Costel Paslaru’s Reviews > On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist > Status Update

"Clarissa, I need to ask you. Can you help me get my family to the West?"
It was a question I would be asked dozens and dozens of times as a reporter working in some of the most dangerous places in the world. And it would not get any easier to answer.

The plane bounced down onto the runway and a South African voice drawled through the intercom. South African crews operated the Royal Jordanian flights to Baghdad from Amman, it seemed they were the only ones willing to risk the corkscrew.

There was no sound other than the water gently running and her whispering "Bismillah ar rahman ar raheem" (In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful).

My father had given me a copy of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina when I was a teenager. I quickly fell in love with both the writing and Anna as a character. I remember telling my parents over dinner, with tears in my eyes, that I was devastated by Anna's suicide.

My mother had a taken a sip of her cocktail and waved her hand dismissively. "You have to toughen up, Clarissa. Anna was a slut."

I would not dispute for a moment that I had a very privileged upbringing, one that threatened to distort any perception of the real world. The only form of discipline from my parents was that I had to get straight A's. And yet, at the time, I never thought of myself as particularly privileged because as a thirteen-year-old, I had no appreciation of what privilege was.

One man had stopped me in the street as I walked past with my camera. He spoke some English and so I stopped to record an interview.

“Please,” he implored, “this is the real Syria.” His voice quivered with emotion. “If you come you will see real bodies. They are not stones, they are not toys. They are real bodies.”