The return of the Baghdad blogger

Two years ago, Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger, was forced to leave the city he loved. But this week he returned from exile ... cautiously optimistic about the future of his country

Original Baghdad Blog

Baghdad Blog (Salem Pax)

Twitter Salem Pax

I have arrived in Baghdad on a magic carpet! Honestly, I have. There was never a more aptly named airline: Magic Carpet Airlines. And it flies daily flights to the Iraqi capital from Beirut, where I've been living for the last three months. As the pilot announced our descent in to Baghdad airport, I prepared myself for the 15-minute stomach-turning downward spiral flights have to make to keep within the secured airspace above the airport. But instead we went for an unhurried, gradual landing: the first and very welcome sign that things have changed.

I have been out of Iraq for almost two years now. The Baghdad I left in 2007 was not the city I had grown up in and loved. She had become so different, so violent, so not herself that I didn't feel I was abandoning her.

I remember the moment when it felt as if leaving wasn't a choice, but a very clear necessity. I was sitting in my pyjamas on the ground in our front garden; my father, mother and aunt crouched beside me, also in their pyjamas. Two American soldiers pointed these absurdly large rifles at us and an unnecessarily aggressive Iraqi translator hissed: "We know you have explosives in this house. It's better for you to tell us where they are than us going through the whole place and finding them."

At the time we were living in an Iraqi-army-protected compound in which many current and previous government officials had been provided "safe" housing. My father's short stint as a minister during Ayad Allawi's interim Governing Council in 2004, as well as his heading of the election campaign for the Iraqi National Accord, gave us the dubious privilege of said housing. The oh-so-many factions who were willing to kill and/or kidnap for money or political reasons, only had to keep an eye on who was going in and out of the gates to the compound. We were fish in a barrel.

But back to that morning in May 2007 as we sat on the ground in our PJs with six humvees at the gate, a dozen American soldiers going through our belongings and an Iraqi translator wearing a balaclava doing his "nobody moves, nobody gets hurt" thing.

None of us were particularly surprised by all this. To be honest, it felt inevitable. Let me count some of the reasons why: the Sunni family name, the tribal connections related to that name, the tide turning against Ayad Allawi and all those associated with his government when a strongly religious Shia government was elected, and last but not least, my father's very vocal opposition to this religious tide taking over. We - the rest of the family - had become pawns in all this.

After about an hour searching our house the US military unit left, having found nothing that could give them an excuse to detain any of us. But what they did find is the money my mother had taken out of the bank in preparation for our trip to Jordan the following day. We all knew the drill by then: after your house has been searched, go through your possessions. I managed to catch the translator before he left to tell him that $2,000 was missing from the house: he told me that he would look into it.

We left home 10 minutes after all the humvees had gone. When being on the street felt dangerous, we had stayed home; now that didn't feel safe either. We felt that as a family we had somehow managed to escape kidnappings and assassinations when they were daily realities around us, and we shouldn't push our luck any further. Most of my extended family had left Iraq by then. We almost had as many acquaintances and family in Jordan and Syria as we had in Iraq.

We left, and so did many, many others. By 2007 the UN High Commission for Refugees estimated that about five million Iraqis had had to leave their homes since the war began in 2003, most moving to other cities within Iraq. When I visited the south of Iraq, early after the start of the war, there were already signs that some Shia Muslim factions were forcing Christians to move to the north. Meanwhile the Kurds in the north were pushing Arabs out of Kurdistan. In Baghdad, not only were districts becoming identified by sect and religion but to curb the violence between them huge concrete walls were being erected demarking Shia and Sunni territories.

I still can't understand why doctors were driven out of the country. They were followed by academics; lists of names of university professors were being circulated, along with businessmen and government officials. They were on hit lists, we were told. Never mind why they were being targeted, were they going to risk it? Of course not: they packed and left. If you didn't fit into the political, ethnic and sectarian compartments created in the postwar chaos, you were out. Baghdad became a city of fear and grief.

