. . . i got into baghdad and my friend Ghaith started showing me around. Ghaith is hot shit. the guy's as fast as a whip, tough as leather, and has been raised in the middle east, so he speaks enough languages to tongue-tie a database. he's part of a small network of intense young iraqis that live in baghdad, among whom is salam pax, an online writer that has been kind enough to keep us posted on local news from a local perspective. [see http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ fore more..]. actually, its not just that he's kind; as his father told me, salam has been doing this at risk of his entire family. his dad didn't find out about what salam was up to and if, prior to the regime's fall, the wrong someone had found out, heads would have rolled.Salam's take on the same event:
this is part of the reason salam's a good man; his freedom means something to him. he and i had a chance to talk in the middle of the mobile media empire named The Sheraton Hotel, Baghdad. we were surrounded by the mass media neither of us trusted. it was a good talk. Salam, like Ghaith, is smart, alert, and watching the distant waters of the US for ripples that will, when they break on the borders of iraq, bring problems. and he's smart enough to be ready for it. and smarter, still, to know how to use this energy to his own benefit.
salam unpacked for me the finer points of using media against imperialism, of what it means to speak iraqi arabic these days, and how important it is that americans take the time to familiarize themselves with cultures that aint theirs (noting that its even more important for non-americans to famliarize themselves with Amerika..). i appreciated what the guy had to say. he has a sharp eye, an honest smile and a firm handshake.
these guys - salam and ghaith - are the future kings of baghdad. they'll rule the city with a gentle insight and a fast wit and i think that the place will be better off for it. if, that is, the americans are smart enough to loosen the stranglehold.
There was a very long talk with mark from [Boar.com] who was on a two-day trip in Iraq. I met him after he was in one of the presidential palaces looting. He had a stainless steel teapot hidden under his t-shirt when he came into the hotel where we were supposed to meet. Pah, amateur amrikaan! At least choose something that looks like it could be gold or something.Well, it's clear that one of these people has lived through a police state and a war and one is a corn-fed American tourist with political pretensions, but in spite of Boar's occasional juvenality, this is a wonderful diary. His descriptive writing is vivid. He meets ordinary Iraqis and US soldiers. He takes numerous incredible photos of urban destruction, the interiors of Saddam's palaces, and Iraqis of all ages and walks of life. His evaluation of his experiences has the same quality as Salam's: honest, unpremeditated, with an authentic voice, pulled by preconceived political agendas but managing to avoid being captured by them.
Don’t ask how we met, pure coincidence. We sat there for about two hours, talktalktalk. He was strangely gadget free; he only had a nifty digital camera and showed me the pictures he had taken inside the palace including the obligatory picture of a bathroom. Everybody has a fixation on bathrooms. The first images they showed of one of the palaces had shots of not-so-significant bathrooms. I am sure there will be a (Saddam bathrooms) special on one of the shows soon. Anyway. Great guy. mark not saddam.
What comes through very clearly is the heady feeling of being a young, smart, energetic, iconoclastic guy in kinship with other young, smart, energetic, iconoclastic guys, generating intense feelings of community and possibility and idealism which color one's interpretation of events. Think Prague in 1990. I have a feeling all the young dot.commers who got laid off two years ago are going to converge on Baghdad over the next six months. And I don't think that's a bad thing.
(via old Austin acquaintance Jon Lebkowsky)
UPDATE: Salam is massaging his 15 minutes of fame. Don't let it go to your head, kid. You'll read some of this stuff 5 years from now, and you'll be so embarrassed.
<< Home