You may have heard about the death of Yasser Salihee, a special correspondent in Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau. Several Inquirer reporters are trying to raise money for his family. He took care of us while we were briefly in Iraq, and we would like to do what we can now for his wife and baby.
If you'd like to help with your own contribution, you can contact me at bahadug@phillynews.com or at 215-854-2601. We'll send the contributions to the Knight Ridder Baghdad bureau, where they will see it gets to the family.
Below are links to two KR stories about Yasser's death, as well as some pictures and thoughts about him. Bob Moran has posted a photo of him at the Pen & Pencil Club. As Bob wrote in an email to the KR staff in Baghdad, "Consider him an honorary member."
Thanks,Gaiutra Bahadur
Knight Ridder Baghdad stories on Yasser's death, as well as links to his own bylined stories
www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12026482.htm
www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12016097.htm
From Patrick Kerkstra, Inquirer Staff Writer
Yasser was nothing short of my lifeline while I was in Iraq. Like so many other reporters, I relied on him for everything. For safety, for companionship, for sanity, and most importantly, for virtually every story I did. We shared many bylines, but even the ones without his name on them would have been impossible without his help. Yasser might have been trained as a doctor, but he had the natural curiosity that you see in the best journalists. I marvel at what he did when I think back on it. I mean he had the experience of an average intern, and yet here he was covering perhaps the most important story in the world, and doing an incredible job at it. His rolodex was huge. He seemed to know everyone. He bristled at the implication (usually from other Iraqis on staff, who occasionally felt he was too much journalist too little fixer) that he was a mere translator. He wasn't, of course. He was a journalist, and a fine one, and I know that's how he would like his Knight Ridder colleagues to think of him.
I took this picture of Yasser the day after I arrived in Baghdad. He was trying to show me how to wear the kaffiyeh that I'd brought with the misguided idea that it'd help me blend in. He put in on himself, on me, suppressed a laugh, and gently suggested I never wear it outside the hotel.
From Gaiutra Bahadur
I remember Yasser talking about how he met his wife in medical school. "My heart started to flutter," he told me. He brought me his baby, Danya, to show her off. She has big, blue eyes and curly brown hair. Clearly, Daddy's little girl. Yasser was a proud man. He took pride in his family, and he took pride in the work he did for us.
I remember him joking after we had a double byline story together, "Gaiutra, can my name be first?" It was good work. His name should have been first. He went to the scene of a suicide bombing outside a police station and then to a hospital where doctors were exhausted from the constant stream of mangled bodies arriving for them to mend.
When two car bombs went off a few blocks from our hotel, our British bodyguard had huddled us in a sheltered corner away from the windows. Yasser, flouting the bodyguard, bolted out to the scene, black kevlar vest in hand.
One night we had stayed at a National Assembly meeting until 9 p.m., well past sundown and well past safety. As we sprinted to the cars, petrified of how late we were outside the gates of the Green Zone, Yasser said to me, "You enjoying your first taste of our Baghdad nightlife," with a gallows chuckle.
I had met a thoroughly unnerving man, an ex-Baathist named Faisal, on the flight into Baghdad. At the end of it, he had me convinced he had ties to the insurgency, and that he would have a full dossier on me in 48 hours. When I needed to talk to someone about what had happened, it was Yasser. He practically confiscated Faisal's phone number from me. Yasser took charge of that potential security threat. Not that I was going to make contact. But Yasser had the situation under control. He took care of things. He took care of me. He negotiated the bribes necessary to get me an exit visa. He noted in English on the back of receipts, how much I had paid for lunch, the date, the tip: "No receipt, no money, Gaiutra."
He took every opportunity to make his English better and more sophisticated. I had given him a book of essays by Atul Gawande, a medical doctor like Yasser. He took it and Trudy Rubin's book of Iraq columns to the Green Zone every time we had to cover assembly meetings. We had to hang out --- it seemed like forever --- in the Baghdad Convention Center as the pols had tea for hours behind barricades. We sat in the lobby talking about how he wanted to move his family out of Iraq. Yasser wanted to get to England, or Canada, maybe. Not America, because he didn't want to reduce his medical degree to nothingness. (He'd have to start over here.)
Yasser did not want to be reduced to nothingness. His pride wouldn't let a war and occupation do that. If he couldn't work as a doctor, he'd work as a translator for reporters telling the story of that war and occupation. He'd be more than that. He'd be a journalist. And he was. A smart, perceptive and courageous one.
