It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario Page A
Authors: Lynsey Addario
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breakfast and my phone rang. It was Uxval. My eyes lit up, and I stepped away from the table to spew my daily Te quiero s (I love you’s) before heading out to work. When I sat back down at the table, Gilles Peress, who had covered Iran and Bosnia, among many other conflicts, looked at me, expressionless, and said, “Was that your boyfriend?”
Yes.
“Do you love him a lot?”
Yes.
“He will cheat on you one day.” And he walked away.
I didn’t believe him. I was still naïve then. Someday I would know what Gilles meant: that in this profession relationships ended in either infidelity or estrangement. A dual life was unsustainable.
• • •
E VERY JOURNALIST at the Serena wanted to be the first to get the news of the final fall of the Taliban in Kandahar. The competition put an extraordinary amount of pressure on all of us to take risks, and it was important to be cautious, to avoid running into heavily armed Taliban fighters as they fled or getting blown away by American air strikes that might mistake us for those Taliban fighters.
Our interpreters and drivers, who had sources inside Kandahar, kept us updated on the progress of the fighting; some journalists got intel from Washington. The camaraderie at the Serena disappeared. Photographers who had been sharing the next day’s itinerary became cagey and private. Everyone thought he had some exclusive details that would get him to Kandahar first.
One night the Pakistani government locked the front gates of the hotel to keep the journalists from leaving for Afghanistan. In order to ensure we wouldn’t get locked inside the hotel, a group of us from the New York Times sneaked over the fence and into cars awaiting us outside and drove toward a house belonging to one of our fixers inside Pakistan, but closer to the Afghan border. After what seemed like fifty phone calls to the Times ’s New York and Washington bureaus, and the Pentagon, we made the decision to drive to Afghanistan.
Our mini convoy of cars passed through the same endless brown flatness I knew from my previous trips. I shared a car with another female photographer, Ruth Fremson, and two male correspondents, but most of the ride was silent with the anxiety of the unknown. We didn’t see any Afghans, any U.S. military. None of us knew whether the Taliban had fled or remained in the city. We hoped we would arrive in a liberated city, but it was hard to tell what had taken place: Afghanistan looks bombed out even when it hasn’t been bombed.
Inside Kandahar it was anarchy. Teenage boys walked through unpaved streets with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs hanging from their necks like giant rock candy. The men—anti-Taliban or former Talibs who had switched sides—wore stacked turbans, dark kohl around their eyes, and Kalashnikovs and necklaces of ammunition strung around their necks and backs. Everyone strutted around aimlessly, milling around boxy, low-hanging storefronts with dirty awnings flapping out front. I was familiar with Afghanistan—how it looked both biblical and lifeless—but somehow the destruction and the armed men all seemed more ominous now.
The New York Times crew found several floors’ worth of rooms in a shady hotel above a bakery that dutifully churned out fresh bread several times a day. In war zones most journalists lived like nomads on a college campus: We shared rooms, meals, satellite phones, cables—anything and everything—and often moved around if a better room in a better location opened up. I had been sharing a room with Ruth, also on assignment for the Times , and I was grateful to have her as a role model: She was wise but not patronizing, started working before dawn and finished long past dusk. Every night she helped me file my pictures to New York on the satellite phone she set up in our room. Besides one other journalist who was staying at the same guesthouse, I don’t remember any other women in Kandahar at all.
The Times Magazine
Yes.
“Do you love him a lot?”
Yes.
“He will cheat on you one day.” And he walked away.
I didn’t believe him. I was still naïve then. Someday I would know what Gilles meant: that in this profession relationships ended in either infidelity or estrangement. A dual life was unsustainable.
• • •
E VERY JOURNALIST at the Serena wanted to be the first to get the news of the final fall of the Taliban in Kandahar. The competition put an extraordinary amount of pressure on all of us to take risks, and it was important to be cautious, to avoid running into heavily armed Taliban fighters as they fled or getting blown away by American air strikes that might mistake us for those Taliban fighters.
Our interpreters and drivers, who had sources inside Kandahar, kept us updated on the progress of the fighting; some journalists got intel from Washington. The camaraderie at the Serena disappeared. Photographers who had been sharing the next day’s itinerary became cagey and private. Everyone thought he had some exclusive details that would get him to Kandahar first.
One night the Pakistani government locked the front gates of the hotel to keep the journalists from leaving for Afghanistan. In order to ensure we wouldn’t get locked inside the hotel, a group of us from the New York Times sneaked over the fence and into cars awaiting us outside and drove toward a house belonging to one of our fixers inside Pakistan, but closer to the Afghan border. After what seemed like fifty phone calls to the Times ’s New York and Washington bureaus, and the Pentagon, we made the decision to drive to Afghanistan.
Our mini convoy of cars passed through the same endless brown flatness I knew from my previous trips. I shared a car with another female photographer, Ruth Fremson, and two male correspondents, but most of the ride was silent with the anxiety of the unknown. We didn’t see any Afghans, any U.S. military. None of us knew whether the Taliban had fled or remained in the city. We hoped we would arrive in a liberated city, but it was hard to tell what had taken place: Afghanistan looks bombed out even when it hasn’t been bombed.
Inside Kandahar it was anarchy. Teenage boys walked through unpaved streets with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs hanging from their necks like giant rock candy. The men—anti-Taliban or former Talibs who had switched sides—wore stacked turbans, dark kohl around their eyes, and Kalashnikovs and necklaces of ammunition strung around their necks and backs. Everyone strutted around aimlessly, milling around boxy, low-hanging storefronts with dirty awnings flapping out front. I was familiar with Afghanistan—how it looked both biblical and lifeless—but somehow the destruction and the armed men all seemed more ominous now.
The New York Times crew found several floors’ worth of rooms in a shady hotel above a bakery that dutifully churned out fresh bread several times a day. In war zones most journalists lived like nomads on a college campus: We shared rooms, meals, satellite phones, cables—anything and everything—and often moved around if a better room in a better location opened up. I had been sharing a room with Ruth, also on assignment for the Times , and I was grateful to have her as a role model: She was wise but not patronizing, started working before dawn and finished long past dusk. Every night she helped me file my pictures to New York on the satellite phone she set up in our room. Besides one other journalist who was staying at the same guesthouse, I don’t remember any other women in Kandahar at all.
The Times Magazine
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