![]() ![]() ![]() For the next ten years we stayed in touch, seeing each other occasionally but more often chatting via Skype. Not because he was quickly becoming one of the most highly-respected war correspondents in the world, but simply because, in my young and narcissistic mind, this was the man who got shot instead of my father, and now he was sitting in our house laughing and joking and telling the most entrancing stories, sympathetic to the naïve confusions of an almost-adult who was trying to learn how to navigate the Middle East. I’d heard stories of Anthony before, but it wasn’t until later that year when I was visiting my father overseas that we met for the first time-and I was overawed by him. His status is unknown.” And I completely freaked out-several frantic phone calls to the Foreign Desk later, I got through to my father, sounding tired and exhausted. ![]() One day, on the way home from school, I heard a brief mention on the radio: “A journalist for was shot by Israeli forces outside the residence of Yasser Arafat. My father was covering events there for an American newspaper. In 2002, I was a raw almost-adult living in California as the Second (or al-Aqsa) Intifada raged in Israel and Palestine. Anthony Shadid is one of those people for me. There are some people who, at least retroactively, define a period in your life you look back from a later vantage point and realize that they impacted you in ways that you were completely unaware of, and that their influence on your life continues to evolve. ![]()
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