Saturday, August 31, 2013
The question often asked, when Amanda Lindhout disappeared in one of the world’s nastiest war zones, was: Why?Nobody
instructed the young journalist to visit Somalia in the middle of a
civil war. No editors demanded her coverage; her only steady job when
she landed in Mogadishu was a regular column for the Red Deer Advocate, a
small newspaper in central Alberta. When news broke that a 27-year-old
freelancer had been kidnapped, some veteran correspondents asked each
other why the rookie threw herself into such danger.
We get a satisfying answer in Ms. Lindhout’s new book, A House In The Sky,
crafted with help from the talented Sara Corbett, a contributing writer
for The New York Times Magazine. The early chapters describe the way
Ms. Lindhout was seduced by the world, drawn to faraway places never
imagined in her rural hometown. Inspired at first by the glossy pages of
National Geographic magazine, she followed the usual backpacking routes
in Latin American and South Asia, then strayed far beyond the maps in
her tourist books. Rough spots along the way – getting mugged at
gunpoint in Kabul, falling sick in the deserts of Ethiopia – only
deepened the allure.
She wanted to break into journalism, but it’s
a hard business. The Advocate paid $35 per article. She got hired for
the Baghdad bureau of Press TV, Iran’s state broadcaster, but grew tired
of the spin from Tehran. She saw the neglected war in Somalia as an
opportunity, remembering the way famed newscaster Dan Rather had proved
his mettle while covering a hurricane as a young reporter in the 1960s.
“Because he was there, because he’d taken the risk, he managed to tell
the story in a vivid and meaningful way. His career was made,” she
wrote, adding later: “Somalia, I thought, could be my hurricane.”
That’s
crazy, to some people, but I recognized some of my own craziness in her
story. Like her, I grew up in a small Canadian town, and I was only 26
years old when I launched myself into the battlefields of Afghanistan as
a correspondent for this newspaper.
What lures us into dangerous
places? Ambition, curiosity, desire for meaningful work. Youthful
stupidity. The romance of new landscapes. The yearning to make our lives
useful, adding a human voice to the cold politics that govern the fates
of millions.
All of these things are part of Ms. Lindhout’s
explanation of the way she stumbled into Somalia, and they’re achingly
familiar. I live in Kabul, where most of my friends tick with the same
emotional clockwork. Many of us live as ordinary civilians but with the
backing of a major organizations that provide risk insurance and medical
training. But there’s a growing cadre of people like Ms. Lindhout,
scraping by with only meagre savings and strong instincts. Such
freelancers are now carrying much of the burden for coverage of Libya,
Syria, and other wars.
This is the reality of our age, with news
organizations and Western governments stricken by shrinking budgets.
Young adventurers are filling the gaps in our understanding about the
worst places, often with little backup when bad things happen.
The
details of the bad things suffered by Ms. Lindhout and her travelling
companion make for exceptionally grim chapters. Kidnappers grabbed them
on their fourth day in Somalia, and their odyssey lasted more than 15
months. She was beaten, tortured and raped. She briefly contemplated
suicide. In the end, their families raised $1.2-million and bought their
freedom.
It’s painful reading, but readers will probably find
inspiration in her ability to endure hardship. The book should also be
mandatory for anybody who feels compelled to work in the toughest parts
of the world. No matter what precautions are taken, the most important
distinction between Ms. Lindhout and the rest of us, unfortunately, is
luck. In the same hour that I finished writing this review, I heard news
about two foreign aid workers kidnapped in Afghanistan. They were
travelling a road we all assumed to be safe.
The most frightening
part of Ms. Lindhout’s account is that such ordeals will be repeated –
and continue, even now, in the difficult corners of the world that
attract young idealists.