Customer Reviews

Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Blogging is all well and good, but Mr. Pax had a sure-shot sword dangling over his neck if his cloak-and-dagger reportage of Iraq was discovered. With that in mind, it is a marvel enough that this book is in publication.

Armed with an Internet connection and a blogger account, Pax leaves no stone unturned in the unabashed description of the attitude of his friends and family towards the US, but also to Saddam Hussein's Baathist dictatorship. The dominant theme of his caustic blog is a deep mistrust of American motives, and the text veritably seers with subdued anger, but Pax's skepticism is informed by a tenacious Iraqi nationalism.

Like many people potentially affected by wars, I devour a lot of news sources, including political blogs (some more informative than others) but it is usually difficult to see a clear perspective of the people who are physically on the receiving end of enemy scuds unless you live, breathe and sleep in the context of that news.

Pax has done a pretty fascinating job of organizing his book, it is eye-opening! For instance, one big anomaly in global news coverage from CNN/Fox/etc lies in introducing Iraq as this hapless nation fragmented by a bevy of races and religions. Yet Pax strongly argues that following recent protracted hostilities with Iran and Kuwait, Iraq itself has been boasting a very strong nationalistic fabric. I wonder how this glaring reality can escape international scribes?

If only the decision-makers in London and Washington take the time to consult the voice of the people (such as Pax's) before waging full-scale wars, their understanding about the country they are now scampering to control can perhaps be greatly helped.

I highly commend Mr. Pax on his efforts, and wish the best to his book, blog and other activism endeavours. If this thought-provoking, entertaining, and occasionally even infuriating compilation of his blog entries is anything to go by, I surely will be reading more of him!

obviously the individual who wrote a previous review on Pax's baathist links is the type of moron who skips over a books introduction... please take the time to read this excerpt:
"...Those who thought his blog was unduly critical of Iraq's `liberators' made dark insinuations about his parents'
Baathist connections. Eventually Salam blew his top, advising
his detractors to `go play Agatha Christie somewhere else.' His
mother, he said, had been a sociologist at the Ministry of
Education, but had given up her job when she was told she could
not make progress in her career without becoming a Party member.
His father had been an eminent economist, but had made a similar
decision when faced with the same choice. `You are being disrespectful to the people who have put the first copy of George
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in my hands . . . go fling the rubbish at someone else.'
In fact, the conspiracy theorists' preoccupation with his family's supposed regime connections misses one of the most compelling attributes of Salam's diaries: he directs his vitriol in all directions. In the last days of the war he managed to describe the Fedayeen, the Baathist loyalists mounting a guerilla defence of Baghdad in the space of two paragraphs as `sickos', `chicken s**t' and `creepy f**s'. If he has been less than reverential about Iraq's occupiers,
he has been harder still on their Iraqi critics..."

I've been reading Salam's blog since before the war started, and continue to do so-- he is certainly no "ordinary Iraqi"-- His written English is better than 99% of Americans, his knowledge of Western popular culture is mind-boggling, and his snide digs at posturing of all kinds is world class. His genius brings us the gift of perspective and complexity in a situation reduced by American television to sound bytes and simple images.

Salam shares not only his political views but his opinions on music, pop culture and the absurdities of life in general, with the result that I now have someone in Iraq who I connect with intellectually and emotionally, who I worry about, think of, pray for. Not an American soldier (bless them too), but a citizen of Iraq who wishes for both peace and freedom, and who is deeply ambivalent about what is happening there.

Salam proves the saying that the "pen is mightier than the sword." No "ordinary Iraqi," indeed, but an extraordinary world citizen writing us missives from a surreal position.

Write on, Salam. And be safe.

What is going on in people's minds while the politicians and leaders use their own peculiar vocabularies to justify whatever?
Salam, thank you, thank you for letting an Iowan get a view without the doublespeak.
Not many people could give the absurdities that end in bombs and invasion the kind of authentic black humor that Salam does. I laughed out loud a lot. The book reminds me of "Catch 22" despite the differences of culture, author's voice, time and place.
Salam is the author with whom I'd most like to have coffee. Or wine-he can pick. I'll pick up the bill.
oh, p.s. for you nitpickers about the title ordinary: If a bomb had killed Salam, I bet his name would have been collateral damage.
read this book.

Salam is a fine and witty writer, and reading his dispatches is like having a friend in Baghdad. From many thousands of miles distant the war is reduced for us to a political issue; hearing it from Salam makes it immediately a story of human concerns. If you want a perspective from outside the American political power struggle over the Iraq war, from someone intimately affected, check this book out. Salaam says on his blog today that he doesn't like the title on this edition, I second that but obviously it doesn't change the worthwhileness of the contents.

I just finished this and it is wonderful! Salam not only talks about the devistation of his city and the hopes and fears he has of the future. Such topics would be interesting and worthwhile. But his discussions of music, tv shows, and the humor he maintains in the face of depressing scenes makes this book a great read.

Salam Pax's book (and indeed his blog too) are very interesting, exciting and funny. His little digs and endless sarcasm are amusing but also get across the message that he dosen't feel 'liberated' nor does he feel the need to be thankful to the Coalition for freeing his country.

His blog is fun, informative and thankfully has continued despite months of living in a dodgy police state and under a state of war and then (if that wasn't enough) several months of anarchy!

I can only hope that we can see the second book listing his adventures in the post saddam Iraq. Good luck Salam!

I'm not sure where the original copy I bought went to, but I realized I had lost it and had to order a new one. Salaam Pax and I would probably not agree on everything, but he's a passionate writer and this book offers a perspective on the lead up and early days of the Iraq war that no American audience was privy to. The blog was great, but the book is timeless.

An excellent non-strident expression of perspective from a pair of creative and perceptive non-western eyes. In fact, in light of consummate arrogance from the Western world and its perspective on the "lesser peoples," we need more, more, more of this kind of writing: tells it like it is but is not so blindly anti-western that it turns people off. The one issue I have with the book--and I say this from having lived in the Arab World--Salam is NOT your "ordinary" Iraqi. While there are certainly more like him than western minds will accept, he does not yet represent the "average" Iraqi.

Salam Pax is both ordinary and extraordinary, and his weblog-turned-book should be required reading for all Americans.

About the book: very readable, intriguing, and with a sense of humor our world leaders would do well to adopt. It gave me a great deal of hope, reading this book, that we, as world citizens, may be able to find common ground among all our different cultures. I wish we could pander to such 'ordinary' citizens of Iraq like Salam Pax, rather than to the extremist interests we as Americans always seem to end up in bed with.

Read it. Read it read it read it.