Salam Pax is posting again, at US$5 an hour. There’s a big backlog of things written while he had no access. I’m almost surprised at how good it is to read something this real again. Yes, I know real is a dangerous word, but after all the reporters went home Iraq has become abstract again. The front pages of the newspaper just go on about sex clubs possibly opening in Bergen and nonsense like that. Perhaps Salam Pax seems real to me because I can relate to his descriptions:
The streets markets look like something out of a William Gibson novel. Heaps of cheap RAM (stolen of course) is being sold beside broken monitors beside falafel stands and weapons are all available. Fights break out justlikethat and knives come out from nowhere, knives just bought 5 minutes ago. There are army sighting thingys, Weird looking things with lenses. And people selling you computer cases who tell you these are electric warmers, never having seen a computer case before. Really truly surreal. (9 May)
I can imagine this precisely. Reality often seems realler when it can be related to a familiar fiction. I’m glad Salam’s back, and OK.
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JonathanSmith
I am hoping that some (whatever the hypertext equivalent of the term ->) “literary agent” will convinxe SalaamPax to “assemble” and “publish” his blog entries. Excellent example of humanistic hypermedia, ja?