REPORTING NO MORE

There are printed articles I will read no matter what they are about, simply because of who wrote them. For example, this morning NY Times’ story by Alyssa Rubin, on the practice of “baad” in tribal Afghanistan, the kidnapping of young girls as payback for a slight received, is one of them. I have been following Ms. Rubin’s printed career since she was a budding foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times  and her pieces that tend to focus on the plight of women in war zones are insightful and compelling. Anthony Shadid was another foreign correspondent whose words I would gobble up no matter what he was writing about. My long fascination with the Middle and Near East political situation was often informed by Mr. Shadid’s articles.

Anthony Shadid died yesterday, after smuggling himself into Syria, a country that has shut the doors to foreign journalists to better cover up the state sanctioned violence that is taking place and that has now turned into full-blown civil war.

It would have been the story of a lifetime, instead cut short by an apparent asthma attack, probably brought on by the horses that were being used by the guides who smuggled him and Tyler Hicks (whose photo reporting from war-torn zones is fearless and empathetic at the same time) over the Turkish border. After trying to revive his colleague for over 30 minutes, Mr. Hicks brought the body of his friend back to Turkey, in what must have been the grimmest and most somber assignment of his life.

What made Mr. Shadid’s writing so compelling was his clarity when explaining complex situations, the understanding and re-telling of the human face of war and, above all, the knowledge that to get a story, THE story, the only possible way was to be where the action was. Far from an adrenaline junkie, Mr. Shadid often stated that reporting through information obtained by phone or second-hand sources couldn’t be accurate, nor compelling, which is why he must have felt that strongly about entering a country like Syria illegally, so he could tell the world what was really happening on the ground.

We will never read the words that would have poured out of such an experience. Above all, a woman and two children have been left widowed and fatherless. I feel privileged to have become familiar with Mr. Shadid’s work that did so much to enlighten me and helped me form opinions about countries that will most likely remain foreign to me.