Declaring their new loyalty by taping a poster on their vehicles of Ahmed Shah Masood, Mohibullah and some 500 other Taliban soldiers from Konduz surrender to the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan. Many of the foreign Taliban were unable to surrender and remained in Konduz to put up a last fight.

Working as a photojournalist, I’ve been through war zones several times in the past five years. I was there at the height of the war in Afghanistan, during the fall of Konduz when the last Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan was destroyed. I was embedded with the U.S. Marines during the invasion of Iraq, and later worked unilaterally at a time when the sectarian violence intensified.

One month after 9/11, I made my first trip into a war zone when I traveled to Afghanistan for The Dallas Morning News.  In preparing for the assignment, I talked with David Leeson, my colleague at the paper who had experienced war before.

“Are you scared?” he asked.

“No, should I be?” I replied.

He tilted his head to one side and arched his brows, as his lips curled up at the edges. But there was no humor in his expression, only irony.

At the time I was too wrapped up in the details of the preparations to think, much less to reflect on fear. In time, I would know its meaning because I would recognize it as a part of me, not unlike my sense of familiarity with my appendages. In war zones, I would learn about another feeling, one I have yet to define but seems the opposite of fear; that feeling is a sense of my aliveness. And somewhere between these two feelings resides a place I think of as courage. I now believe that without courage, a person never can attain that feeling of being vigorously alive. Or so it has seemed in my life.

Understanding fear

Other than in my dreams, the first time I came face-to-face with deep and penetrating fear was during a battle in northern Afghanistan. It was Thanksgiving Day, 2001 and I was following an opposition movement with my young translator, who went by the single name, Esmatullah. I called him Esmat, and I learned in the time we spent together of his moral courage, as I explored my own. After eight hours of tagging behind the mujaheddin – waiting, moving forward, waiting, then finally moving forward again – an eerie quiet settled over the area and a tactile tension seemed to suck oxygen from the air we were trying to breathe.

Esmat lagged behind me further and further, as he walked in a zigzag line, muttering to himself.  This seemed an unlikely time for him to check out mentally and I didn’t want him to suffer, so I advised him that I did not pay him to risk his life. If he was not comfortable with the situation, he should go back. But he insisted I was his responsibility and if anything should happen to me, then the burden would be on his soul.  I explained that he was not ultimately accountable for my choices and that I took full responsibility for my decisions. I gave him a fresh business card, advised him to contact my boss if I was injured or killed and told him where my money was hidden.

Within minutes, a loud and chaotic battle, as only I had seen in the movies, unfolded before our eyes. In the distance were explosions from rocket-propelled grenades. Colored tracers lit up the scene and men scurried for cover in the flat, dusty landscape.  Soon the high-pitched whiz of bullets resounded in my ears.  I was barely able to focus my eyes ahead when my overworked brain registered the fact that armed men were running towards us. Instead of carrying their weapons pointing forward, they were slung on their shoulders and a panic palpably consumed their faces. If the mujaheddin were running away, I figured, things must be bad.

I knew I must take photographs, recognizing that I was witnessing an amazing scene. Trembling, I put my camera to my face but my muscles would not cooperate. My pictures were so blurry that I quickly gave up and ran behind the Afghan fighters. I had no training for war so I did what I’d seen Vic Morrow do on the television shows of my childhood. I ran low.  And when I heard a mortar go off close by, I plastered my body on the nearest mud wall and waited for the resounding explosion before I continued.

By the time we had reached the end of the village where we could safely get cover, each breath seared my lungs. I turned to Esmat in relief and said, “Oh my goodness, my feet are killing me!”  In the gravest of terms, he said, “No Cheryl, you are killing you.” I looked at him and couldn’t help but laugh at this young man, who at that moment seemed larger than life.

“No Cheryl, you are killing you.”

That day taught me the meaning of fear, but I also learned something else as every cell in my body screamed with life. At that moment there was a sense that I was, as all of us are, the sum of each primordial organism that has endured through billions of years of evolution to become the complex units of cells known as a human being. My heart – the preserver of that life – was pounding so loudly in my chest that it echoed in my ears.

In silence, we trudged back to the front lines, as I contemplated my epiphany: Though paradoxical, I realized then that we are no closer to life than at moments when we are so close to death. Our existence, so easily extinguished, and our death, are not so opposite as we might think.

