listen to the radio, they buy the same records in shops, they fuss about the value of their currency, they like pizza and kebabs and they shit their pants like the rest of us during a bombing raid.

Friday, 25 October 2003, 11.35am

I realize that I detest reading blogs because a lot of it boils down to, 'Oh, today I did this,' 'I saw that,' 'I met so and so for coffee,' etc.

Salam's blog is no different but has some saving grace no thanks to material made rich by the numerous bombing raids courtesy of Bush and Co. Take that away and it's no different than any diary. It can only and should be read in small doses.

This is an e-diary for the Wired phenomenon. Be warned.

Review by Shawn Low