I liked that post a great deal, and I think understand what Salam is saying
Salam's writing is succinct and elegant. I have neither of those qualities, so here is a garbled reformulation of what I got from Salam's post.
I think Salam wants to be ordinary. Not a spokesman for his race, or representative of the Iraqi experience. Not a zoo animal on display for westerners to gaze at before they go to sleep.
(The African American poet Paul Dunbar had similar great ambitions, but from him America only wanted to hear "a jingle in a broken tongue". See _The Poet_)
Salam's expressed envy for the Perso-blog community. Iranians have created their own space, in Farsi, and do not need to "represent their race". An Farsi blogger can blog about (frex) anime in an wholly Iranian context, and not answer questions, or even think about, how Americans are politically viewing his anime blogging.
So, if you accept that this is what Salam wants -- why can't he just stop whining and do it? Why not blog in Arabic, write about Egyptian Soap Operas, and ignore the Americans. Why not create his own "space", where he can be ordinary?
Well, maybe he's trapped, stuck being a "brown Englishman" / "Macaulay's minuteman" / Nehru. Perhaps (and this is a guess) his cultural experience does not allow him to discuss the world in an Iraqi (or Arab) context.
And maybe he's sees the value in explaining the Iraqi perspective to Euro-Americans. Somebody's got to do it, or a militarily powerful constituency will remain abysmally ignorant. And, with his cultural background, he is well placed to be that animal on display in the cage.
He _is_ a sell-out, a walking betrayal. He is a blog "client" or worse, a blog "comprador". But somebody's gotta do it.
-----------------------
I think the sentiment described by Salam is common in other places, not just Iraq. The colonial experience created a layer of elites, in Africa, India, or Malaysia, who are disconnected from their own culture, but not fully members of the Euro-American west. Read "The Times of India" to get a flavour of this class in one nation.
(Perhaps, like Hellenized Jews? Jonathan?)
There's a lot more I could say about this class, it'S relationship to the west, and the reaction against them (whether by Mahathir, Vajpayee, or OBL). But not on Christmas Eve.
------------------------------
(I may be putting words in Salam's mouth, and seeing things in his post that he did not intend. For that, I apologize.)
(Dear Raed is a great blog, but not because it is Iraqi. It's great because it is honest and meaningful. Most bloggers, and commenters, are pedantically political or trivially personal. Salam's writings are meaningfully political _and_ personal. He's got an Isherwood _Berlin Diaries_ feel.)
Perhaps I don't get Salam's humour either. For safekeeping, I filed my sense of humour in a cabinet several years ago, and don't plan to retrieve it until retirement.
But FWIW, here's a bit of his post you did not quote that I think is relevant.
" ... This is not the dialogue of equals we used to talk about, I keep referencing their everything because I am so swallowed up by it."
And, with reference to being ordinary,
"Moreover I was getting all those scary questions from the people who read the blog. What do I think about the Kurdish situation? Open letters from Diane, which I was really at loss how to answer. "
I think you're right. I've been called on this post by others as well, and it looks like I misunderstood what Salam was trying to say. It's just that, well, I want to know about the Egyptian soap operas too. It's selfish of me, but I want to be a guest at the party - I don't mind if he's "ordinary," but I want to share his ordinariness the way I do with the other people who post here.
And, as someone who regularly commits the sins of being pedantically political and trivially personal, I also like Where Is Raed because it is neither. Maybe my problem was that I didn't understand how much his post was an expression of emotion, because I'm bad at expressing emotion in writing myself.
You've raised some other good points; I'll answer them later.
Some more grist for the mill from a Shelby Steele article in _Harpers_ entitled "The Age of White Guilt and the Disappearance of the black individual" (November 2002).
The purpose of Steele's article was to highlight the damage to blacks (and, also whites) from "white guilt". But he has a few points that are relevant here, particularly his discussion of the obligation a Black man in Paris had in the 60s. He describes one fictional account, and the life story of James Baldwin, as examples of black men going back to the USA and subsuming their own identities to become the representatives of the group.
Whether this is done out of altruism, group obligation, or some selfish desire to appropriate moral authority (and this latter one I doubt was real in the 60s), Steele believes the cost to the individual of becoming a "group representative" is severe, and in his view, no longer necessary for blacks in America. What about for Salam?
