Doing the Job as a Woman

What are the particular challenges for a woman as a foreign correspondent? Over the years, before you started your career, there were a number of distinguished [female reporters] -- I think of Flora Lewis and others. So, there was a tradition there. But during the period that you've done your work, things were still changing for women, more opportunities, but were there particular challenges that stand out? Or when the tire hits the road, maybe these things don't matter unless you're in a society that frowns on the engagement of women in different professions.

In Latin America it was pretty much never an issue. There were plenty of women journalists in Latin America, both foreigners and from those countries. It was a profession that women had worked in for quite a long time, actually, in Latin America. So, I never felt out of place or uncomfortable particularly. There were many difficult times -- sometimes you have to sleep in a tent with soldiers and stuff, and you get through it. But usually they weren't particularly related to [being a woman].

The problem really came in the Muslim world, when I entered the Muslim world six years ago and began having to live in that culture and to do a professional job, which required taking notes and going to difficult places and dealing with people as equals and getting access to officials. And also being deferential to the culture. I mean, being deferential to a culture in which very, very, very few women did anything remotely like what I do, and where, to be a woman, to request an interview with someone and to sit at a table across from them like this, taking notes, asking questions, perhaps asking tough questions, demanding questions -- all these things were unheard of. Not in India, of course, I'm not speaking about India. I'm really talking about Muslim societies, in particular.

The way I handled it, and even with the Taliban in Afghanistan, we got around the whole thing (and this is sort of unspoken) -- basically, I pretended to be a man and they pretended that I was a man. We dealt with each other, the authorities and I, as if, for all intents and purposes, I was just like them. I always dressed very modestly, very conservatively. I learned very quickly not to shake people's hands. After you [offer it] a number of times and nobody takes your hand, you learn not to stick it out anymore.

This is because you're a woman?

Because I'm a woman. People didn't want to look me in the face, so I didn't look them in the face. You've trained your whole life, "Hey, I'm so-and-so," and you have to unlearn that. You have to learn to [cast] your eyes down, put your hands in your lap, keep your scarf on your head, wait for the people to finish their tea, and then have a silly conversation about their families, and then after a while you can ask a couple of questions. I'm exaggerating here but not that much. [It's] a completely different culture. By my very existence, in many cases, I was perceived as an oddity and a threat, not only being a woman, [but] being a journalist, being a Westerner, being a Christian. All the things about me, in many situations, especially Taliban Afghanistan and especially conservative Islamic Pakistan, where I spent a great deal of time, I was, if not a threat, certainly an oddity and sometimes both.

I had to work very hard to overcome that by simply being as modest and as deferential as I possibly could. There was one incident that I mention in the book where I was interviewing a Taliban official in Afghanistan, I had my scarf on my head and all the heavy clothing and everything, and I was with another woman journalist, we were old friends, and we were sitting there doing this interview together, and we were very, very tired. We'd been up for two days and nights straight covering a hijacking, and we were very tired. And sometimes you start giggling when you're really tired. The translator made a mistake, and she looked at me and I looked at her and we started giggling. Tears were rolling down our faces, and we were like kids sitting in this room. And this Taliban authority was so deeply offended at this that he stood up, left the room, dismissed us from the ministry and never came back, and was highly offended.

I found out later, several years later, he'd actually written a formal protest to the foreign minister for our giggling.

Maybe you were showing your humanity.

I was showing something. I don't know what!

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