It's a Small World, Afterall

Rereading old words, I stumbled across something from a few years ago, during a brief time spent in the Middle East. I remember the mornings in Jerusalem, sitting outside on my balcony, sipping hot tea, and trying to warm up to the day. There's a certain energy in that city, that buzzes through the air and makes you feel alive. I wrote a lot then, couldn't stop the pulse flowing from my fingertips, or the excitement of new observations and ideas.

Funny, the conversations you'll have... thousands of miles from home... that make you realize how small this world is.... From 2004:

Mohamoud, my fixer in Gaza has worked for everyone.

His least favorite person to work for? Larry Towell. Mohamoud described him to me as an asshole. Too green when he shot Then Palestine, and too ill-informed on what he was getting himself into (probably a predecessor to my previous thought on the skill vs. time argument. He unlike most, rose to the depth of the situation, even though he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. Many times, Mohamoud said he was tapping Towell on the shoulder, saying you should probably shoot that, it's important. Or come take a look at this, because you're looking in the wrong places. They used to talk on the phone all the time, Towell calling him from the states after his frist trip to Gaza, constantly inquiring about the "real" situation, as opposed to what t.v. was showing. They'd talk for hours. And then on Mohamoud's prompting, that things were heating up to a new level of intensity, and stating that something was bound to happen soon, Towell traveled back to the region. Once he got here, he didn't call Mohamoud once. Didn't stop by to say hi or anything. It's a small area, and word travels fast about who's there and who's doing what. Suffice to say after that, which in a very polite Arab society was seen as a cold, hard dis... Needless to say, they had a falling out

His favorite? James Nachtwey, of course. "Jim is smooth," he'd say. "Smooth. Like silk." No harsh movements, no fast and sudden responses to the situation. Just very calm and calculated and thoughtful. Snap, snap, and he was done. "And they were the best pictures you've ever seen!" said Mohamoud. "Better than all those chicken's running around with their heads cut off, shooting everything but getting nothing." Smooth.