I don't think Salam should be obligated to be a representative of his group. I don't want him to give up his individuality (unless that's what he wants to do). I don't particularly care if he never talks about politics or "what it means to be an Iraqi" - even if all he talks about is daily life as he sees it, I want to share that and enjoy his warmth as a human being. This is probably a selfish attitude on my part, but I've already got in enough trouble over this post that I don't mind getting in a little more.
This is strange way to say my first hello to Salam.
Hello.
For one thing I'm came upon this comment thread from the entry on the December page where you thank Ikram Saeed for his kind words, so I can't really read these comments in context. I couldn't find the entry they originally came from.
But I did have a reaction to Ikram Saeed's words, I thought I'd post.
His words are very familiar to me. I guess it doesn't matter where I've read similar things before... I'm not sure how to say this gently:
Very few people are so incredibly lucky enough to feel fully at home in this world. If they feel at home, it's temporary, usually.
Maybe most people are square pegs in round holes.
Deigning to talk to westerners makes Salam a victim and betrayer?
Such melodrama robs everyone involved of their dignity.
Cultural identity is a nonexistant disease, like race or poor grammar. We make up a nonsensical concepts and then like madmen we hallucinate tortures using our phantoms.
People are just people. To believe anything else is to make solvable problems impossible.
I just read an entry where Salam said "I [heart] Bjork".
Is he victimized by identifying with an Icelandic woman? It was always nonsense. It was always nonsense.
I'm a little ashamed that I'm writing this little whine first instead of emailing Salam about my appreciation of his site... But I'll get to that later, after some sleep.
Joshua Scholar
Hi.This is my first trip into the archives. I've been reading "Where is Raed?" for about two or three weeks now, and I really don't remember where I first came upon the site. While Salam's stuff speaks to me, this thread really hits where I have lived my whole life. This sense of disassociation from one's own people...coupled with the tenuous strings that bind one to them. I can see this turning into a long babbling rant, (maybe my need to indulge in long babbling rants fuels my recent interest in taking up blogging, but that's besides the point here. Although I am sort of researching the options for starting one. Any suggestions regarding appropriate sites,hosts, software, etc. would be appreciated) A capsule of my experience that I believe made me feel this way: I am the son of a career Army soldier in the United States, born in the mid fifties. I was raised in my early childhood in Turkey and France, finally coming to the deep South in America in 1966, when I was eleven. My parents were from working class families in the South and Southwest, Okies and Hillbillies, depending on which parent. This is a very conservative and insular group,these people,who I now live among - rednecks and cowboys and Arab haters, ignorant and zenophobic and proud of it. These are my people, and yet I feel like an alien among them. On the other hand, excepting some pidgen Spanish and vestigal French, not enough to be useful, I speak no language but English..or more accurately "Amurri'can." This country, America, which I love, but which constantly embarrasses me, does not feel like home. I would be even more lost, I fear, in the Europe that I cling to childhood memories, and I sometimes wish I had been left behind while my father traveled the world, helping in the great quest to "make the world safe from Communism." That I could be blind to the inherent hypocrisy of our culture. That the idea of Salam's blog and it's current notoriety would make me roll my eyes in disgust and make some sniping comment about sand niggers, as it seems to do with my contemporaries here in Texas. I so wish, in other words, that I were an ignorant redneck, snuff dipping working man, listening to Nashville pop and calling it "country", polishing my pickup truck weekly and being inordinately proud that the president, smirking puppet of the elite power structure that nurtured him along that he is, is "a Texas Boy made good." Instead, I try my best to fly under the radar, not calling attention to the fact that I'm one of them French-wine-lovin-Dixie-Chicks-listenin-George-
Bush-bashin-Commie-Liberal-America-hatin-
apologist-traitors.
What can I say to Salam? Well, maybe just this. I'm sorry we allowed our country to be hi-jacked by a self serving power puppet who chose a quick and easy way to defect atttention from his administration's own ineptitude by invading your little history soaked part of the world. And thank you for opening a little win
(continued) [ I said I had a propensity for long and babbling, didn't I?]And thank you for opening a little window into what's happening over there - direct from the source, not filtered and vetted through the vast commercial propaganda packaging apparatus that spews phosphor dot fertilizer into our homes. I like my news pulled fresh from the dirt, mud clinging to its grubby roots.
Commenting by HaloScan
