Salam strikes again and again. The famous blogger of Baghdad (and former interpreter of mine) wants the Americans to succeed in Iraq “because if the occupation forces fail, my country will fall apart.” But Salam notes, in his blog, that “G. my friend got beaten up by US Army last night, he was handcuffed and had a bag put on his head. He was kicked several times and was made to lie on his face for a while. All he wanted to do was to take pictures and report on an attack, he works for the New York Times as a translator and fixer. He got more kicks for speaking English. His sin: he looks Iraqi and has a beard. Story will be told, I need to get him drunk enough to get the whole thing out of him.”
And in his column in The Guardian, Salam reminds us that “As you go into Baghdad from the west there is graffiti on the walls that says ‘Welcome to the Republic of Darkness and Unemployment.'” He attends a press conference by an Iraqi politician; the event was hosted by the Americans. “The press guy, at the request of the conference, was telling journalists that the instantaneous translation thingy has two channels; channel one for Arabic, channel two for English. I would like to add another channel: channel three for the truth. It keeps repeating one phrase: ‘We have no power, we have to get it approved by the Americans, we are puppets and the strings are too tight.'”
Salam also recounts an unpleasant encounter with the Americans. “Earlier in the day I got frisked and the car I was in searched because the colonel or something who has just passed by thought that he didn’t like the people who are standing by the car (me) and that I was giving him dirty looks. Habibi, you have no idea how dirty my looks can get, you didn’t get one. What you saw was the I-have-been-standing-for-a-whole-hour-in-the-sun. But because you have the power to decide what a look means I got searched. You really should have looked more carefully before you shot the nine-year-old kid in Ramadi only to find out later that it was a water gun he had in his hands. Dirty looks–yeah, totally justified frisking me.”