In war, emotions and choices become exponentially multiplied. Esmat’s decision to follow me despite the danger has always overwhelmed with me with awe.  We don’t see that kind of raw courage in our day-to-day lives in the United States.  It’s rare that we are called upon to make those kinds of decisions of deep and final consequence. Yet he made the choice not only to risk his life to look after my safety, but also to carry the burden of my death if that should have happened to me. And this, coming from a young man half my age, from a culture foreign to mine, from someone I barely knew. The lesson Esmat taught me that day has humbled and haunted me ever since.

Bearing witness in battle

It would be over a year later when I would find myself in Iraq, covering the U.S.-led invasion as an embedded journalist.  The day, April 4, 2003, is indelibly stamped in my memory. Riding in an amphibious assault vehicle, I watched as young Marines loaded cartridges in M-16 rifles and fired off round after round while we took both artillery and gun fire in an ambush in Al Aziziyah, just south of Baghdad.  The earth shook from the violence and gunpowder filled our nostrils.  I was numb from exhaustion and my senses were reeling from the activity.

Soon, confusion began to grip the Marines in my group.  I gleaned that a civilian had gotten caught in the crossfire and he was injured and trapped in his burning minivan.  I knew that the chances of the vehicle exploding made helping him extremely treacherous.  But he was very close to our vehicle and a couple of the men felt compelled to jump out.

It was a moment of reckoning for me. Would I stay inside the safety of our armored cocoon or should I get out and risk the battlefield and the burning vehicle to make a picture?  I was there to cover a war, I mentally prodded myself. There was no time to write down the pros and the cons of the situation, to consider the percentages of risk, to weigh life’s deeper truths.  In a fraction of a second, I determined that the situation was worthy of my life, so I rushed out behind the men.

My mind and my camera were in sync. Perhaps my previous exposure to battle violence falsely inoculated me from injury. I moved quickly and methodically to make images of Marines saving the life of an aged civilian Iraqi, even as some of their own had just been killed in battle.  Within minutes of making pictures of the rescue, I photographed somber faces as a Marine sergeant was carried away on a cot.

Witnessing efforts like this makes it easier to find the strength to look past one’s fears. Somehow, the Marines’ sacrifice was multiplied by the conditions, and I felt compelled to look beyond myself to record them in their moment of bravery.  Ultimately, I found that my courage had simply been a by-product of a moment whose significance was greater than me.

Returning from war

My greatest challenge with my war coverage has been at home, in the months after my last trip to Iraq as I deal with the ongoing personal effects of my war experience.  Two weeks after my return to the United States, on August 2, 2005, a dear man and a friend, New York freelance journalist Steven Vincent, was killed.  Steven and I lived in the same hotel and often shared meals and many heated political discussions.  His death violated me; his death could so easily have been my own.  It unhinged my sense of safety and well-being.

I search for the courage to not fall into a moat of helplessness, to draw up my inner fortitude against the violence. I search for forgiveness at those times when I do feel weak and victimized.  Months of quiet and solitude have been my path to peace. Only the passage of time has replenished my creativity and will.

Courage, I’ve learned, means having the strength to recognize and accept our weaknesses.

It means having the wherewithal to stay on course when we believe in something. Courage is pursuing our dreams, and it is doing what is right when it could cost us our lives.

Courage is telling our mothers that we are going to cover a war, and that we have chosen to go of our own volition.

In the Eastern Marshes of southern Iraq, 5,000 Iraqis have returned to reclaim land and restore the marshes once destroyed by Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War Shiite uprising. The Dallas Morning News photographer Cheryl Diaz Meyer reports on the conditions of the marshes.

Dear Family, Friends and Colleagues,

It’s really quite a giggle.  I’ve got henna painted in floral design on my right hand extending from my inner wrist down to the tip of my middle finger.  It’s still drying and crusted on my skin like leprosy.  But underneath is the beautiful orange pattern, which delicate hands detailed onto mine with much precision.

Today, I spent the afternoon laughing with the young Muslim women at the Grand Mosque in Manama, Bahrain, as they painted my hand and each other’s with geometric and floral designs.  The geometric designs with intricate detail are considered Indian, and the floral designs are considered Arabic.

