Interviewed by Mona Kareem
He was the first Arab blogger I put my eyes on his writings. 2003, a wild year for the world watching Iraq waiting for the war to start and part of watching Iraq was to watch Salam Pax. This interview has been conducted online in February 2009 and published in Arabic in Awan Kuwaiti newspaper. I was looking for him for months and found nothing but some of his old posts but then I got lucky, thanks to facebook.
Where is Salam Pax, everyone is wondering?
I have been in the UK doing a Master degree in Journalism. In 2007 the situation in Iraq was very difficult. I was too terrified to go out on the street with a camera so I stopped making the short documentaries I was making for the BBC. I stayed home. When almost all my extended family left Iraq I looked for a way out too. The British Council was offering scholarships for post-grad degrees and I applied for one. That’s how I ended up in London for a year.
Is it that hopeless, the case of Iraq, that you cannot bother blogging about it anymore?
It isn’t ‘bother’, it’s more the frustration. I don’t know if you’ve tried blogging... There comes a point where you ask yourself ‘what am I doing here? Does it matter at all?’…. just blogger burn out. Also, I moved on from the written word to video and for a while that was immensely satisfying. I blogged to tell people about Baghdad... Now the BBC and News night were giving me a chance to *show* you Baghdad. Not to blow my own horn but it was a very good transfer from word to moving image, but no thanks to me.. On the 20 fifteen-minute films I made I worked with a very good producer and a couple of very patient picture editors. One of them even had his own mantra whenever we told him I’m coming back with new footage for a film... ‘Embrace the Wobble’, he used to mutter as he watched my footage... I don’t have a very steady hand!
Why whenever a blogger becomes significant, he/she just stops blogging! Do the readers take his/her blogging pleasure, privacy, and freedom away?
As I said there is the issue of blogger burn-out. What I mean by that? You run out of things to say, you become emotionally exhausted by the it all and with increased competition updating as often as it is needed to keep the readership happy becomes just too much.. Somehow you’ve got to make a living, have a life and post 20 times a day? Not possible. The ones who’ve kept doing this are the ones who managed to turn their blogging activity into jobs.. Andrew Sullivan being the example most often sited. Also, you should not underestimate what happens when you suddenly have a large readership. If you have any integrity at all and take pride in your ‘art’ the responsibility suddenly becomes unbearable. Journalistic rules of the trade impose themselves on you. You must maintain credibility. People come to you because they trust you amongst other things… it’s a heavy burden if you are not prepared to it. We bloggers are all attention whores – ok, don’t translate that into Arabic... Attention seeker (that’s better)... so we love basking in the glow all those thousands of readers shine on us but that light also means that you’re constantly under observation… the fun of being silly on your own diary goes and it turns too serious so it’s a difficult balance. I want readers but the more I get the less private the blog becomes and the more toned down and serious it must be.
We hear a lot about bloggers getting arrested, especially in the Middle East, how do you respond to that?
I find it terrifying. That is what happens when your readers shine too bright a light on you, governments see you. And we in the Arab world don’t have very tolerant governments. Saying you’re an inconsequential blogger doesn’t get you off the hook. They are on to us; they know we can be opinion shapers... Hurrah for us but woe upon those who go beyond red lines... I wish I was that brave, I self-censor too much.
Do you think that we, in the Middle East, got the concept of blogging differently? I mean instead of blogging, we sometimes lecture people, or treat the blog as a website!!
Ok, it’s your blog. It’s your own space. You do with it what you want. I find blogs with rants funny I also enjoy blogs which only link to other content like a portal and I love diarists. Each serves a purpose and in the end Content is King; if it offers me something I want I will come back. A blog is what you make it so I don’t agree that we don’t ‘get’ the concept of blogging.. It’s a web diary.. So if you want a scrap book that’s fine and if you want a detailed political analysis that’s fine too.
You inspired a lot of bloggers, in fact some bloggers in Kuwait, for example, started blogging after witnessing your experience and they have achieved something, how effective would you evaluate your blogging history?
