The Diligence and Humility of Anthony Shadid
Agence Global
February 17, 2012
Commentary by: Rami Khouri, senior fellow with the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut
Topic: Anthony Shadid
“BEIRUT — When special people depart this world for another, as New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid did earlier this week, those of us who are left behind feel like a rowboat bobbing in the rolling waves of a large luxury yacht or ocean liner that has left us in its wake. We are slightly disoriented, momentarily losing our balance and direction, focused only on regaining equilibrium, and later anchorage, in a suddenly turbulent and frightening world. Acids that are only occasionally activated for special assignments go to work in the pit of our stomach. They generate sadness at the passing of his life, fear because we have been alerted to the fragility of our own lives, and also small jolts of confidence and hope — because his life and death remind us that our world was, and remains, full of gifted people like him.”
