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• "Pining for the Home They Fear"
• About Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq
• "Farnaz Fassihi's e-mail"

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Journalist tells how the war affected one family in Iraq and explains the feelings of the country's general population towards Americans. (2:08)
 

Full interview. (11:42)
 

Tavis: Farnaz Fassihi is the deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and Africa at "The Wall Street Journal," currently based in Beirut. For the first three years of the Iraq war, she served as the "Journal's" Baghdad bureau chief. The acclaimed new book about her time in the war zone is called "Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq." Farnaz, nice to have you on the program.

Farnaz Fassihi: Thank you, and I thank you for having me.

Tavis: Let me be honest with you - when I first saw this book come across my desk, my first thought was, "Not another book on Iraq." And I mean that not to cast aspersion, because once I got a chance to actually look at it and start reading it and going through it, I realized it wasn't just another book about Iraq. You really have, to your credit, taken a different approach, a different - given a different treatment to the story about Iraq, and I'll let you explain what you were attempting to do in the text.

Fassihi: The thing that really inspired me to write this book was the fact that the story of how the Iraqi civilians have really fared in the war has been by and large underrepresented in the media. There's a lot of discussion, a lot of coverage about the American military's presence there or the question of troops withdrawn, and the policies surrounding the war, but very little about what's happened to the Iraqi civilians, how their lives have changed.

And when I was there, based in Baghdad, I tried to also focus a lot of my reporting around stories about Iraq, and I think also when you humanize the war, it's much easier for people to relate to it and the stories are much more compelling.

Tavis: This question doesn't come from any place of naïveté, but because I want to get your point of view on it, which is what you make of the fact - why you think it is the case that the story of the Iraqi civilians has not been told. Why is that?

Fassihi: It has been told, it just hasn't been told as much, and I think partly beginning the violence there was just so spectacular and the policies, the question of the military, and you have American media who are interested in an American angle for the public back here, and, you know, the space that we get, both in print and on-air has been reduced as the public has sort of gotten tired of hearing about Iraq. So that's one of the reasons.

Tavis: How much of it has to do, honestly, you think, though - and one watching this program, in fact yours truly, with respect, might find that answer a bit charitable, a bit generous, and that if we drew it down a little bit further we'll have to admit that the American media isn't really concerned, necessarily, with humanizing people in Iraq. It really is, to your earlier point, about telling our side of the story - that's the danger you get when you get embedded journalists.

I'm just trying to tease this out a little bit more. I'm just not sure that I believe or maybe that you believe that there is an interest in humanizing them. You're right - if you can humanize it, people want to read it. But is there an interest in that?

Fassihi: I think yes and no. I think that there is interest on the part of the reporters who are on the ground. I think that perhaps the realities, the challenge also, I think, for the past couple of years of reporting Iraq was so difficult - it was difficult to get to Iraqis, it was difficult to move around because of security, and again because of the space that was available - if you have American editors deciding what angle of the story is going to get played up, it's often the angle that relates to the Americans.

But I do think that particularly as you say, you know, when you humanize the war it just makes all the questions around it a lot more challenging. One of the things that we've seen is the American military bans pictures of coffins coming back home, and makes reporters sign papers saying that we won't publish any pictures of soldiers getting wounded or injured or dead bodies without their consent.

So it's just much - it's a lot of hurdles to try to get across the fact that the war isn't just about numbers, it's really about people.

Tavis: If the American media is essentially shut out of telling the stories, of showing the pictures on the news and in print of bodies coming back to Dover Air Force Base, if we can't even tell that part of the story, did you ever think that it was going to be impossible then to tell their story - that is to say, again, the Iraqi civilians.

Fassihi: Not impossible, but challenging. Not impossible, but challenging, because often what you hear is, well, why should Americans care? Why do we want to know about this? And I think the reason is because it's - war, as I say, here happens to people, it happens to families, and house to house, and ultimately it's the Iraqi people who can make Iraq work or not work, so we need to pay attention to what's happened to them.

But yes, you're right, it makes it very challenging to persuade readers or editors to care and print the stories.

Tavis: This is an unfair question because you have a whole book about this, but let me ask in the time that I have what you learned, then, what most struck you about the unraveling of life in Iraq as you saw it?

Fassihi: How frightening it was to see that happening, how unstoppable it was, and how war destroyed just everything it touched.

Tavis: Was there - and there are a number of stories you tell in the book; I'll let you choose - was there a particular family, a particular individual or individuals who you got connected to as a reporter? Because I suspect, to be fair about this, if American reporters can get attached to military officers because they're embedded, I suspect the same thing could happen to a journalist covering the stories of everyday Iraqi people.