Consider this… if you’re a ‘first’ you’re free from the burden of having to be ‘the best’... There are people much better than I was at blogging. Just look at Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who very quickly moved on from blogging to being an award-winning journalist. I am very glad that people saw what I did and chose to follow suit, I feel humbled by those who say they have been inspired by my blog… I am more than happy to be one of many bloggers in the region… many have shown they’re much more courageous and braver than I have ever been.
How would you justify the special care that westerners had for you? Is it your English fluency? Or is the hysteria that the west has towards anything that comes from the Middle East region? Or is it something else?
Western media is lazy. Very lazy. I know, I worked with them. So here was an English writing person and using cultural references they can relate. They pounced on it. I didn’t mind. I thought this could be used to explain our culture to them. Also blogs were a new thing at the time, the concepts of ‘global village’ and ‘new media’ were fresh and still sexy. The internet was still this magical thing PLUS Iraq was within the radar of every news organisation on earth. I had started blogging a year before anyone in the media took notice. Other bloggers had but not ‘Mass Media’… so it’s a number of things. If I am going to be a bit cynical I would say that western media looks at life in the middle east (life not politics) like visitors looking at chimpanzees at a zoo… ‘look it peels the banana before eating it just like we do’.. it’s exasperating. But if you’re in a position to set them right then get over their idiocy and ignorance and grab this chance by the horns.. We are a great mix of bloggers.. Religious, secular, nationalists, globalists, gay, straight and always very engaging. If you get through to ‘them’ give them a run for their money.. show them how wrong their preconceptions are. Not only will you be doing the region a great service but the parts of the west who are open for their misconceptions to be challenged will love you.
How was your book received?
The book was a strange beast. When I was first approached by a publisher the first thing I told them was ‘who the hell was going to buy something that’s available for free online?’ I have already told another publisher that I am not interested into turning the blog into a more traditional novel form… and the blog well, it’s online and I was not going to take it off the web. But this was the early days of blogs, the American publisher didn’t even want to use the word ‘blog’ in the title, they thought no one would know what that is.. they change the title to ‘a clandestine diary of an ordinary Iraqi’… factually wrong on so many levels… it’s not clandestine.. it’s on the web for god’s sake.. and ordinary? Hah! Gay, atheist, western educated.. not exactly fitting the average Iraqi profile.. anyway.. so the UK publishers were right, blogs weren’t what they are now. Then it got translated to 13 languages. I tell you what I regret not doing.. getting an agent to get me a better deal.. hahaha! I read what other bloggers were paid for their blogs turned to books and I’m shocked. But it has been an amazing opportunity.
They say blogging is old, what’s next?
It is old, isn’t it? Every newspaper and journalist has a blog now.. governments have blogs! Iranian politicians have blogs! The cool kids are all wondering what the next big thing is… it isn’t Twitter for sure and neither is it Facebook.. they are interesting developments but how are they changing they way we live our lives and share our stories with people in a fundamental way? Not much.. they are evolutionary developments from the idea of having an online blog. We’re waiting for the next revolution. It’s probably happening in a technologically emerging country. Look at Africa where the mobile phone is much more powerful than a computer.. or China because of the sheer mass of users… we’ll find out soon I hope.
How did Iraqis perceive you when your blog made you famous?
From the start I knew that my readers won’t be Iraqis… I am not telling them anything they don’t know already. And I have made the decision to write in English. Iraqi media barely know I exist. I like it that way; it allowed me for years to work in stealth. I blog and run.
You are a blogger who shifted to work in media and filming, and you’ve talked about society and politics. Who’s voice you want the world to hear through your works?
For a while I kept reminding everybody that I do not speak for Iraq... We’re almost 30 million people and my views clash with 99% of them. What I was hoping to show is a fact of life that interested me. When the readership and film audience grew I tried the best I can to show all facets.. I stayed away from politics as much as I could I care about people and their lives more than I do about politics, it is part and influences our lives but there is so much more. I will feel very happy if I was able to show the world and let them hear the voices of people who the light of international media didn’t catch. The women’s rights activist, the forgotten prisoners of Saddam’s regime… and maybe also show just how exciting and varied our lives are. If that happened and someone took notice for just the 10 minutes of one of my reports I would be very happy.
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