It was a real insight, this henna-coloring girl-bonding thing.  Suddenly I understood why women of Muslim faith welcome a separate existence from their male counterparts in half of their living.  It was entertaining and fun to be glammed up and watch others do the same and not have to worry an iota about someone of the opposite gender staring at me.  It seems that as a foreign woman I am often stared at.  It’s not that there aren’t other women who roam this rather modern and open society uncovered, but I inspire some curiosity, perhaps because of my mixed heritage.  There are many Filipinas here who work as guest workers and I have that in my appearance.  Then again, not quite.  My German-American roots on my father’s side are also mixed in me and I carry myself like an American woman who lives the unrestrained life of one who has choices and opportunity.  I know that for many here, I am a conundrum.

My story of the afternoon really began yesterday evening as I shopped for an “abbaya,” the long black dress and veil that many religious women here wear for “protection.”  As I shopped for a fashionable abbaya, not really knowing what fashionable is, I happened to enter a little shop in the old “souk” or market where a young woman and her mother were getting fitted for a new abbaya.  The shop had many lovely choices to pick from: black abbayas with black embroidered trim, black abbayas with black embroidered trim with little shiny sequins, black abbayas with red embroidered trim, black abbayas with black fringe on the cuffs, black abbayas with swirly embroidered trim, and so on ad infinitum.

But these women were being fitted specifically for what I don’t know.  So I took the opportunity to stare, since staring woman to woman seems acceptable in these parts of the world, and eventually decided to chance that they might speak English.  I was looking for an abbaya, how did I pick one, I wanted one that was closed in the front, how long did it take to hem the bottom, etc.  The young woman, whom I later came to know as Khadija of Bangladesh, gave me an informative speech about the meaning of the abbaya and the high points about how to find a fitting one.  She later explained that she worked at the Grand Mosque as a tour guide and if I wished to visit tomorrow, I could do so from 10 am to 5 pm — for free.  I thanked her kindly as she left with her parents, doubting that I would ever see her gentle face again, but if I had time, I would certainly come by the mosque.

And as it so happened, I did have time on my hands, so I took her up on the offer.  As I approached the entry she appeared from behind two other guides, and with surprise in her eyes, she greeted me warmly.  I took her tour with two Germans, outfitted in my new abbaya, which many of the young women guides coohed over.  How much did I pay for it, where did I get it, how did I know Khadija, and so on.  At the end of the very informative tour, I was invited for refreshments since today was the day after Eid.  And then I was directed to a carpeted, pillow-laden area where women congregated and were apparently painting henna on the hands and feet of guests.  There I was introduced to Faiza, another Bangladeshi woman who revealed that she was “sort of” engaged to a young Bangladeshi man who was presently studying in America.  She said that the last time she saw him was a couple of months ago when he visited her over the holidays.

Her parents permitted them to see each other, she explained, because they were family friends and had known each other since childhood, therefore they could not forbid it.  Faiza was covered in an abbaya, a scarf, and another contraption that covered her entire face minus a slit for her eyes. Khadija explained that Muslim women could choose to wear the full-face cover if they were so beautiful that they needed extra “protection.”  I wanted to know who determined whether a woman needed extra “protection” and was it just a woman being vain thinking she was so beautiful that men could not possibly control themselves in her presence.  Faiza never revealed whether it was she or her parents who wanted her to wear the full face covering.

Faiza’s next customer was an Uzbek woman who worked also as a tour guide at the Grand Mosque.  She was the Russian-speaking guide.  Her name was Noora and she was supposed to be tending the cardamon coffee, tea and sweets table, but instead she was playing hooky and having her hands painted in henna.  Whereas I got a simple floral design from my wrist to the tip of my middle finger, she was getting her entire hand painted, then the next, and finally continuing up her arms as aging Australian women tourists with bad knees waited their turn for Noora to finish.

Every time Faiza the painter would get distracted or another guide would check on the progress of Noora’s hands, Noora would send them away to check on a renegade tourist accidentally wandering into the great hall without the proper covering or she would quickly admonish Faiza to keep her eyes on the task at hand.  I dubbed her “the manager.”  And she took my teasing in stride as I egged her on and she commandeered all the younger Muslim women to do her bidding.  Later she revealed that her husband, who was Bahraini, didn’t even like henna hand painting.  But this was really for her so she didn’t care what he thought.

