May 7, 2003
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If you read the Salam Pax's post, you will see that he gets angry whenever it is suggested that they would be better off under Saddam. And it is pretty clear that almost nobody would go back to the pre-war situation.
One of the reasons I've always been inclined to believe "Salaam Pax" is real is that he displays the normal ambivalences of an actual human individual. Having war come to your home town sucks like you wouldn't believe, and being relieved of Saddam Hussein is terrific. Both are real.
I'm inclined to agree, as far as Pax's believability. If he were a fake, those responsible would almost have to have someone in Iraq, given the number of things that he's said that could have been disproven by people on the ground, were they to have been false.
Even if you're willing to grant those commiting the fraud the ability to come up with a supremely believable character, it seems really strange to go through all of that effort to come up with a blog that's ambivalent about the war. I could understand either pro-war or anti-war people faking up a mouthpiece. But I'm not quite as willing to believe that those ambivalent about the war (though on the balance, on the anti-war, anti-Saddam side) would go to the trouble.
I wonder if spawn <nomail@mt.net> read the same blog as I did. Some taxi drivers in Baghdad are saying that things were better under Saddam — and that is precisely what is setting Raed off.
One of the things that makes me think that Salaam Pax is real is how poorly he writes. Not that he writes terribly; he writes like my college educated sister, actually. He's perfectly literate and his occasional errors of spelling and grammar are quite within normal tolerances. But his writing is...thin. When you read a good writer, Patrick, say, or Jim Henley or Ken McLeod or, well, pick your favorite writer, you find that the total meaning in their paragraphs is greater than the simple addition of the meaning of each sentence within that paragraph. It's something that some people do as naturally as breathing, and others can't do at all. The rest of us try to learn.
The other thing I find interesting about Pax's style is his lack of simile and metaphor. Again, this is something you see from people who aren't great writers, but perfectly competent in the language. When Pax does venture into that territory, as often as not there's a grammatical problem, usually involving a preposition. (Am I crazy, or have other people noticed that people who speak English as a second language often have trouble with prepositional phrases? Does anyone know if we put them together oddly?) There are times when Pax uses simile well, but often it sounds to me like something he's heard. There's a line about bombing being the soundtrack of their lives. It's a phrase which is nicely evocative, but it's also a phrase that's been used often, in movies and historicals and so on. Movies and histories of the Sixties, in particular, talk about the soundtrack of the peace movement, or the soundtrack of the war...
I wouldn't lay any serious money down on it, but I just don't see the point, if Salaam Pax isn't real. There doesn't seem to be any opportunity for fraud, he isn't playing on other people's sympathy, doesn't seem to be angling for attention, and doesn't seem to have a simple political view. Heck, he doesn't even seem to have a complex political stance, just the usual mish-mash of ambivalence and hope which I find very familiar.
Tangent: Does anyone remember how shocked the press were when we bombed Sarajevo and its inhabitants were royally pissed. Here we'd come to liberate them, and all they could talk about was how their city was in ruins. Nobody likes to be bombed. Why is this perpetually a surprise?
"Why is this perpetually a surprise?"
Because we're really good at pulling the wool over our own eyes. Because Sarajevo was off the radar for a lot of people (too busy watching the Clinton Show).
And we won't learn anything this time. Folks'll remember that statue toppling over, and the tough-guy talk from Rumsfeld and Bush, and the breathless reports from embedded journalists.
Lydy: Prepositional phrases are always the hardest for a non-native speaker to learn in most any language They tend to be idiomatic. What, really, is the difference between saying I live on Elm Street and I live in Elm Street? Yet one is definitely American and one definitely British. And to an American the Brit version sounds faintly risible. It's idiom. I've studied 2 languages other than English: German and Latin. Prepositions are essentially idomatic in both, and I'm told this is true for most languages. Certainly my reading seems to indicate that.
MKK
"Nobody likes to be bombed. Why is this perpetually a surprise?"
I think it's only too easy to be glib and forget what the experience must be like for those who have lived amongst falling bombs, whether in Baghdad or anywhere else.
