Anthony Shadid died yesterday of asthma triggered by an allergy against horses while traveling on a smuggling route between Syria and Turkey. Shadid was one of the most objective reporter on the Middle East in the western media. I read every piece I stumbled upon that carried his byline.

Shadid was nearly killed some 10 years ago. But not by an allergy. The American Journalism Review wrote about it back in 2002 and the story captures Shadid’s human qualities quite well:

On a gray Sunday, Boston Globe reporter Anthony Shadid made his way to the epicenter of one of the world’s hottest stories–the Israeli assault on Yasser Arafat’s compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Shadid wore a white flak jacket emblazoned with “TV” in bold red letters, the universal symbol for the press in conflict zones.
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Around 5 p.m., Shadid tucked away his notebook and began the trek back to the hotel.
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Shadid felt pleased with his day’s work, particularly making it past Israeli Defense Forces troops dug in around Palestinian Authority headquarters. He was walking down the middle of a deserted street, talking with a colleague, as someone in the shadows took aim. The high-velocity bullet tore through his left shoulder, missing his spine by a centimeter.

The reporter crumpled into a heap, unable to move his arms or legs. “At first I thought I was hit by a stun grenade because my whole body locked up,” recalls Shadid, 33, a veteran Middle East reporter. Suddenly, the white flak jacket was soaked with blood. The bullet entered at the edge of the protective gear and exited through his right shoulder, leaving two gaping wounds.

Israeli medics administered morphine and stopped the bleeding. They put Shadid on a stretcher and wheeled him across the street to the Arab Care Hospital. His ordeal was far from over.
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That same evening, Israeli soldiers raided the Arab Care Hospital where Shadid had been taken. In a stupor from painkillers, he focused on heavily armed soldiers standing in his room, barking questions in Hebrew. “I said, ‘Hold on, I’m a journalist.’ One of them said in English, ‘Put your hands up.’ ” It was two hours before he would see a doctor again.

The next morning, the IDF arranged a military escort out of the war zone for the wounded journalist, who had spent five years reporting for the Associated Press in Cairo before signing on with the Globe. Shadid insisted that his Palestinian colleague be allowed to leave with him. “The Israeli military was not keen about the idea,” he says. “I knew if Said didn’t come with me, he would never get out.”

The two drove off in an ambulance headed toward Ramallah’s main square. Suddenly Shadid was told by the army that he was being transferred to an armored personnel carrier and that his colleague could not go. “I said, ‘Forget it. We’ll go back to the hospital,’ ” the reporter recalls. During the return trip the ambulance driver and Ghazali decided to head straight for a checkpoint. For the second time in less than 24 hours, Shadid faced Israeli gunfire.

“We didn’t run into any problems until we got to the checkpoint. At first, we thought they were shooting at us,” says Shadid. “We could actually hear the bullets ricocheting off the pavement. I was lying on a stretcher helpless. I remember thinking, ‘This could be a bad ending.’ I felt more fear than when I was shot.” Instead, the Israelis were firing at Palestinians hurling rocks.
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The wounds have healed, but 12 razor-sharp pieces of shrapnel remain embedded in his body. Still, Shadid has one goal in mind: “I will go back. It’s not like a cowboy thing. I don’t get high on an adrenaline rush. This is an important story, one that I have been involved with for a long time.”

There were more stories he deemed important and wrote about The families of people who vanished in Iraq, the death people in Lebanon during the 2006 war and the revolutions in the Middle East. Here is a good piece that captures some aspects of the situation in Syria: “In Assad’s Syria, There Is No Imagination” and his most recent piece from Libya: Libya Struggles to Curb Militias as Chaos Grows.

The world needs more reporters like Shadid.