RIP. Ryszard Kapuscinski died on January 23 in Warsaw, Poland. He has been called the world�s greatest foreign correspondent -- and for good reason. He started traveling in Africa in the early 1960s and later reported on events in Latin America, the Middle East, and other regions, first filing stories for PAP, the Polish news agency (he says that�s how he learned his laconic style), and then working on books like the acclaimed volume The Soccer War, which covers conflicts in Congo, Nigeria, Guatemala and other countries in the developing world from 1958 to 1976. He wrote about politics, scandals, war, and revolution from the perspective not of the wealthy and powerful but of those who exist on the margins of society.
I met Kapuscinski in 2001. I�d admired his work for years and was excited to have a chance to interview him for a newspaper article. He was a short, thin man, and sat slouched across from me in a booth in a hotel restaurant in Washington. During the interview, a bus boy wheeled a cart filled with ice next to our table. The cart rattled and heaved, and we had to stop talking because it was so noisy. Kapuscinski glanced over at the cart and then couldn�t take his eyes off it. He looked as though he�d never seen ice cubes in his life -- and I thought, Well, that�s his gift. He sees ordinary things as if he has come upon them for the first time -- and then has the patience, and the right sensibility, to think about what they mean. That afternoon, he noticed the ice cubes. In years past, he had seen a squalid street in Lagos, for example, and described it in a way that would have an impact on readers around the world. Kapuscinski is dead. But his view of the world as a perplexing, fascinating, and magical place will -- luckily -- live on his books for a long time to come.
--Tara McKelvey
