Reflections From the Hot Zone: Syria

Beauty, garbage or truth, wherever you choose to see it

*Note: In addition to my regular news dispatches, I feel it helps to add some personal context to the Hot Zone mission. So I occasionally post a "Reflections from the Hot Zone" essay, which allows me latitude to express personal observations -- or an "Inside the Hot Zone" diary entry, which provides behind-the-scenes perspectives of the people and places I've encountered on this journey. Please remember, these are subjective thoughts and from-the-hip analyses, not reportage. That's why we label them as such.

DAMASCUS,

But this is important -- very important. At least I think so. My translator Nawara has contacted a well-known Syrian artist named Nazir Ismail and we're going to meet him at his small studio off one of the winding alleyways of the old city.

It's an appointment I'm looking forward to, especially after just finishing an interview with Fayez al-Sayegh, the chief of state-run Syrian Television and a spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Information. The interview begins to go downhill shortly after my first question.

I ask him to respond to claims by the chief

He lights his pipe and tells Nawara his time is very limited. We rush through as many other questions as I can ask and actually get translated within the 15-minute window he grants us. As I'm packing up my tripod and camera gear, he asks me through Nawara -- rhetorically, I learn -- why I don't write a story about rendition of terrorist suspects and "Bush's secret black prisons" in Europe. When I begin to answer, he tells me, "I don't want you to answer, I just want you to write it."

Nazir Ismail meets us at our car. His eyes are kind and there is a soothing calm behind them. He is short and stocky with long gray hair. We begin the ten-minute walk through the narrow passages to his studio in what's known as the "Jews" neighborhood. Nazir says it was once home to a large Syrian Jewish population before they began emigrating to the West and to

He has a soft-spoken, but fully attentive manner. He tells me that he likes to make this walk early in the morning or late at night when it's quiet and gives him time to think. And there's obviously much to ponder here. The history we brush past is as thick and dense as the layers of stone walls that have crumbled, been replaced, crumbled again, been replaced -- carrying forward their sections of time until they stretch into the moments of this night.

In some dark corners there is loose garbage piled up, waiting for someone to come by with a shovel and bucket, but for now calico cats enjoy a feast.

Nazir's studio is no more than a rectangular room of about 400 square feet. There are several work tables fitted into a "U" shape with a rocking chair in the middle. They are covered with works in progress. A small electric heater warms the room.

"In the past," Nazir says, pulling out stacks of completed pieces for us to look at, "artists made all of their materials themselves, their paper, their paints, even their brushes."

Nazir says he does the same to try and maintain that historical link. On his desk are plastic jars filled with pigments he's devised from household products like terpentine, dyes and detergents. Some of his brushes are constructed from wood and frayed leather. His canvasses are everything from old newspapers to pieces of cardboard, all treated with acid tints and sealers.

But while the craftsmanship is impressive, it's Nazir's artistry that is most striking. The repeating figure in his works is the human head, depicted in the various abstractions and emotions, from harsh-edged scratch marks to soft-bleeding watercolors.

Like a deck of cards in a game of solitaire, one by one, I place the pieces on Nazir's work table, displaying them side by side in long rows. As I look over this body of work I notice a pattern. Though they are not literal representations, they seem to be lacking a common anatomical trait.

"So many of them," I say, "seem to be missing mouths."

After Nawara translates, Nazir just nods his head in agreement, but does nothing to alleviate the mystery. Unable to resist the vacuum, I fill it, clumsily, as I so often do.

"Does it have something to do with the pain of not being able to express something," I ask tentatively, trying not to imply too much.

"It's whatever you see," says Nazir, "whatever it says to you -- that's what it is."

Nawara is intrigued by his answer. "I like that," she says to me. "I believe that anything, a story, a novel or a piece of art, has a place for you in it. A place that is yours to decide."

It is a thought, that, like the stone walls outside, transcend this moment.

"Here's the scoop. We are trying to put a human face on the issues of global conflict."— Kevin Sites

It's not until later -- long after I've left Nazir Ismail's studio -- that what I experienced there begins to resonate.

In fact, it's not until a week later when I begin to read some of the reader responses to my Hot Zone dispatches from

There is a place for us in each work of art and in every story, but the question is, how do we want to view it? Are they simply mirrors reflecting what we project onto them, our own prejudices and preconceptions? Or do we allow the art or the story, the artist and storyteller, to quietly inform us with their observations and impressions?

Because we decided to have an open message board on the Hot Zone, allowing viewers to easily comment at length on my reports -- we knew there were going to be critics.

I'm not talking about people who disagree with me or each other in constructive and relatively articulate ways -- but those who stake out their own place in these stories as destroyers, choosing not to amplify the dialogue and debate over these critical issues of global conflict but to reduce it to the banal or even attempt to stifle it by driving others away with vitriol or crudeness.

There's not much we can do to persuade these folks about the value of what we're trying to do.

For the rest of you, though -- readers and those who have taken the time to offer thoughtful comments, whether critical or laudatory -- here's the scoop. We are trying to put a human face on the issues of global conflict.

The idea is a simple one in concept, but incredibly challenging in the execution.

How do we do it? By telling the small stories in front of and behind the conflicts, stories about people, the unseen and the unheard, that when threaded together, may help to dispel misperceptions and provide even just a tad of understanding.

It is not our mission to be the "news of record" on any particular issue or country. We are not avidly pursuing presidents and prime ministers or other typical newsmakers. We try to talk to those who don't normally spend a lot of time with journalists.

We do narrative feature journalism; we present stories about people. We provide links for you to learn more, sources like the BBC for country profiles or non-governmental organizations like the International Rescue Committee (IRC) for ways to help some of the people we've introduced you to.

We don't expect to be your only source of news or information, but we can promise we will be a source of stories that you probably haven't heard about -- like a maverick doctor's approach to combating Iran's crippling heroin problem, or a torture chamber turned museum in northern

When we launched last September we planned on hitting every armed conflict zone in the world. That's still the plan. But we've also branched out with some interesting political conflict zones as well.

I'm reporting solo in the field, usually just a week in each location, and filing multimedia reports five days a week. Those include 1,000-word text dispatches, dozens of still photos and video.

In these short deployments we sometimes sacrifice depth for breadth, but we feel that we are in a race to expose you to as much of your world as we can in the shortest period of time. Some of the lives embroiled in these global conflicts may depend on the audience we reach.

I have a "Mission Control" team of only three overworked people who have to set up nightmare logistics scenarios, provide editorial and technical support and deal with a daily deluge of issues that would easily break the psychological will and physical stamina of lesser individuals. Their efforts are bolstered by the Yahoo! News desk, which deals with a flood of daily news of which the Hot Zone is only a part.

Under these conditions we will certainly come up short on some occasions. We will make mistakes and omissions but we have promised and continue to promise to be transparent about them.

But within our limitations there is also opportunity. When I report, I'm highly mobile and less intrusive. With a low profile and my small digital camera, I'm much more likely to have candid and honest exchanges with the people we cover -- some who take great risks to speak with me.

Because I was able to walk with Nazir Ismail and see his studio and tools, I have a clearer understanding, hopefully, of the artist's intentions with his work, while still leaving a place for myself to question and interpret.

Will you, I wonder, see the art in the lives we share with you -- or just the garbage? Will you be a bit closer to seeing the truths we hoped to convey, while also leaving room to find a place for yourself within them?

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