A Tribute to Anthony Shadid---Who Explained to the World the Importance of the Mihbaj Coffee Grinder

Anthony Shadid almost died twice before he finally died from an acute asthma attack at the age of 43 while working in Syria. In 2002, he was shot in the shoulder in Ramallah, and then in 2011, he was kidnapped in Libya and held captive with two other reporters for five days. He lived to tell about both incidents and to continue reporting, with bases in Baghdad and Beirut. Throughout his career, during which time he was an international journalist at AP, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, he won numerous awards—including the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (once in 2004 and then again in 2010)--- for his coverage of the Middle East. His eye was trained on the humanity of the people in the countries he covered, as much as the geopolitical facts. Shadid’s family immigrated to Oklahoma from Lebanon before he was born. He developed a strong Lebanese identity that he explored in a memoir-in-progress, “House of Stone.” In excerpts recently