Anthony Shadid made a brief return to Baghdad last week and, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post drove into the city from the airport, he was aghast by how much it had deteriorated since his last visit just a year ago.
“Baghdad is a city of ghosts at this point,” the 1990 University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate said in a phone interview Monday from his home in Beirut. “It doesn’t embrace life anymore. I don’t think anybody understands how bad it’s become.”
Shadid spent much of 2003 in Baghdad researching his highly acclaimed book, “Night Draws Near,” which views the Iraq war through the eyes of ordinary citizens and which recently was released in paperback.