By late 2012 the war in Syria raged. For journalists it was at least as dangerous as Libya had been in 2011. If newspapers sent in correspondents at all, they went in with the help and logistical support of a particular rebel commander and stayed for only a short time. I wanted to cover the war’s civilian toll—far from the front line—and offered myself up to the New York Times to visit the camps for displaced civilians. I traveled to Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, and as I crossed the border from Turkey into war-ravaged Syria, I thought about Lukas and wondered if my love for him might overwhelm my ability to go to countries where my fate was so uncertain.
With a colleague, a security guard, a driver, and a fixer, I drove through the bucolic villages of northern Aleppo that lined the border between Syria and Turkey, my cameras tucked away in a bag at my feet, my hair neatly hidden under a head scarf. I watched the countryside whip past my window as we traversed small pockets of peace that existed precariously in a country torn apart by death: a few farmers toiling in the fields, young men lining up for haircuts at the barbershop. We drove to the rebel-controlled village of Tilalyan, where we were greeted by members of the town council, happy to see foreign journalists there to document their plight. I photographed boys who spent their days trying to secure flour for the bakery, teachers at a makeshift school who taught amid the air strikes. We visited a local clinic, swarming with Syrians who had been wounded in battle, others merely suffering everyday ailments that suddenly became impossible to treat as doctors disappeared or migrated to battlefronts to treat the gravely wounded. It was a story that had been routine in the past but took on a whole new meaning for me as a mother. With every scene I wondered how Lukas would fare in the same situation; I wondered how it would feel to be like these mothers, who suddenly couldn’t guarantee security or access to daily meals for their children.
Eventually the story of Syrian refugees took me back to northern Iraq, to Erbil, where I had spent my first night in the country a decade earlier to cover the war between the United States and Iraq. Instead of driving across the jagged, snowcapped mountains between Iran and Iraq, I flew into a glassy, modern airport in Erbil and presented my passport at immigration to a pretty young Iraqi Kurdish woman with long, wavy hair and nails painted red.
“Have you ever been here before?” she asked, looking through a passport that was a stamped testament to so many memories in so many countries.
“Yes,” I responded, smiling. “But a lot has changed. I was here ten years ago—in 2003.”
“Welcome,” she said. “You have a two-week visa.” Iraqi Kurdistan was one of the few places in the Middle East that welcomed Americans.
I exited the airport to a familiar burst of dry, convectionlike, one-hundred-plus-degree heat and looked around for Tim, the correspondent I would be working with for the Times. He was there, wearing a Yankees baseball cap, and behind him stood Waleed, the driver with whom I had endured the kidnapping in Fallujah in 2004. He looked older, his gray hair and mustache now dyed black but faded into a black-red henna tint, his large frame still tall but slightly gaunt. He threw his arms around me and laughed a big laugh.
“Habibti!” (My dear!) “So happy to see you again.”
I squeezed Waleed tightly, grateful to see a familiar face and a friend after many years. I wondered about the toll Iraq’s sectarian violence had taken on him and his family. How many friends and family members had he lost? Over the ever-present kebab, Waleed ran down the list of fellow Times employees from 2003 and 2004 and rattled off where they were now: Basim, Canada; Zaineb, Canada; Ali, Michigan; Jaff, New York. The ongoing war had disassembled Iraqi society, scattering lives and friends across the Atlantic, across continents.
As we raced toward the Syrian border, my mind slipped back to 2003, to who I was then: a young woman who wanted nothing more than to travel the world and to document the stories of people and their hardships. I was insatiable in my quest to document the truth with my photographs and threw myself into the midst of any situation without regard for the consequences, believing that if my intentions were pure and I focused on my work, I would be OK. Though I still work with the same dedication, I have grown more cautious with every brush with death, with every friend lost. Somewhere along the way my mortality began to matter.
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