But finding a partner wasn’t easy for me, as jihad followed me into my private life. After the Algeria debacle, I arranged to spend some time in New York, working out of the Times headquarters. I wanted to get to know my fellow reporters and editors better and improve my English, which was my fourth language after Arabic, German, and French.
My American friends seized the opportunity for matchmaking. Some arranged dinners to introduce me to “accomplished Arab Americans”; another signed me up for a website where I could supposedly meet Arab singles from around the world. All went well—until the men found out who I was and Googled my articles.
Some hated what I was doing and accused me of making Islam or Arabs “look bad”; others sent messages full of compliments but noted that “what you are doing is so brave but also dangerous.”
The man who wrote those words was an American-born engineer of Arab descent whom I’d met online. A friend had set up a profile for me, entering answers to questions about my preferences and whether I wanted to get married and have kids. (The answer to both was yes.)
There was no picture of me on my profile page, and I never sent my picture to anyone I met on the site. I wrote that I was of Arab-European descent and worked in media, without specifying where. I said I was independent and hardworking, that I liked to listen to music, that I liked long walks and art museums and went to the movies and read a lot, and that I was a very social person. When one man I met on the site learned who I was, he asked if by “social” I meant that I liked to meet jihadists.
Even before I got responses like that, I had mixed feelings about online dating. I didn’t feel at home in that world, and separating the normal people from the nuts was time-consuming. But the friend who set up my profile told me that half her friends in America had met their partners online. “This is the new thing,” she said. I thought it might be worth a try.
As with any dating site, some men were looking for a fling. I immediately deleted those messages. But some guys seemed more serious. An engineer I was talking to seemed well-mannered, friendly, and open-minded. He said he wanted an equal partnership. When I first told him I was a journalist, he seemed excited. He said he liked women with strong views, who were engaged in world events. He didn’t mind a woman working or traveling, but when I finally told him my name (after chatting with him anonymously for nearly three months), he felt differently. Instead of the light conversation we’d shared before, his tone grew more stilted.
If I’d traveled the world to cover environmental issues or fashion, none of it would have been an issue. But this guy worked for the U.S. government. I interpreted his message as a way of saying good-bye. We dropped out of touch.
I never met the engineer in person, but I did have coffee with a wealthy Arab-American businessman whom I’d also first met online. He flew to New York to meet me. On our way back to my office, a man accidentally bumped into me on the street. He said he was sorry, but the businessman was furious. “You should really apologize to her,” he told the man. I assured him that everything was fine and that the man had already apologized. But I also thought, I can speak for myself just fine.
My colleague Michael Moss worried about me in his brotherly way. He and a Times researcher and friend convinced me to let them run background checks on the men who wanted to meet me, including the businessman. It turned out that he’d been arrested a couple of times for beating his ex-wife.
When he contacted me again online, I told him I didn’t think we were a good fit. He seemed perplexed. “Why?” he wrote. “We had a nice coffee. I thought we had something.” I told him I knew about the domestic violence arrests and asked him not to contact me again.
I felt I was wasting my time. Like most people, I wanted a steady and loving partner who understood me and appreciated my quirks. I knew that if I had children, my work might change, but I wanted to be with someone who would be proud of how I have built my career, not afraid or ashamed.
“What happened to all these people who say, ‘Behind a strong man is a strong woman’?” I asked myself and all my girlfriends. “Where are they?”
My friend Mahvish pointed something out to me. “You’re a badass in your job,” she said, “but with guys, you’re just too nice.” I certainly felt pressure not to intimidate men with details about my day job. The fact is that many men have set ideas about women who work in the field I do. It was hard for the men I met to see me as anything but a thrill seeker or some kind of bizarre female action hero. Many were drawn to what they saw as the glamorous side of my work, but they were often surprised to learn that I also cooked, cleaned, and liked wearing nice clothes and going out with friends, or that I wanted to have children. It seemed impossible for them to hold all these ideas in their heads at once. The jihadis who said they wanted to marry me didn’t get it, either. For them, I was little more than a curiosity.
As usual, work came to my rescue. In 2009, the Times sent me to Pakistan to look into the networks that had trained and helped the perpetrators of the attacks in Mumbai in November 2008, in which more than 160 people were killed at two luxury hotels, a train station, a Jewish center, and a hospital. The sole surviving shooter had given information to the Indian police about the planning and coordination of the attacks that the Times wanted to investigate.
I’d heard so much about Pakistan from prisoners and jihadists that I was eager to explore it. But I had a lot to learn about the country and culture, which were very different from the Arab states I’d visited. This time, I didn’t speak the local languages, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Pakistan is formally a democracy (albeit one that has had several extended periods of military rule), but in recent decades Islamist groups have grown more influential, establishing seminaries in which they promote an ideological worldview. The seminaries, many of them cheap or free, are often the best options for poor and working-class families to educate their children. Meanwhile, the country’s oligarchic power structure and weak democratic institutions have helped strengthen Islamist movements.
One of my sources told me to look up a journalist named Jamal, who had previously worked for Al Jazeera. Jamal had also covered the Taliban and Al Qaeda for several Arab papers. When I met him, he was living in Islamabad, where he ran a film and TV production company. He became a trusted friend and a reliable adviser, and he helped connect me to militants, civil society, and the Pakistani military and intelligence services.