Extreme Middle East
Patrick Baz
Agence France Presse
I was twelve years old in 1975 when war broke out in my country. I grew up on the dividing line, with bombs and snipers. I could have taken up arms, but five years later I chose to take up a camera. With the blind unawareness of youth, I flirted with death and recorded moments for posterity, showing Lebanon as it tore itself apart, showing confrontations between Christians and Muslims, car bomb attacks, the emergence of Hezbollah, a variety of occupations and then internecine struggles between Christians. It reached a point of utter disbelief, even revulsion, despite the sense of anguish that one day I might have to take a photo of a friend or relative killed by a sniper, or to cover a car bomb attack in my own district. Later there was liberation, or the impossibility of remaining neutral.
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My job in Jerusalem, when the government at the time was occupying part of my country, was a challenge on both professional and personal levels. I met two populations laying claim to the same land, a land where people kept confronting me with my background, a land where the earth is more important than humans. I was in Baghdad when the bombs came raining down, starting in March 2003, attacking an under-equipped army, when the regime fell and the crowd rejoiced. Some months later, the Iraqis discovered an army of occupation and another war began. The insurgents’ rejection of foreigners and outsiders and the fear of kidnapping meant that I ended up discovering what it was to be embedded with the Marines, in Ramadi and at the time of the attack on Fallujah. It is a strange situation where journalists and military join forces. Iran is a land of contrasts and mysteries. You can find Charlie Chaplin rubbing shoulders with Imam Khomeini. Election campaigns there are organized to the beat of techno music, with sacred sites turned into polling stations, and girls are veiled by the age of nine.
