MARJAYOUN, Lebanon: New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid’s ashes were spread Wednesday afternoon in the garden of the house he rebuilt in his hometown of Marjayoun.
His immediate and extended family honored the will of the man who many lauded as one of the finest journalists in the Middle East of this generation. Shadid was the recipient of two Pulitzer prizes.
Shadid, 43 died in Syria last week near the Turkish border from an asthma attack apparently triggered by a horse allergy. Shadid, known for his skill with words and gift of explaining and humanizing complex stories from the Middle East, was working on a story about the Syrian opposition fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Born to Lebanese parents, he was raised in Oklahoma. Shadid spent his career living and working in the Middle East trying to explain the complexities of the region to American and international audiences. He worked for the Associated Press, The Boston Globe, Washington Post and most recently The New York Times.
He was no stranger to conflict. Shadid had been captured in Libya, shot in Ramallah and reported throughout Iraq’s post-occupation civil war.
Based in Beirut, Shadid had become engrossed with understanding his family’s history in southern Lebanon and how it tied into larger narratives of the nation. That is the subject of his newest book “House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East.”
Shadid went to his grandmother’s home in Marjayoun and retraced his family’s flight to the U.S. and unraveled his need to understand his past.
“‘House of Stone’ is an unforgettable memoir of the world’s most volatile landscape and the universal yearning for home,” as the book is described on his website.
The book is now being published posthumously and publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade decided to push forward the release of the book by a month due to his death. The book will now be published Feb. 28.
Publishers have asked Shadid’s colleagues to promote the book across the United States in his stead.
He is the author of two other books: “Night Draws Near,” which retells the American occupation of Iraq through Iraqi eyes, and “Legacy of the Prophet,” which explains the transformation of 21st century Islamic politics.