And to make sure that the boot was firmly planted on our backsides, one of my uncles who was still in Baghdad got kidnapped from a supposedly protected compound within the ministry of oil. Shia militias walked in, knocked on doors, took high-level officials in the ministry and walked out. It was an ugly, ugly affair. It took months to get him released and no one in the family talks about it much. It left those of my family still in Iraq terrified because they had to deal with the kidnappers who were demanding a ransom. Those of my family already outside washed and dried their hands of the whole country. It felt like a clear message: this is not your country any more, you are not welcome.

Not that there were many places outside Iraq welcoming Iraqis. Governments in neighbouring countries were already grumbling about the number of Iraqi refugees "flooding" their gates and European countries were revising their asylum policies regarding Iraqis. The general argument was: "Your country is now safe, go back." We fled to wherever we could: my mother stayed in Jordan, my father in Lebanon; my brother managed to find a job in the United Arab Emirates, and I travelled to London having been lucky enough to secure a British Council scholarship to do a postgraduate degree in journalism.

So, two years later, after all that, what on earth am I doing back here?

I wish I could say that it is a wider general trend of Iraqis returning. If you were following the news after the US "surge" and the widely publicised improvement in the security situation since that time, you might have the impression that Iraqis were returning in big numbers. The truth is many of those who did go back left shortly afterwards again, having found their homes occupied by other people, or their neighbourhoods still unsafe. But many of those kept returning, bringing more family members with them: one foot in Iraq and the other holding the door open just in case a quick retreat was needed. That's where my family and I are now.

Since the war started, Baghdad has become for me the sort of place where you can never really judge how it is until you are there. Listening to the news from afar can be confusing and rarely gives you the full picture. When I moved to Beirut three months ago the picture got slightly less blurry. And now I want to see if the situation really has improved.

While in Beirut I found out that the Lebanese design consultancy firm I used to work for while I was writing my blog from Baghdad is back doing work in Iraq, and that the scope of the projects the Iraqi government is planning is amazing. A new general masterplan for greater Baghdad is being formulated, former army barracks are being turned into huge new housing districts and Sadr City should be seeing some impressive developments very soon. All of this has been boosted by gradual improvements in security and profits from high oil prices last year.

Even as we were hearing about a suicide bomber near the Kadhimya shrine just a week ago, the Baghdad municipality website was announcing an open call to architects and urban planners to submit designs for the development of the wider area around that holy shrine. This, just a month after opening bids for the construction of the Baghdad subway project. I didn't even know plans had been submitted for the project, let alone it being ready for construction.

An underground railway in Baghdad? Sounds delightfully crackers, doesn't it? But no less so than the plans for five-star hotels and shopping malls in the city centre, or a UAE property development company planning a $15bn housing project in the north. OK, I know what you're going to do now. You're going to send me a link to that mad "Disneyland in Baghdad" project the Times reported on last April and tell me not to get overexcited.

But what gives me some optimism regarding these projects - not the Disneyland thing, that would be silly - is what I've seen on TV over the last two weeks from the city of Karbala. The city has just been through Ashura, the 10-day commemoration of one of Shia Islam's most revered imams. The event was widely covered with live broadcasts from the city centre, and what I saw was a far cry from the shabby city centre I visited in 2003 when I made a film for Newsnight about the Ashura festivities. What we are betting on, given money and some calm, is that it can be done.

On the politics front, I have never felt as supportive of the current Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki as I was during the negotiations for the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States. For once it felt as if the Iraqi government could stand up for itself and not be a pushover. Yes, the negotiations were messy and the Iraqi parliament acted, in the end, like a bunch of kindergarten kids, but as an executive authority the prime minister and his cabinet mostly played hardball with the US negotiators. It was great to follow, and hopefully a sign of political maturity.

My mother spent about four weeks in Baghdad very recently. She stayed in my flat in the centre of the city, where I am now living. She came back feeling very positive about the situation. She told everyone she talked to about how much she enjoyed herself there. Without telling us about her plans, she travelled to Karbala and Najaf to visit relatives and went on a taxi ride through Baghdad. And all she complained about when she told us about her adventures was the traffic and how incredibly expensive everything was now. But when my aunt decided to go to Baghdad for a trip too, my mother called her to tell her that she hoped she hadn't sounded too enthusiastic and optimistic, it was just that she was so excited about being back.

