Leila Fadel is a young, award-winning journalist who has been covering the Iraq war since June 2005. For nearly the past three years, she has been the Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers.
In April, she returned to work in the United States. In an video interview for McClatchy, Fadel observed her life seems detached from reality now that she is working in Washington, D.C. and that Americans may be choosing to forget about Iraq.
“I think it is strange to be in a place that doesn’t feel real to me anymore,” Fadel said. “It’s really hard actually to be in D.C., to be in a place that feels so like life is easy, everything is fine.”
“Just the idea that you can wake up in the morning and go to Starbucks, pick up your paper, read about all the horrible things happening in the world and then go to your nice, air-conditioned office and everything is over. It’s really hard and you feel a bit guilty you can have that life,” Fadel said.