It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War (31 page)

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Paul paced the room.

I asked him what was up. Did he want to tell me something? Was he cheating on me, like the others? It’s fine, I’m used to it, I explained, but I needed to know where I stood. Paul laughed. He began frantically packing our golf cart for a picnic, which seemed strange, given the foreboding clouds along the horizon. I lay on my back under the covers and pleaded with him to come to bed and take a nap with me.

“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” he said.

“What? Now? Can’t we go later?” It was so delicious in bed on a chilly, gray day by the sea.

“No. Let’s go now.”

We got to the beach, and Paul hurriedly unpacked our golf cart and started walking toward the shore.

“Let’s just stay right here,” I said. “Why do we have to walk far?”

“Let’s keep walking.”

I grew anxious. Paul was never skittish. He was neurotic at work but relaxed on vacation. Now he was neurotic on vacation.

We made our way to a spot that looked like any other. He stopped and laid out the blanket. I plopped down on my stomach and propped my chin up on my palms. Paul sat down. And then kneeled, and then paused, and then told me to stand.

He already had the red Cartier box with silver trim in his hands, and he was crying. “Will you marry me?”

He was the first man I’d ever considered spending my life with, but I couldn’t believe he would want to marry
me
, the woman who was forever told she was an inadequate girlfriend by all her past lovers. I had long convinced myself that my cameras and I would grow old together alone in some remote corner of the planet.

“Me? Are you sure you want to marry me? I am never home,” I said. We were both crying, kissing. “You don’t have to marry me, you know.”

“Baby, I love you,” he said. “I want to spend my life with you.”

We set the wedding date for July 4, 2009.

 • • • 

I
N MOST WAYS
my life and my career didn’t change after my engagement. The countries I covered continued to be torn by violence and humanitarian catastrophe. And at age thirty-four, after ten years in the business, I wanted to cover these stories as much as I did when I was twenty-four. The only difference was that I didn’t have to fight for assignments or live hand to mouth, and this relative comfort nurtured my passion for photography. I even started shooting regularly for
National Geographic
magazine, an honor for any photojournalist. My ambition actually seemed to grow with time. Quite often the most ambitious or prestigious assignments were the riskiest ones. I spent much of 2008 and 2009 in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the War on Terror still raged.

Paul was surprisingly selfless and objective about my choice of stories. He trusted my inner voice as much as I did. When I presented him with the risks involved in an assignment, he was always levelheaded in his feedback, asked the important questions, and only selectively questioned my journalistic judgment. That summer, when I was asked to cover the growing presence of the Taliban in Pakistan, he replied, as always, calmly: “Nice. How are you planning on doing that? By meeting the Taliban?”

Paul knew the answer to his own question. My old friend Dexter Filkins was reporting the story for the
New York Times Magazine
, and to do the story right we had to meet face-to-face with one of the world’s most fundamentalist jihadi groups, one that had repeatedly threatened to capture and behead Westerners. Dex had arranged for safe passage to meet one Taliban commander, but there were many Taliban groups in the tribal areas. Just because one had ensured our safety didn’t mean we couldn’t fall into the hands of another that wanted us dead.

But as with Elizabeth, I trusted Dex. In our professional circle many saw him as a reckless foreign correspondent who would do anything for a story. But I think much of that stemmed from envy: He was a great journalist. He always wore the same white Brooks Brothers button-downs, khaki pants, and loafers, which, especially in Iraq or Afghanistan, made him look like a CIA agent. This didn’t seem to worry him. In Iraq we had spent countless days working together, and evenings talking, and I found him a fun and loyal friend. I respected and admired his work. I also knew that any story he did might land on the cover of the magazine, or the front page of the newspaper, and have a better chance at actually influencing American foreign policy. More often than not, it was that combination that swayed me to do a story.

I was convinced by my case, and so was Paul.

 • • • 

I
HADN’T BEEN
to Peshawar since 2001, when I was twenty-seven and trying to rig up assignments from Green’s Hotel as the United States prepared to bomb Afghanistan. This time Dex and I were staying at the relatively luxurious Pearl Continental Hotel. Through a network of photographers who had spent years working in Pakistan, I was connected with the wonderful Raza. Almost fifty years old, with stringy, graying hair combed over to the side and a weathered, smiling face, he was one of the savviest drivers I had ever worked with. Raza dressed me up as his wife and sneaked me into the Swat Valley to photograph secret girls’ schools that had recently opened after the Taliban closed schools in the valley; he bullied imams into allowing me—a female infidel—to photograph prayers at mosques in Peshawar; and he snuck me into the gun market for a few quick shots before fleeing, because we feared we might be spotted and attacked.

Dex and I were to meet a Taliban commander named Haji Namdar. The day before our meeting Haleem, one of our interpreters, relayed a message from the commander: “You cannot bring a woman with you.” Dex and I were adamant that we would not separate. The long-bearded Haleem, who himself was sympathetic to the Taliban and wouldn’t look me directly in the eye because I was a woman, was tormented. He wracked his brain for the entire day and finally came back with the solution: “I know! Lynsey can be Dexter’s wife! And we can say that Mr. Dexter did not want to leave his wife alone in the hotel while he traveled out of Peshawar.” I was always being dressed up as someone’s wife.