I left the U.S. on January 29 and arrived in Kuwait three days later.  My layover was in London and, having never been to London, I decided to take the subway into the city to entertain myself during a 14-hour layover.  I did the whirlwind tour, and as the day progressed the weather deteriorated until I was eating my first plate of fish n’ chips watching the sleet blow sideways outside a pub window.  In the subway, each minute brought another announcement of a line that was closed, until it became my line that was closed and desperately I hopped from line to line to finally arrive at the airport among a throng of other late, bug-eyed passengers.  By the time I made it to my gate, my plane was cancelled and the ticketing line was several hundred deep.  Remembering a story related to me just that morning from a fellow passenger, I knew that the counter would close in two hours, not all customers would be assisted, and whoever dared to stay in line for the night would be the first ones helped the following morning.

So without much adieu I chattered happily with the passengers in line with me, and sat down on a cart with two poles supporting my rear.  The line diminished as each hour passed until finally I was 20th in line at 2 am.  By morning, a new line developed alongside ours and apparently several planes of people who had waited all night for take off were released from their planes, and they felt perfectly justified in cutting in front of us.  A nasty scene ensued as passengers began to curse at each other, push, shove and generally try to get ahead. The Indians, Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis were definitely winning this fight.  They had all the practice.  The rest of us were gasping for breath trying not to faint as the pressure became increasingly impossible to bear.  It was actually quite frightening.  A woman nearly fainted, I was weak and nauseous and others were crying.  It was a royal mess that even the policeman didn’t have the courage to straighten out.

After getting my ticket reissued, I waited all day and watched as 97% of the day’s flights were again cancelled.  Since I was on standby, I was sure my chances of getting on my flight to Kuwait were close to nil.  But after enduring a long wait in line, told that all standby positions were cancelled, having my luggage assigned to a different passenger, and finally told at the gate that the agent never reissued my ticket after all, they straightened it all out on the spot and I was on the flight to Kuwait.  That was a good thing because after three days of no sleep and very little sleep before departing Dallas, I didn’t believe that physically I could have made it to a hotel in London.  I was simply out of steam.

Seven hours later, I met up with Jim Landers, a writer from our Washington, D.C. bureau, who met me at the airport with a shuttle arranged from the desert oasis Marriott Hotel.  I checked in around 10 am, showered and slept until the following morning when Jim dared to wake me to tell me that the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated over Dallas!  Not the kind of news I would want to wake up to on any given day, much less out of a moronic stupor.  At that moment, after everything I had just been through, it seemed like the world was coming to an end as I slept in a delicious featherbed on the other side of the globe.

We’ve been in Bahrain about a week, and haven’t done much but dine with rich Bahrainis who seem to have adopted us during this week of Eid.  Typically, this is family time like Easter is to Christians, but Bahrainis have taken Jim and I in and wined and dined us as they rabidly attack our country.  We had a particularly memorable dinner with Anwar, the editor-in-chief of one of the big daily newspapers that reports the news as the government would like to hear it.  He had an evil air about him as he whispered in my ear that America was bad, bad, bad, and that if he had a gun he would keeeell George Bush himself.  He spent an entire evening feeding us beautiful wine and lamb extolling the sins of our government and our country.

I hardly said a word, happy to let Jim debate with this man all evening, wondering if I would spend the night puking my guts out.  People in this part of the world see Americans so differently from how we see ourselves.  It simply amazes me that they can blame us so wholeheartedly for everything that is wrong in this part of the world.  I rarely hear people talking about their responsibility in the chaos that has long been a part of the history here.  Instead they will spend hours talking about the sins of America and never acknowledge that they have done nothing to make the Middle East a more peaceful place.

We are returning to Kuwait tomorrow morning under mixed circumstances.  I have proposed to my boss, Director of Photography Ken Geiger, that I should be dispatched to Baghdad to wait for the troops and report as they enter the city.  The Al Rashed Hotel in Baghdad is chock full of journos waiting for the war to arrive on their doorstep.  The port of entry seems to be Jordan and then a bus ride in to Baghdad. 

Jim and I got second passports issued here in Bahrain so as not to antagonize the Iraqi government with our Kuwaiti visas stamped all over.  The newspaper management hasn’t made a decision yet, and they are weighing heavily whether to have someone in Baghdad given the dangers.  It’s a difficult decision, and despite my proposal, I am nearly sick with fear, but I feel strongly that Baghdad is the place to be for me as a photographer. 

