Make the world smaller

Last night, I attended a reading and question-and-answer session with Anna Badkhen, a foreign correspondent who has traveled in and out of conflict zones with one purpose - to humanize the conflicts Americans read about quickly and without compassion.
Too often, she explained, western journalists write about war in terms of numbers. Two dead. Ten wounded.
Those people were more than bodies, she argues. They were humans - part of families and a community that laughed, cried and celebrated together.
In her work, she says, she attempts to "make as many people like us - our own - as I can."
In her book, Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories, she does so by finding the common denominator for any society: Mealtime. Everyone eats - whether it is a handful of dust-covered raisins in the desert or a feast indoors. In Peace Meals, she frames conflict zones - Afghanistan, Iraq, and a number of dangerous places - in terms of the people she shared meals with. Some are still alive. Some are not. But Badkhen works to ensure the reader of Peace Meals and her prolific magazine and feature articles for various publications feels the same connection she did to the area and the people.
"We all have something in common," she said.
Badkhen covered a lot of ground during her Q&A, but stressed finding the commonalities all humans share as a means to connect to what is happening "over there." Her thoughtful pauses, head tilted to the side, eyes clear but distant, showed her connection to "her people there," both alive and dead now. Those who have died are not just casualties of war, but of a lack of humanity.
Her lecture, for me, helped flip the idea of what journalism can do for a community: open a window to a wider world - to make the world larger for people who don't have the means to see it themselves.
Badkhen put it simply. The mission, instead, is to make the world smaller, one intimate story at a time.

Here's how she does it: Dispatches

Quotables:

Badkhen grew up in the Soviet Union, has woven her way around the world, and recently became a U.S. citizen.
"I see myself as a set of eyes and ears and a notebook. And fingers to type it up."

On the decision to travel to Afghanistan on assignment
After reading through The Lonely Planet travel guide's note on when to travel to Afghanistan: "In the Afghan section, it said, 'Don't go.' So I went."

On traveling with a print library
"Someone gave me a Kindle once, and I gave it back to them. I thought it was a coffee coaster."

On revising a piece: Take as much time as you can from it, then look again.
"Sometimes you say this house is broken. It will not stand. You'll find you are putting siding on bad beams." "Be honest with yourself and your audience."

More to come on craft and keeping track of notes in a war zone to come. For now, work!