We arrived at Haji Namdar’s house in the early afternoon, in the midst of a torrential downpour. I tried to steal glances through the thin white cloth of the
hijab
that covered my face. We were inside high compound walls, and everything was tan. Haleem and Dex jumped out of the car to greet the commander. I was told to wait until permission was granted for a woman’s presence.

Within minutes Haleem returned and told me I, too, could enter the house. The room was pungent with foot odor and full of heavily bearded, armed men in varying states of Friday sprawl against the walls. Their AK-47s stood up against the walls alongside their prosthetic legs or lay alongside their masters. I tried to walk without tripping over my
abaya
. Dex, in very Dexter fashion, started the interview.

“Haji Namdar,” he said jovially. I was surprised he didn’t add “dude” or “man.” “Thank you so much for welcoming us today. Before we begin, I want to introduce you to my wife, Lynsey.” I was grateful he didn’t waste time, because I was clearly the elephant in the room. “And by the way, my wife has a camera,” he continued. “Can she take some pictures?”

It seemed like an absurd proposal.

Haji Namdar agreed. I often found that some of the biggest extremists were open to meeting with women so long as we were not
their
women. Western female journalists didn’t have to abide by either male or female traditions, and I assumed they had given up trying to figure us out long ago. I removed my hulking Nikon D3 with a 24−70mm f2.8 lens from my bag and tried to look unprofessional.

I started out with a few frames of Haji Namdar as Dex interviewed him. I wasn’t sure whether the other Taliban fighters were comfortable with being photographed, but I figured if their commander agreed, they would also agree. After a few minutes I started pointing my camera around the room. My rule of thumb was that once I got permission to photograph, I shot as much as I could, because I was never sure how long that permission would last. Some men shielded their faces when I turned my camera on them; others didn’t flinch. And some were proud to be photographed for the most important American newspaper in the world. They might have been illiterate fighters, but most insurgents understood the influence of the
New York Times
on the U.S. government.

Talibanistan series for the
New York Times Magazine
, July 2008.

I grew more brazen and took another lens from my bag. My hand got tangled up in my layers of cloth instead—my eyesight impeded by my
hijab
—and I dropped the lens. After eight years of trying to shoot from beneath myriad disguises, I was exasperated, and I opened a teeny horizontal crease in my
hijab
for my eyes. I needed to work.

About ten minutes into the interview, tea was served, causing a flurry of activity around Haji Namdar. I stayed focused on shooting. Some men whispered among themselves and then included Haleem in quiet conversation. Finally a declaration was made. I worried they had had enough of a woman’s presence and were going to ask me to wait in the car.

“Madam,” Haleem said, “the commander’s men are worried you can’t drink your tea through your veil. They would really like for you to drink your tea.” The whispers continued, and if it weren’t for the veil, I would have had a difficult time concealing my smile. Only among Muslims is the hospitality so great that they cannot bear the notion that someone’s tea will be left untouched.

Haleem had another brilliant idea: “I know! You can stand in the corner of the room, with your back facing all of us, and lift your veil to the wall and drink your tea. Once you finish, you can replace your veil.”

And so, in a room full of some of the most vicious fighters against the United States and everything it stood for, I stood in the corner and faced the wall as I drank my tea.

Some eight months later our magazine story, “Talibanistan,” was part of a package of stories that won the Pulitzer Prize. I congratulated Dex; hours later, to my surprise, congratulation e-mails began pouring in for me. Apparently two photographers—myself and my childhood friend Tyler Hicks—had been included in the winning team, which was unusual for the Pulitzer. For years, my only dream was to work for the
New York Times
, and now my work for them was part of journalism’s greatest award. I was honored and overwhelmed.

 • • • 

S
EVEN WEEKS BEFORE
the wedding, Dex and I met up again in Islamabad. The Pakistani government had made a large public display of their internal battle against the Taliban, and we flew in to cover, among other things, the thousands of Pakistanis displaced from the Swat Valley into camps on the outskirts of the city of Mardan, the second-largest city in the North-West Frontier Province.

On a Friday morning, Raza showed up at my guesthouse door at five thirty. He brought with him an unexpected addition, Teru, an old friend and fellow photojournalist from New York, who asked if he could ride along with us. Dexter had decided to stay in Islamabad and report that morning, and I was happy to have Teru’s company. We drove to Mardan, where the camps for Pakistani civilians fleeing their Swat Valley homes were swelling by the day as the government continued its offensive against the Pakistani Taliban. Teru and I spent the morning photographing in the camps as Raza shuffled between us, providing us with rough translations for our photo captions.

We had a successful morning. We were in the heart of the story, in a region I cared deeply about, less than a year after I had photographed the Pakistani Taliban, and we were working in a safe area. The soft morning light eventually turned too harsh for photographing, and we packed up our gear and headed back toward Islamabad to file pictures. The plan was to meet Dexter back at the guesthouse that afternoon.

Around 1 p.m., Teru, Raza, and I stopped for gas along the highway and had some tea, biscuits, and nuts to tide us over until we reached the guesthouse in Islamabad. Raza filled his tank with gas and handed me the receipt, along with the receipt for his hotel room. I had insisted that he sleep in Islamabad the night before—rather than Peshawar, which was a two-hour drive away—so that he was well rested for our journey that day. We got back into the car and I resumed my natural position when on assignment: horizontal in the backseat, making up for sleep lost to days of hard work. I sent texts to Dexter and Paul saying how great the morning was, tucked my camera bag into the nook of a triangle made by the recline of the passenger seat in front of me, and dozed off.