Now that I am in Baghdad myself I think I should temper my optimism as well. Let's not forget that until recently Christians were being driven out of their homes in Mosul, suicide attacks are still killing hundreds weekly and with provincial elections approaching, things could take a turn for the worse. Services are still more miss than hit - long electricity and water cuts are still the norm.

And I am not sure if the city I left is the city I have arrived back in. Will what it went through have changed it and its people so much that it will feel alien to me? I hope not. I want to feel like a Baghdadi again; I want to get my driver's licence back and drive along the roads I used to love. I want to visit the book market and check out the art galleries. I even hear the Iraqi National Museum is open to the public again. After becoming a source of fear, worry and sadness, I want Baghdad to feel like home again.

The busy and bustling streets from the airport to my flat are a good omen and my aunt's welcoming words, "Good, you're back, you'll like it" make me even more hopeful. So, until my next update from Iraq, keep your fingers crossed that Baghdad gives me as warm a welcome as she did.

by Salem Pax

'He spared neither regime nor invader' (How the Baghdad Blogger became a global media phenomenon)

by Leslie Plommer

In the breathless limbo of early 2003, as Iraqis waited for the American-led assault against the regime of Saddam Hussein, a special voice emerged to tell the world what it was like to be an ordinary person in a city on the approach to war. Writing in wry, idiomatic English under the pseudonym Salam Pax, "the Baghdad Blogger" became an international media phenomenon - his web diary avidly followed around the world, quoted, criticised and admired. And puzzled over: who was he?

On 20 March, the war arrived. The bombing of Baghdad began. By 9 April, a crowd in the capital was pulling down the huge bronze statue of Saddam Hussein under the eyes of newly arrived American troops. Before, during and after this focal period, a young man living somewhere in the Baghdad suburbs transmitted (with just one temporary break in service) his account of his life among family, friends and neighbours. Closely observed, intelligent, sometimes passionate, frequently funny, he spared neither regime nor invader.

Yet masked by his insouciant tone is the fact that what he was doing held great danger as the dying apparatus of the regime lashed out.

Excerpts from his blogpost on 9 March 2003 give a flavour, as he takes aim at a British reporter who has ended his piece from the Mutanabi Friday book market by saying that Iraqis seemed to be putting on an air of normality. "Look," responds Salam, "what are you supposed to do then? Run around in the streets wailing? War is at the door eeeeeeeeeeeee! . . . But in order not to disappoint the BBC, me, Raed and G put on our 'normal' faces and went to buy CDs from Arassat Street in a demonstration of normality ... many thanks to Malaysian bootleggers for providing us with cheap CDs. The Deftones, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Erykah Badu and the Amr Diab have joined the Pax Radio CD racks.

"Other normal stuff we did this week: finished taping all the windows in the house, actually a very relaxing exercise if you forget why you are doing it in the first place. Bought 60 litres of gasoline to run the small electricity generator we have, bought two nifty kerosene cookers and stocked loads of kerosene and dug holes in the garden to bury the stuff so that the house doesn't turn into a bomb. Prepared one room for emergency nasty attacks and bought 'particle masks' - that's what it says on the box.

"Got two rooms in our house ready to welcome our first IDPs (internally displaced persons) - my youngest aunt who is a single mom with three kids because she lives farthest away from the rest of us and another aunt from Karbala in the south. Hotel Pax is officially open for the season, no need to make reservations but you might need to bring a mattress if you come too late."

In the wake of the invasion, a Guardian correspondent set off in search of the blog's author. He proved to be "a witty young Iraqi living in a two-storey house in a Baghdad suburb", Rory McCarthy reported. "In June last year, Salam (this much of his name, at least, is real) was a recently graduated architect, aged 29, living at home with his parents and brother in Baghdad. His best friend was Raed, 25, a Palestinian-Jordanian he had met while studying architecture, who was taking a masters degree in Jordan. Raed was at best an infrequent email correspondent and so Salam started writing up his news from home on a weblog, a site on the internet where he could post his scribblings as often as he liked for his friend to read. He called it: Where is Raed?"

As war approached, that site - www.dear_raed.blogspot.com - became the stage for the Salam Pax phenomenon.