Posted 9:29 AM by Blah blah

All Too Real

More on Salam Pax (Philadelphia Inquirer): "In Brazil and Sweden, in China and Australia, from California to Maine, the question flew across the borderless Internet: Where is Salam Pax?...On Friday, Pax - a gay man in a repressive society, an atheist in a Muslim land, a lover of democracy but a hater of war - filed a worried dispatch as he awaited the first shock-and-awe assault on the city he cherishes....'For many people, Salam is the face of this war. He articulates the anguish of being caught in the cogs of the wheel when it's out of control.'...

He appears to be well-off and well-educated [a 29-year-old architect], with eclectic musical tastes that embrace the Deftones, Amr Diab, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. His blog is named for a wealthy Jordanian friend he calls Raed. (Blog chat notes this is "dear" backward, perhaps a pseudonym to protect a lover.)...Pax says he speaks English, German and Arabic because his father's work required the family to settle abroad for 14 years....He's such a colorful character, so observant and bitterly humorous, that he seems to some too good to be true....

Visits to his site have intensified with the war. In December 2001, the blog's first month, Pax got 140 hits. A year later, there were 2,563. So far this month, there are 98,757."

If you wonder if he's real, he's been talking back-and-forth to Diana of Letters from Gotham. She said this about him being real. Paul Boutin, writer for Slate, checked up on Salam: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real?. Answer: YES.

Salam's blog from Baghdad, http://dear_raed.blogspot.com, is now one of the most linked blogs in the world. The Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post all noticed him. The Guardian printed these excerpts from his blog. Since his site crashed from the surge of traffic, Blogger and Google helped create a mirror site for him, http://dearraed.blogspot.com.

The latest from Salam. I've edited his spelling/grammar:

March 22, 4:30pm (Day 3)

[H]alf an hour ago the oil-filled trenches were put on fire. First watching Al-Jazeera they said that these were the places that got hit by bombs from an air raid a few miniutes earlier, but when I went up to the roof to take a look, I saw that there were too many of them, and we heard only three explosions. I took pictures of the nearest. My cousin came and told me he saw police cars standing by one and setting it on fire. Now you can see the columns of smoke all over the city.

Today, the third day in the war, we had quite a number of attacks during daytime. Some without air raid sirens. They probably just gave up on being able to be on time to sound the sirens. Last night, after waves after waves of attacks, they would sound the all-clear siren only to start another raid siren 30 minutes later.

The images we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, Jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire. The only thing I could think of was “why does this have to happen to Baghdad.” As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion, I was close to tears.

Today my father and brother went out to see what is happening in the city. They say that it does look that the hits were very precise, but when the missiles and bombs explode they wreck havoc in the neighborhood where they fall. Houses near Al-Salam Palace (where the minister Sahaf took journalist) have had all their windows broken, doors blown in, and in one case a roof has caved in. I guess that is what is called “collateral damage” and that makes it OK?