Fassihi: Absolutely. I was very attached to our Iraqi staff, who we worked very closely with, to a number of Iraqi friends and families. One of the stories that I like to tell is from the Nassir family, a Christian, middle class, educated family whom I met in 2002 when Saddam was still in power, and sort of had lunch with them every week so I sort of saw how they were apprehensive about the war before the invasion and then a little bit hopeful right after the Americans had invaded that something may happen, something good may come out of this.

And then their sort of hopes just disappeared, and now they've been displaced. The senior Nassirs are displaced within Iraq and their sons are refugees in neighboring countries. So really, just watching, as you say, people's lives around me fall apart.

Tavis: Is it your sense now that there is a - I'm trying to find the right word here - a more universal or homogenous point of view inside of Iraq about how they view the U.S. now, or is it as divided inside that country as we are on a presidential election in this country?

Fassihi: It's divided, and it also depends on when you ask the question and how you ask it.

Tavis: But does it depend on region at all?

Fassihi: It definitely depends on the region. I think the Kurds in the north and the Shi'as in the south were very happy to see Saddam Hussein get toppled, but I think unanimously Iraqis are unhappy about the results of the war - not that Saddam has been toppled, but what happened after, that there was really no plan for post-invasion, that security fell apart and that they just couldn't - infrastructure still hasn't been restored. So in that sense, I think there's a lot of anger and resentment toward the Americans.

Tavis: Speaking of anger and resentment, well in advance of the publication of this book, Farnaz, as you know, you wrote an email to your family that somehow got widely circulated in the American media. "Doonesbury," the cartoon, even referenced your email. So it got widely circulated, your personal email to your family, in the American media, and I read that and I wanted to ask you how covering a story like this impacts you.

Set your journalist hat aside for the moment - how does covering something like this for as long as you covered it, and seeing it up close and personal affects you on a human level, as a person?

Fassihi: It scars you. To be honest with you, witnessing and watching so many horrendous stories, and also being at risk yourself, because Iraq is unprecedented for journalists, these risks and the security situation. So the combination of having to constantly talk to people who have terrible stories and document that and also be at risk yourself really is very traumatizing, and in an ongoing way, I think I also discuss in the book that it was very difficult to go through that.

And long after I left Iraq, every time somebody would say Iraq or talk about Iraq, I just couldn't stop - my throat would kind of get tight, and I felt like I wanted to cry. So it really - it was very emotional. You really can't separate yourself from something like that.

Tavis: So you can't separate yourself from something like that, to your point now. Can you separate yourself from the politics of it? You're a journalist covering this and you're supposed to cover it in, pardon the pun, a fair and balanced way. You separate yourself from your own personal political feelings about it.

Fassihi: Yes, I think that you can, because we're trained professionals. I think that you don't send laptops to war zones, you send human beings. And we form opinions, we are affected by what we see, we have emotions, but we've been trained very well, we know that when we're sitting down to write a story we have to represent both sides. We have to set aside our feelings, make sure we've talked to both sides and represent their view.

There's also a very strict editorial process. Your editors check out your stories, they make sure that they're balanced, they check everything. So I think as the "Journal" mentioned, my editors came out and supported me when the email came out, that the stories that I published did not have my opinion in them - they were fair and balanced.

Tavis: Let me ask, finally, at the risk of sounding sexist, there were, in this war, because we have been told this by the media who profiled this for us from Farnaz - I can do a long list of people - Laura Logan, all kinds of folks - there are a number of women who increasingly are covering wars, and this Iraq war has been covered by a lot of women for a lot of the major networks, a lot of the major papers.

Is there a - how do I ask this? Is there a womanist angle, a womanist formulation about covering this particular war that I'm missing or that I should have raised?

Fassihi: I think that in this war and in the Middle East, it's actually an asset to be a woman because it's a very traditional society, and the men don't often give you access to their wives or to their family if you're a male reporter. So I think having a woman perspective on the ground was very important because it allowed us access to people's homes.

And also, you could speak more candidly, and I think the stories that many other female reporters have been writing have mainly focused on the human side of war.

Tavis: Would you want to do this again if something - not that I'm trying to find another war for you to go to, (laughter) but - or spend more of my tax money supporting one - but that said, would you go through this experience again?

Fassihi: Maybe. It would depend on the circumstances, but covering a war is also very interesting. You have a first seat to witness history and to document it, and there's also a lot of responsibility attached to it. In Iraq, journalists are really the only independent observers. If they weren't there, you would only have the military on the government's side.

Tavis: Well, in that case, I'm glad you were there. Better you than me.

Fassihi: Thank you, thank you.

Tavis: And I'm grateful for that. Her name is Farnaz Fassihi. The book is "Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq." Farnaz, nice to have you on the program.

Fassihi: Thank you for having me.