“Hi.”
“This is the first of such phone calls I have to make in my new job as president of the foundation, so I will just go ahead and begin: I would like to tell you that you have been selected as a MacArthur Fellow.”
I was silent. Every year I combed through the announcement of the year’s MacArthur “genius awards,” people from all professions who got the famous “phone call out of the blue” telling them they had won $500,000 “with no strings attached.”
“Hello? Are you there? Do you know what a MacArthur fellowship is?”
“I think so,” I said, wanting to be told again.
“We will give you half a million dollars, with no strings attached, over the course of the next five years, in quarterly deposits of $25,000. This is not based on work you have done in the past but to help further your work in the future.”
“Are you sure you have the right person?”
“Your name is Lynsey Addario, and you were born November 13, 1973, in Norwalk, Connecticut, correct?”
“Yes, that is me.” I felt my chest tighten with emotion.
Mr. Galucci offered a brief explanation of how the next few weeks would unfold in relation to the announcement, passed on the name and contact details of the head of the fellows program, and congratulated me once again. He then asked me what I thought of the situation in Afghanistan, and I was so overwhelmed, I used some lame word like “quandary” and then wondered if he was going to take the money back, thinking, “She isn’t really a genius.”
Our phone call ended, and I put my BlackBerry down and stared at the phone. I was sure “Robert Gallucci” must be Ivan playing a practical joke on me. I looked at the caller ID and entered the number into Google: MacArthur Foundation. It was true.
I sat down on our couch, alone in our happy, sunlit apartment, and wept with joy. I wouldn’t have to worry about money for the next five years. After years of traveling from country to country with no home, of trying to bring attention to injustice, of witnessing war, funerals, and hunger—the MacArthur Foundation had recognized how devoted I was to this work. All that time, sacrifice, and commitment had been worth it.
I had promised Mr. Gallucci that I wouldn’t tell anyone other than my husband. I walked to the metro stop in Taksim Square, where I knew Paul would eventually surface from among the throngs of commuters, and hovered over the subway exit for almost an hour before he came out. When he saw me, he was confused by what could possibly have brought me to meet him at the subway for the first time since we had met.
He spoke first. “Are you pregnant?”
It may not have been the good news he wanted, but Paul was overjoyed. My success was his as well. Paul, who understood the limitations of fast-paced breaking-news journalism, had always encouraged me to work on longer-term projects, which, he argued, would allow for more artistic freedom as well as a chance to go deeper into a story. Larger independent projects also often become exhibitions, which are a way of connecting with a world outside the news and media. Only something like the MacArthur fellowship would allow me that kind of time for my work, without worrying about where my next assignment would come from. And yet I decided to continue working with the New York Times, Time, and National Geographic because I believed in those publications, and their readership reached a wide audience. Part of me recognized that there was little point in doing this work if no one saw it. So while the MacArthur changed certain aspects of my professional life, it didn’t change everything.
? ? ?
TWO MONTHS LATER our lovely existence in Constantinople ended. Paul and I moved to New Delhi, where he took a job as the new India bureau chief for Reuters. I hadn’t realized how attached I had grown to my life in Istanbul over seven years—having Ivan as a neighbor, colleague, and best friend; enjoying Mediterranean salads topped by grilled halloumi cheese with Suzy, Maddy, and Ansel; spending summers drifting around the Aegean on a sailboat with my dad and Bruce. I was a married woman, and for the first time in my adult life, decisions about where I would live and how long I would stay were no longer determined by which war I was covering or which correspondent I wanted to work with. These decisions were going to be determined in large part by the fact that Paul had a staff job at a large company, and Reuters had needs.
An Afghan woman, Noor Nisa, stands in labor on the side of the mountain in Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, November 2009.
The death of a U.S. Marine in southern Afghanistan, 2010.
Maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, 2010.