Anthony Shadid’s Longing For His Lebanese Roots

This portrait (Arabic) by Hussain Abdul Hussain of Anthony Shadid paints him as a figure many of us are familiar with: The man with Lebanese roots who had a nostalgia for an ideal of Lebanon, an ideal that never really existed, who was willing to give up everything to return “home” and build a new life there.

Except Shadid died early and never got to finish the script that is typically associated with those people. He never got a chance to actually move to Lebanon and settle down there, only to discover years later that he had made a terrible mistake.

Bonus: The “end of an era”, why Anthony Shadid’s reporting mattered so much for America’s understanding of Arabs.