The military has announced that The Dallas Morning News will be granted several positions for embeds with the army and Marines, but I believe it will be a highly-controlled agenda and it will be difficult to make pictures of situations as they unfold.  In photography, there is no retelling the story, either you’ve got the photo or you don’t.

I have been struggling with an overwhelming sense of unease since my arrival in the Middle East and it is really pervading my whole being.  I have all of my body armor, my chemical protective gear and all the possible precautions including my stash of fine hot chocolate, yet I have moments where my stomach turns over in terror as I think about the possibilities of what may happen as we cover this story.  It’s so unnerving, this fear.  Oddly, as I live out of suitcases in the most glamorous hotels in the area, the possible conflict seems completely surreal and incongruous with my present reality.  It contributes to my angst and anxiety.

As I drift off to sleep, a Pepsi runs through my veins hampering my precious rest and my mind wanders to the swirls and floral patterns of my henna-painted hands.

Love from the desert,

Cheryl

Zebullah, 12, listens to an English lesson from his nurse Abdul Satar through a window at the Khoja Bahauddin Hospital in northern Afghanistan. Zebullah’s foot was injured and his two uncles were killed when the Taliban fired a rocket into their house during a Taliban attack on their village.

Editor’s note: On Oct. 10, 2001 Cheryl Diaz Meyer, staff photographer for The Dallas Morning News, left Dallas for Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to join News reporter Tracey Eaton. The pair have journeyed to Dushanbe (D-YOU-SHAHM-BEH), Tajikistan, where they ventured across the Afghan border to Khoja Bahauddin (HO-juh BO-DEEN). After nearly two weeks in Khoja Bahauddin, they have moved on to Taloqan (TAHL-oh-KAHN), where they were awaiting the fall of Kunduz (koon-DOOZ).

A couple of oblique references need to be clarified: “John” is John Davidson, visuals editor. “Massood” is Ahmed Shah Massood, former leader of the Northern Alliance who was assassinated in September.

Cheryl and Tracey are more than our co-workers, they are our friends, part of our newspaper family. Through Cheryl’s e-mail journals, we’ve been able to feel and be part of their incredible journey.

Ken and John,

More people came in last night from Khoja Bahauddin, Massood’s town, which is some 1 1/2 hours from the Tajik border where many journalists are staying and where the aid organizations are also located. It’s not on the map because it was created four years ago when Massood was pushed north by the Taliban.

This town is where we anticipate to work out of. News is that the Monday convoy, which we were supposed to be on, was held up at the border overnight by Russian guards. They left at 10 a.m. and arrived in Khoja at 10 a.m. the following day. They slept on the ground or whatever.

In Khoja Bahauddin, we should be 1 or 3 hours away from the front lines – there are varied reports. It’s a drive plus an hour on a horse through a river. Supposedly the Northern Alliance cannot make a move because they have inferior weaponry so they are simply waiting for the U.S. to bomb the Taliban there. There is some firing back and forth, but it’s just a show. They are too far from each other.

The Northern Alliance got hold of a bunch of rations dropped by the U.S. and have kept most of it and pawned the rest at the market where journalists can find American peanut butter and other items the Afghans have no clue what to do with. They eat rice and beans most of the time.

The foreign ministry in Khoja Bahauddin was Massood’s place before he was killed. NBC is camped on his property. Many others have simply pitched tents in the so-called “garden.” Word is that they are serving free rice three times a day for the journalists. I will pick up some hard cheese and salami for the first week or so, and then we’ll go to canned meats and fish after that. I have decided to hire a second car for the ride to the border because we simply have too much baggage; we are loaded down with water and other supplies.

I am thrilled to think I have convinced a fellow from Bloomberg to part with his sleeping bag after he leaves in some four days. It’s fancy, small and very, very light. The ones at the local sport shop weigh a ton.

Apparently we must buy a generator. There is little electricity there, and with all our equipment needing recharging, we won’t be able to rely on kindness. Apparently journalists are feeling frustrated by the amount of equipment breaking down due to the sand and are getting quite ornery about whatever is working. I tried to scam a beautiful red small generator off an Austrian fellow who’s returning to Moscow soon, but he was too fearful of the repercussions with Russian customs. It was quite a lovely one, however.

For your comfort, some 1,300 or more journalists have gotten accredited in Dushanbe on their way to Afghanistan, and no one has gotten hurt. So things are rough but not terribly dangerous, it seems. There’s more danger to our equipment and personal health than anything.

Cheryl