Anthony Shadid

Anthony Shadid is a reporter for the Washington Post (later the New York Times) who covered conflict in the Middle East for 15 years. At the age of 39, he is exhausted by wars that have kept him from his family, leading to his divorce and displacement from his daughter Laila. Shadid seeks a sense of home, of belonging; he is American, but Lebanese; a Greek Orthodox Christian but Arabic. His sense of identity is deeply confused. He finds himself drawn to his Lebanese heritage, tracing his family's immigration to America. He takes a leave of absence from work to move to the small Lebanese town of Marjayoun to rebuild his great-grandfather's house, despite the fact that he does not personally own the house. Shadid dreams of a world he was never a part of, nostalgic for his idealized vision of the Ottoman Empire, when cultures freely intermingled. He...