I just finished reading Anthony Shadid’s thoughtful book House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East.
Anthony, you may remember from an earlier blog post, is the son of Fayteen’s cousin Rhonda. He also worked as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times before he died in Syria earlier this month. He won two Pulitzer Prizes and wrote two other books.
As I read House of Stone, I felt sad that Anthony died so young. I marveled at what he had accomplished and thought about all he might have done in the years to come. Most of all, I felt the tragic loss of a good person who wanted to become an even better person.
In his book, Anthony wrote about meeting a doctor in Lebanon—Dr. Khairalla.
“Simply put, he was the kind of man I wanted to be, but I worried I would never become—gentle and kind, principled, ever curious,” he wrote. “Choices didn’t seem to disturb him. In the fullest of lives, the way forward was easier to discern.”
–Joy
