He always had an idea to go back to Marjayun and look for his ancestors' home.
And I think he finally made the trip in January 2006 and looked for the house.
And I think it was then when he had this idea of moving to the town for a year
and just rebuilding the house.
This whole thing looks like it's a disaster.
And you see this one little glimpse of that iron grate.
It's spectacular.
I'm sure it's the same one there 80 years ago.
It kind of depresses you and makes you hopeful at the same time.
This is Anthony Shadeed reporting from the New York Times.
What makes you keep going back?
You were shot in the shoulder in the West Bank in 2002.
Why do you keep going back to war zones?
It's kind of pretty much the only thing I know how to do.
I've been covering it for 15 years. I think now finally is the moment that we see
that it's transformative in the Arab world and it does make you even more,
I think, eager in some ways to cover it, to try to bring meaning to it,
to witness it, and it matters.
I think there are some stories that are worth taking risks for.
It is a little bit of a cliche, but I think there is some meaning to it
that unless you're there covering it, no one is going to know about it.
Unless you're there trying to bring meaning to it, to bring a certain depth to it.
It won't be done otherwise.
I love these small things that I think are so important.
He was actually involved in the smallest details of the building,
laying tiles on the ground, planting trees in the garden,
and every little detail he was involved.
We're going to redo these stuff, we're going to clean them,
and then we can save this marble from the original marble.
This is exactly what I imagine this room looking like.
This can be spectacular, I think, when we renovate it.
As the house was getting finished, he grew more and more fond of the house.
He just loved this house so much.
It was for him something that he had created,
and created from imagination.
In his imagination, it was where his family came from,
where all began.
I think it must have been the happiest year of his life.
But there's a feeling when I was shot in Ramallah,
and this happened in Libya, in Ajdabi,
where you fear you're about to die.
It was never frantic, it was never...
You never felt like getting up and trying to run away, save your life.
Instead, it's kind of just a weird resignation,
and acceptance.
Maybe what best characterized him is how nice he was.
Whoever came knocking on his door, he made time to sit with them,
to tell them what they needed to hear,
and more importantly, to listen to them.
He was one of the most relentless and tireless reporters I ever worked for.
And only after he had listened to hundreds of hours of people talking,
after he had filled notebooks with things he had seen,
and smelled, and heard, did he actually sit down to write.
His extra-rare talent was to bring to people in a very poetic way
what was happening in these areas.
He wanted to be where the bombs were falling,
where the human cost was being felt,
and he wanted to report that and tell people the cost of war.
I think the world has lost an incredible communicator
of this complicated and turbulent Arab world.
Universally respected.
Probably the best reporter of his generation in the Arab world.
Anthony Shadeed was a giant.
Amen.
Well, I think peace in the Middle East is coming.
I have to say, I am optimistic.
The moment when the Arab world is remaking itself,
is refashioning itself in some ways of being reborn.
Keeping people at the center of the story is the most important thing.
Understanding the humanity of these stories is the most important thing.
And I think it's incumbent upon us as journalists and as reporters
to keep the humanity there, to keep the meaning of what's actually happening
so that we keep the people who read us engaged.
Thank you.
