Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Salam Pax emerges

For those of you who are fans of the the "Baghdad Blogger," whose blog, Where is Raed?, has become famous on the web, you may now listen to its author (Salam Pax is not his real name), courtesy of BBC. To link to the Real Player presentation, go to The Agonist blog and scroll down a bit.
The interviewer asks Salam about that awful night before the "Shock and Awe" bombing began, when Salam had learned by telephone from Britain that squadrons of B-52s were taking off from an airbase, Baghdad bound. Salam launched this news on the Internet and we readers of his blog waited for the duration of the six-hour flight, hoping he'd survive the bombing. He did survive, of course, but his blog was silent for three days and we feared the worst.
It felt, for me, a bit like that final, fabulous scene in the oldie, Foreign Correspondent, where Joel McRae is broadcasting to America from London as the German bombs are beginning to fall, telling America that the lights are still burning in England. One of the great moments in film.

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