Jonathan Rugman

A voice that haunts

One cold evening in the middle of February this year I walked into a smoke-filled room in a town called Saraqib in northern Syria to find Anthony Shadid sitting shoeless on the floor like a Bedouin and conversing in Arabic with a tall, thin school teacher, one of the leaders of the town’s revolution. A cast-iron stove, fuelled by paraffin, heated the room, and Anthony, a bearded, somewhat burly man, seemed to glow with bear-like warmth. Through the cigarette smoke I could see three notebooks proudly stacked in front of the New York Times reporter, evidently bulging with his observations.

Anthony had watched rebel fighters attempt to blow up an army tank earlier that day, and he was clearly shaken by the audacity and ferocity of Syria’s violence. But he also laughed a great deal, smiling the smile of a reporter who had found a story he couldn’t wait to write — a story gifted to him through the bravery and suffering of ordinary people mounting extraordinary resistance to their own government.

Anthony spoke fluent Arabic (though, by his own admission, with an Oklahoma accent) and he translated for me that night, despite my embarrassed pleas that he should stop. I only discovered later that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, twice.

We spent the rest of the evening at the home of the teacher-cum-revolutionary, grateful for the sanctuary of a quiet residential neighbourhood after dark. No one was really in charge of Saraqib; the police had fled, the hated Ba’ath party head-quarters had been burned down, and the town was riddled with government informers. Syrian rebels protecting the place did not inspire confidence, armed as they were with Soviet-era weapons and homemade bombs — strange amalgams of plumbing parts loaded with pesticide and even coffee.

Adding to our sense of insecurity were the Syrian tanks and government snipers in plain view on the outskirts.

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