"There were rumors that Palestinians were posing as Red Cross workers and journalists. I don't think if they knew I was an American journalist that I'd have been shot. They might have, who knows? They can be rough on journalists. I think they wanted to teach a lesson. 'Here's what we're going to do to people acting as journalists.'"

"God," I said.

"A cold-blooded ecution."

"From point-blank range," I said.

"They were looking to kill me. Crazy, but reading my notes may have saved my life. I think they were aiming at my head, and I moved my head down looking at my notes."

"The M-16 wound makes you sure an Israeli did it?"

"Yes. And the Israelis were in complete control of that area that day."

He could have been dead. He could have been paralyzed. Instead, he was in a Ramallah hospital away from the one he had visited that day. From his bed, he called Boston and told his editor what happened. He also said, "I got this great story. I think I can still write it." And the editor said, "If you think you can do it, we'll take it." Before Shadid could get his laptop, common sense, in league with morphine, prevailed against the idea. Besides, he hadn't been in the hospital an hour before here came more Israeli soldiers, guns drawn, entering his room and shouting something in Hebrew, a language he did not understand. He said, "Back off. I'm an American journalist." They answered, "Get your hands up"—as if he could. He was mummified in bandages around his chest and shoulders. He raised his forearms.

Later that night, an Israeli army officer stopped by. "If we shot you," he said, "I apologize on behalf of the army." Then he shrugged. "But you know, you were in a war zone."

···

Shadid's notebooks were tangible evidence of a reporter's adrenaline rush. Well formed and orderly notes suddenly skittered across the pages and landed wherever there was white space. Sometimes he even made space by turning the notebook sideways to write along what used to be margins of the page. We were in Boston looking at notes made years before, notes of events so vivid that he still could translate the scribblings. He kept the apartment to be near his daughter, Laila. She lived with her mother, a doctor who had loved Shadid but not his work. When it was clear to both the husband and wife that the man and the work were inseparable, they divorced. He said, "That combination of altruism and ambition that makes reporters who we are—sometimes I wonder if only journalists understand that. You think you're doing something good, something worthwhile, and you like doing it."

He loved the Iraq story in 2003 and 2004, Lebanon in 2006. "You basically lose yourself in it. You take a deep breath and sink into it. The story becomes you. It defines your life in a way I've never experienced elsewhere. The downside to that is, it takes a bit of your soul away. You're thinking about the story constantly. How do I understand that story, how do I put the pieces of the puzzle together?"

"And you're thinking of that," I said, "instead of playing Scrabble with your daughter?"

"Afraid so. This will sound cheesy, but it is an overwhelming experience when you're defined by a story to that degree. And that's when journalism can really be great when that's who you are, you're here to report that story."

The old general assignment reporter, Don Graham, now the Washington Post Company's CEO, knew that about newspaper people. He told staffers in Iraq, "No story is worth your life." Shadid disagreed, almost. "Some are really important. It's worth taking a risk to stay in Baghdad. This is a seminal moment in our country's history and to not have someone in Baghdad for The Washington Post—that wouldn't make a lot of sense."