Pulitzer Center grantee William Wheeler reflects on his experience in international reporting and the fraught path from daily journalism to long-form nonfiction.
Refuge in Ruin: Returning to Nahr al-Bared
The humanitarian focus in Gaza will soon begin to shift, thanks to the more than $4 billion in pledges that were made by international donors at the Sharm el-Sheik conference this month.
Among the emergency relief workers, the humanitarian workers, and medics flooding the strip, there will be some unexpected people trawling through the rubble before reconstruction starts.
One afternoon in May 2007, a few days after my graduation from journalism school, I was seated with some friends at a booth in Tom's Restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when my cell phone beeped. I had a text message from a classmate. It read, "Don't back out now."
The Lebanese authorities are planning to rebuild the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared, which was pulverized last year by the Lebanese army.
The three months of fighting at Nahr al-Bared last year brought a period of relative unity to Lebanon. In a country whose political process is founded on sectarianism, the army is one of the few state organs free of religious-based schism. The Nahr al-Bared conflict, which pitted the army against the shadowy, foreign, Fatah al-Islam group, led Lebanese citizens of every sect to rally together behind their army.
Lebanon proposes to rebuild the Palestinian city-camp Nahr al-Bared, which was previously pulverized in a long siege, to preserve the memories of the old, yet return the area to Lebanese control.
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Grantee
Don Duncan is a New York-based freelance journalist. His print, video and radio work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington...
Grantee
William Wheeler has reported on political affairs from East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Haiti, and the Middle East. He’s also covered immigrant detention in rural Virginia, and subterranean...