If I lived under a vicious dictator then I would be delighted to see him gone, even if the future was uncertain. I would even recognise that I owed thanks to those who removed him. However, being human, if I had spent three weeks in fear of my life, with air raids every night and the constant threat of death, if I had lost my son or daughter to one of those bombs, then think I just might have mixed emotions rather than unadulterated gratitude.
This is why I think the 'why aren't they more grateful' question is crazy, and one asked only by those who view events only in theoretical terms without considering that those involved are not simply actors on a set amongst some expensive SFX, but real people, with real lives, and real emotions.
Lydia, do you perhaps mean Belgrade rather than Sarajevo? 'We' (meaning the US, NATO or the 'West') didn't bomb Sarajevo, but we did bomb Belgrade in a caring, freedom-loving way.
Should we SF people want an informant on the subject of living through NATO bombings, we have only to ask Zoran Zivkovic who's been publishing a lot in Interzone. He lives across the street from the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and was home at the time the US bombed it.
Lydia, do you perhaps mean Belgrade rather than Sarajevo? 'We' (meaning the US, NATO or the 'West') didn't bomb Sarajevo, but we did bomb Belgrade in a caring, freedom-loving way.
It is possible that I do. My memory for detail has never been good. But if we didn't bomb Sarajevo, who did?
Prepositional phrases are always the hardest for a non-native speaker to learn in most any language
I remember having terrible trouble with Latin prepositions, now that you mention it. "In" just didn't work properly. However, ablative was worse. I never did figure out what an ablative case was, at least, not with any certainty. I passed tests by figuring out by the way the question was phrased when they wanted me to show off my ablatives, and then doing so with great aplomb. Or at least, spelled correctly.
I don't think anyone bombed Sarajevo, but a lot of people shelled it. From the target's point of view, I expect it amounts to the same thing.
Re prepositional phrases being idiomatic: I have a sneaking suspicion this will be the achilles heel of the "semantic web", at least in its strong form. Prepositional phrases are how we link concepts together to build larger meanings; they are analogous to various kinds of hypertext links (think of "authored by", "for more information see...", "part of", etc.). They're tough things to formalize, and the fact that human languages tend to be unsystematic about them makes me think that coming up with some grand systematic scheme for communicating them to computers is going to be hard.
"Having war come to your home town sucks like you wouldn't believe, and being relieved of Saddam Hussein is terrific. Both are real."
But you only quoted one, and that's revealing.
I really disagree about Salam's writing, especially when compared to other bloggers. The guys you quoted use English in a standard, often dull way. Premise, argument, argument, conclusion, yawn.
Salam's writing is an adventure, and I love the turns of phrase. Also, he's got a real voice. Not just ordinary (and usually dull) poltical blogging.
I don't think anyone bombed Sarajevo, but a lot of people shelled it. From the target's point of view, I expect it amounts to the same thing.
I confess to failing to distinguish between bombing and shelling. Things come out of the sky and explode. Thanks for clarifying.
Salam's writing is an adventure, and I love the turns of phrase. Also, he's got a real voice. Not just ordinary (and usually dull) poltical blogging.
Ikram, I completely agree with you when you say that Salam has a real voice. It is one of the reasons why I love his blog. It is that real voice, plus some of the ways in which he fails to be a polished writer, which convince me that he's a real person. He writes like one.
I love good writing, but there are many different kinds of good writing. Elegant, formal, precise English is one. Poetic, metaphorical, evocative writing is another. Clear prose which conveys a sense of the writer and his experiences has got to count as good writing, even if it would get downchecked by an English teacher.
The other thing that makes him so real to me is his lack of an ideological hobby horse. Salam writes about where he is and what is happening, and -- shock! surprise! -- simplistic political viewpoints don't encompass the situatiion or make it any easier to deal with.
From How To Be A Jewish Mother. You buy your son two expensive sportscoats, and when you see him wear one, you sadly say, "the other one you didn't like."
Just testing the keyboard.
Hey, happy news: the Iraqi National Library may have burned, but the books are reportedly safe. Yeehah! Point'cher browsers to the Boston Globe:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/133/nation/Library_s_volumes_safely_hidden+.shtml
All other things aside, this makes me happier.
Whoops! I see Teresa already has the scoop. I must remember to empty my cache more often.
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
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