IRAQ. Mosul. 2017. A burned classroom in Mosul University. I’d spent two months embedded with the U.S. military in Mosul on my first trip to Iraq in 2006. When the climactic battle against ISIS to retake the city came in 2017, I wanted to return, though I had been trying to ease out of covering conflict. More than a decade of war coverage had made my family absolutely miserable, and I had probably fucked myself up in ways I couldn’t even perceive yet. My pictures were starting to look the same. Yet, when the New York Times Magazine called, I hardly hesitated.
When I arrived, I was glad to be there, but something in me had changed. The two-hour commute to Mosul every day was rife with dangers— kidnappings, attacks on the road, sleeper cells. Inside the city, there was danger, too—weaponized consumer drones, snipers, car bombs, mortars, rockets. I worked efficiently, but was more fearful. For years, I’d buried my dread while working in war zones, somehow too afraid of being afraid to actually feel afraid. Within a few weeks, the fear was so strong that it threatened to derail the assignment. One morning I woke up groggy, having drunk most of a bottle of booze the night before, and couldn’t get out of bed. The idea of driving down the road to Mosul again terrified me. I called my editor and said I was done. I told myself I’d never go back, but it didn’t last.