Silent Iraqi Bloggists

A long while ago I told an online friend, Hr, another elderly person like me, about Riverbend, the mysterious young woman who courageously continues to live and function in or near the heart of the Iraq maelstrom, as she has so vividly reported for several years now in her "Baghdad Burning" weblog. (http://www.riverbendblog.com/)

I didn't hear much about River from Hr. afterward, and I assumed that she read a couple of River's posts and then went on to other things. I was surprised when, a couple of weeks ago, Hr. emailed me, asking with some alarm if I knew why River hadn't posted for a long time. Ironically, that email cracked me out of my own latest and much longer "blogsleep," and ever since I've been fully awake and once more dog-paddling through that fascinating world.

River hasn't posted for close to a month and a half now, and her last report consisted only of three terse sentences, notifying us of the abduction/arrest of another interesting Iraqi webloggist, Khalid, the proprietor of "Tell Me a Secret" [http://secretsinbaghdad.blogspot.com/], and before that River hadn't left us anything to ponder for the preceding two weeks. This means that it has really been two months since she last applied herself to these outside communications.

Because of the frequent shortages of electricity and other drawbacks of living in Baghdad brought on by the Bush attack, River's postings are characterized by large gaps between them. Two weeks is about usual, but six weeks is way out of the ordinary.

To my recollection, her previous most worrisome absence was caused by another abduction, much closer to home, of an inlaw, the husband of her cousin, for which she and her family had to scurry around and come up with some serious ransom money.

So far I have found no mention in other weblogs, Iraqi or American, of Riverbend's situation, and so, as always, we can only speculate and hope for the best.

Times seem to be tough for Iraqi bloggists, and surely it couldn't be any other way. After giving us a long and amazingly thorough account of his ordeal, Khalid himself hasn't posted, for a month. And until a few days ago it had been two weeks since Khalid's brother, Raed Jarrar, of "Raed in the Middle," (http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/) had said anything either.