29 Oct 2013
We’re off talk of “intervention” in Syria, and on to trying to get everyone to the negotiating table. It’s not going very well. The head of the Syrian opposition has made it clear that they will not attend talks in Geneva unless President Bashar Al-Assad is removed from office. Scheduled for 23 November, the peace(…)
24 Sep 2013
The woman who appeared in my office doorway on May 20, 2010, wearing a slim white skirt suit was absolutely startling. Maybe it was her eyes—I’d never seen such jewel-green eyes. But the intensity of her presence was more than physical. Amanda Lindhout radiated a kind of peace I hadn’t expected. After working for fifteen(…)
17 Sep 2013
I remember a chalk line drawn on blacktop by a group of kids at recess when I was young. The message was clear: This is the line you do not cross. If you stepped over it, you would face the wrath of those kids in whatever game we were playing. Now turn that line crimson(…)
25 Jun 2013
Alma Abdulrahman is lying gaunt and unable to move anything below her diaphragm in a hospital bed in Amman. Some bedsores have become so deep she’s having surgery tomorrow. Screws hold together her upper vertebrae, and cigarette burns pock her right shoulder. Her voice fades in and out, hoarse from either weakness or morphine. Six(…)
6 Jun 2013
Inside a furniture-free caravan in the Jordanian desert, sixteen women and girls and a plump boy wedge themselves in a circle around a 15-year-old girl and a woman doing her hair. The hairdresser combs through one-inch sections, spraying on a fixative before twisting them into elaborate shapes. The girl, whom I’ll call Nada (I’ve changed(…)
5 Apr 2013
One day in the fall of 2012, Syrian government troops brought a young Free Syrian Army soldier’s fiancée, sisters, mother, and female neighbors to the Syrian prison in which he was being held. One by one, he said, they were raped in front of him. The 18-year-old had been an FSA soldier for less than(…)