Salam Pax

Did you know Salam Pax is back? Or am I like the only one that didn't get the memo?

In the run-up to the Iraq War, he was essential reading. Inspiring, pugnacious, opinionated, free-wheeling. Simply awesome. If there was any one blogger who gave me a sense of the potential importance of this medium, it was him.

He gave it up for a while, but now he's back at it. His commentary on the Iraq draft constitution is among the best I've seen. The most recent post there is a fine, sad tribute to a recent victim of the violence in Iraq.

I know you have smarty-smart journalists who tell you the most amazing stories from foreign lands and explain everything for you, but there are many cases where a journalist has just been parachuted into a country he knows nothing about and where he, as the Arabic saying goes, can’t tell the difference between a stick and a corncob. That’s when the journalist is only as good as his/her fixer. Before all you journos out there get indignant I know what I’m talking about because I was a fixer myself.

And for all those freshly parachuted journalists there can’t be a better gift from the skies than a passionate and knowledgeable fixer. This would be Fakher’s cue to make his entrance. Fakher al-Tamimi, Fixer extraordinaire, with a ready smile and a million stories to tell.

Today I heard of his assassination on the radio. The report said that he was kidnapped last night from his home and was found shot dead today. I met Fakher while I was a fixer for the New York Times, his English wasn’t yet up to speed then and I was sent down to Basra to translate for a new NY Times reporter who was working with Fakher. For me at the time he was like the Rolls Royce of fixers. He had endless reserves of enthusiasm and he made you feel he knew everyone in Basra’s phone directory personally and more importantly he cared about the stories being researched, he genuinely wanted these stories to be told and read by the outside world.