It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

by Lynsey Addario

In America I expended an incredible amount of energy on things that in Afghanistan seemed vain if not pointless, and it was refreshing to submerge myself in an unfamiliar perspective and ideology, to assimilate in both mind and dress.

I walked around the village in search of water as a vampire hunts for blood;

Evocative writing and a thrilling, informative autobiography

Trying to convey beauty in war was a technique to try to prevent the reader from looking away or turning the page in response to something horrible. I wanted them to linger, to ask questions.

Only among Muslims is the hospitality so great that they cannot bear the notion that someone’s tea will be left untouched.

I had worked in the Muslim world for eleven years and had always been treated with unparalleled hospitality and kindness. People had gone out of their way to feed me, to provide me with shelter in their homes, and to protect me from danger.

had interviewed suffering people all over the world, and they never felt like victims. They felt like survivors. I had learned from them.

I was confused, appalled, and angry until I suddenly had a moment of clarity: If the Israeli soldiers were doing this to me, a New York Times journalist accredited by the Israeli government itself, who had called the press officer in advance to graciously ask to be manually searched, how on earth did they treat a poor, Palestinian pregnant woman? Or a nonpregnant Palestinian woman? Or a Palestinian man? The thought terrified me.