It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario Read Free Book Online Page B

assignment. I would keep trying. I felt that if I could only shoot for the New York Times —to me, the newspaper that most influenced American foreign policy and that employed the world’s best journalists—I would reach the pinnacle of my career.
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    A ROUND MID- A PRIL 2000 Ed returned from a reporting trip to Afghanistan. He came home with fifteen Afghan carpets and some advice: “You should go to Afghanistan to photograph women living under the Taliban.”
    “What do you mean?” I honestly didn’t know much about Afghanistan, aside from the Times articles I had read while on the elliptical machine in New York.
    “You’re a woman, and you’re interested in photographing women’s issues,” Ed said. “There are few female journalists doing these stories there now. You should go.”
    I had never been to a hostile country. Afghanistan had been destroyed by war, first when the Soviets occupied the country in the 1980s and later when Afghan factions fought each other for power. By 2000 one of these groups, the Taliban, had taken over about 90 percent of the country, promising to end the violence, thievery, and rape. It installed Sharia, Islamic law requiring strict obedience to the Koran; forced the entire female population to wear the burqa; and outlawed television, music, kite flying—any form of entertainment. Men had their hands cut off for robbery, and women were stoned to death for adultery. But everything I had read was from an outsider’s perspective, from articles usually written by Westerners and non-Muslims. Were Westerners imposing their own set of values on a Muslim country? Were Afghan women miserable living under a burqa and under the Taliban? Or did we just assume they were miserable because our lives are so different?
    I didn’t know how I’d pull off such a trip. The only governing body was the Taliban, and almost all foreign embassies and diplomats had pulled out. I was an unmarried American woman who would want to photograph civilians. In Afghanistan women were not allowed to move around outside the home without a male guardian. Photography of any living being was illegal. According to one famous hadith, the Prophet Muhammad said: “Every image-maker will be in the Fire, and for every image that he made a soul will be created for him, which will be punished in the Fire.”
    But aside from a brief moment when I wondered whether I would be able to carry out my work, I wasn’t scared. I believed that if my intentions were for a good cause, nothing bad would happen to me. And Ed was not a daredevil journalist. I didn’t think he would recommend a trip that might end in my death.
    On Ed’s recommendation I immediately sent a bunch of e-mails to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and to several local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), introducing myself as a freelance photographer interested in photographing the lives of women under the Taliban. Almost immediately I began to receive responses. I was shocked: I didn’t have backing from a major publication—to them I was a nobody—but they still took the time to answer my e-mails and offer logistical support. Few journalists were covering Afghanistan under the Taliban, and they were grateful for my interest. I arranged to arrive in two weeks.
    The week before I was scheduled to go, I checked my bank balance. The remnants of my wedding money had dwindled to nothing, and most of my freelancing payments hadn’t come through. I couldn’t possibly cancel this trip because of money. In most war zones credit cards were not accepted: The only accepted currency was a wad of dollars. And I didn’t have dollars. Or rupees, for that matter. My mother couldn’t lend me money; I refused to ask my father and Bruce for anything beyond the wedding money, because they had repeatedly expressed their belief that I needed to make it on my own. I called my sister Lisa and her husband, Joe, and without