Trauma, kidnap and death: all in a day’s work for journalists in Iraq. I spent a week in Baghdad last year. It was minor, really – from the airport to our compound, from our compound to the green zone, from our compound to the airport again and put. I ate amazing meals prepared by the live-in cook (an IDP) and talked to the Iraq country team. It was the scariest thing I ever did, and it was nothing – absolutely nothing – compared to what the US military and the Iraqi people go through.
This article really resonated with me; the author struggled with the same feelings I did. Like you’re not allowed to be traumatized because your risk was so minor. Which it was. But…
I would, I think, have stayed in Iraq if I wasn’t a mother. We were doing good relief work there, and there was a vivid and immediate sense of why the work mattered. Time magazine has a nice article about the need for more humanitarian work in Iraq. Agron Ferati, who is quoted, is brave and brilliant and I worry about him all the time.