Everyday life in Iraq
Mr. Shadid was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 2004. He is also a recipient of several other top awards in journalism including The Michael Kelly Award, an award named after Michael Kelly, the first journalist killed in Iraq after the invasion. So far 90 journalists have been killed in Iraq, highest so far in any war.
I asked Mr. Shadid the first question after his moving talk about the consequence of the invasion on the ordinary people in Iraq that he gave on April 3 at Zayed University, in Abu Dhabi. I prefaced my question with my experience of the day of liberation of Bangladesh where an oppressive, genocidal regime was overthrown.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. I told him: "I was a witness to the fall of Dhaka on December 16, 1971 when Mukti-Bahini, flanked by Indian soldiers (Mitra Bahini, as they were called) marched into Dhaka amidst applause, I saw people -- thousands of them -- jubilant, some with flowers in hand, others with sweets, come out to receive the victorious forces. As I watched the fall of Baghdad on CNN, I did not see the same euphoria of jubilation nor the huge number of people on the streets. Did CNN fail to capture the celebrations of the day and was the camera crew taking the wrong shots? What was the mood on the street?"
Mr. Shadid chose his words carefully. He thanked me for my question then he went on to say that there is a difference between his understandings of that day from on the spot to some time later. The report that he filed for the Washington Post on the events of that day portrayed a picture of jubilation on the part of the ordinary Iraqis but later he found out that the response was much more complex; there were feelings of joy, ambivalence, doubt and fear.
A more complex picture was presented in his book, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War. By then he had more access to the minds of the Iraqi people. Many, he thought, were relieved that Saddam had gone but they were apprehensive of the foreign forces. They could not accept the occupation of their country by a foreign power. There was a feeling of grief: a sense of loss that one country was taking over another.
Mr. Shadid concentrated on the everyday life of the Iraqis. How the invasion has turned their world upside down. For Mr. Shadid, the job of a journalist is "to listen and not to judge." Baghdad has been described as a "city of lanterns" and "a city of ghosts" and so on.
He quoted a 14-year old Iraqi girl who kept a diary (Anne Frank of Iraq, not his characterization) in which she described Iraq as "a land of dried bread with tea," reflecting the disappearance of even the basic necessities of life. She wrote: "This morning did not begin with the roosters crowing but with bombs."
Mr. Shadid explored the complexity of the insurgency through the perceptions people had. He talked to the villagers from where a suicide-bomber came. For some, he was "a martyr," some would say "nationalist," others "devout" or "one who got thousands of dollars from the Baath Party."
And indeed many people -- Shiite and Sunni -- did show up to cast their votes. Their vote was not a simple capitulation to the interests of the occupiers but they wanted to exercise a right that they were denied of for a long time. But politics was not the main focus of Mr. Shadid's observations.
He narrated one story to capture the ravages of the war on the Iraqi society. In an idyllic village on the Tigris, an informer allegedly brought a group of US soldiers and pointed out the houses of some of the insurgents. The soldiers did their job of destruction leaving a trail of four dead bodies.
Later the villagers came and talked to the father of the informer demanding that he had to kill his son for he had betrayed his community, or else following the local tradition of tribal justice they would kill the rest of his family in retaliation. One morning, the father finally took an AK-47 rifle and shot his son. While talking to Mr. Shadid later, the father told him that "Even the prophet Abraham did not have to kill his son but I had no choice."