Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rod Nordland has covered conflict zones in over 150 countries over nearly five decades. When he was diagnosed in 2019 with glioblastoma multiforme grade 4—one of the most aggressive types of brain tumors—he was told the disease would kill him. Rather than concede defeat, Nordland took on a new lease on life, looking closely at what is important to him and rectifying things he wished he'd done differently. His new book, Waiting for the Monsoon (Mariner Books), is an examination of what he calls his "first life" and his new perspective on life after diagnosis, his "second life." In this Q&A, Rod shares his thoughts on how to keep journalists safe so they can report on the events of the day, advice for those facing difficult things, his newfound faith, why he views his disease as a gift and more.
You've been up close with some of the world's worst terrorist leaders, giving you a unique perspective on today's extremists. What should we understand about extremism?
You can't understand it in isolation. You have to see it in context of the conflict that's taking place. But sometimes I've found that hard to do, especially where there's been violence to women and children involved.
While you were reporting in Beirut in 1985, AP Bureau chief Terry Anderson was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad and held for almost seven years. Evan Gershkovich is currently being held in Russia. How can news organizations keep their people safe while also offering unvarnished coverage?
By being careful and thinking about their security first. Terry lived in the same general neighborhood as I did, and a few hours after he was taken, a group of Shiite gunmen surrounded me outside my office, but I had followed advice from more experienced local colleagues and hired a bodyguard, a guy named Ali. He courageously faced the six of them down, drawing his own weapon, a 9mm pistol as he whispered to me to cut and run for it.
I'd always wondered about bodyguards. Whether they would put their lives on the line for their client. Ali explained that as our office was in a Druze area and there was an uneasy truce at the time between the Shia and Druze factions controlling the area, the risk he took in facing down my would-be kidnappers was a calculated ploy, not a blindly heroic one. My point regarding my near-miss with kidnappers, is that we keep ourselves safe by being careful.
Do you have suggestions for press covering war zones now?
Plan ahead. When I worked in Iraq and Afghanistan it was so dangerous that we all had full-time security advisers. They were all ex-military but what they brought to the party was not firepower but military experience. Every time we left the bureau we would game plan what to do in any conceivable circumstance if we ran into a Taliban or ISIS roadblock or a roadside bomb.
We always traveled in two cars, local staff in the first one. We went out with two walkie-talkies hidden under the front seats. Foreigners went in car two, car one stripped of all phones, ID cards, cell phones or anything linking the local staff to us foreigners. Protocols such as these are becoming the industry standard and best practice. The more that trend continues to grow, the safer we'll all be. Planning and calling on local expertise are everything.
Is there an anecdote or episode that particularly stands out for you as a foreign correspondent?
While I was with the NYT we did a story from the village of Jaghori in Afghanistan in 2018, a largely Shia village that was completely surrounded by Taliban. The roads to it were too dangerous for anybody to use. The Taliban were attacking Jaghori, and the government had sent its best troops to defend that village. I managed to get there aboard a small plane that took aid groups into different parts of the country just as the worst of the attack was coming.
This was really "f/8 and be there"—what photographers call the whole secret of good journalism. We were in the district headquarters building. An official had been sent from the presidency of Afghanistan to assess how bad it was. He was all about spinning it. He said that there had been some losses but minor, and talk of the district fall was all Taliban propaganda. As he was telling us this, we were standing at the top of a stairway which had a huge glass window in front of it overlooking the parking lot. Pickup trucks were coming, one after the other with bodies loaded in the back of these vaunted commandos, specially trained by the Americans who believed they would turn the tide in the war.
These trucks were coming full of bodies and their colleagues and friends were unloading them, many of them weeping openly. They lined [the dead] in the dust of the parking lot one next to another until all four or five trucks had disgorged their load. And this official was saying there had been hardly any casualties and none of our special forces had been lost. It was one of these moments in journalism that you always wish would happen but hardly ever do. The sight of these commandoes lying there in the parking lot immediately put the lie to this official's spin.
Given what you're facing and the heroic way you've approached your illness, do you have advice for the rest of us when we face difficult things?
There's nothing heroic about my approach. I've just used lots of optimism, approached everything with a good sense of humor and a core conviction that the human mind is more powerful than any bunch of oncological deviates. Keep your spirits high and your powder dry.
As for practical advice for the newly diagnosed, make sure you have somebody who can be your advocate because medicine is really a war zone of its own. My partner Leila Segal has been that for me. And I think the biggest thing for both of us was that we both took on projects that gave meaning to our situation. In my case this book, Waiting for the Monsoon. Leila has written a book of her own—it's called You Came Back.
And feel free to apply my personal screening test for new doctors. See if they laugh at this joke: What's the difference between God and doctors? A: God doesn't think he's a doctor.
Formerly an atheist, you began studying the weekly Torah portion during your illness and converted to Judaism. What caused you to turn to religion?
You know the expression "there are no atheists in foxholes"—it's something soldiers often say to each other. During the course of my illness, I realized I had long been looking for a spiritual home. There was even some evidence that I had Jewish ancestry. An introduction to Judaism course opened up, and I learned a lot about Judaism that drew me to it more seriously, especially the Jewish practice of questioning—even arguing with—God. That seemed right to me. There was one chapter in my original book draft entitled The Middle Finger of God. I wrote that when I found out glioblastoma has no known cause—it's just random. Since I've been a young child I've been in situations of conflict. So it feels pretty natural to me, that type of relationship to God as a sparring partner.
Was there anything surprising that you learned in the wake of your diagnosis?
Facing a terminal diagnosis forces you to think about your first life and maybe what you've done wrong in it and what you could have done better. It's like having a second opportunity to fix things and do things right and that I realized early on was a gift. With the help of Leila, I learned to love again. To really love. And that was the greatest gift of all.
There's a tradition of people writing great books when they are battling illness, like President Ulysses S. Grant's memoir. Did you find writing this book therapeutic?
Yes, very much so. Civilians (as we would call all nonjournalists) would often say to me, to my slight embarrassment, "you lead such an adventurous life." My stock reply was always: "The only true adventures are adventures of the mind."
But glioblastoma is a disabling disease, so after my diagnosis there was no longer any chance of my being that globe-trotting war correspondent, getting into places all over the world no one else could. Writing Waiting for the Monsoon became my adventure of the mind. It helped me maintain my sense of dignity, autonomy and self-worth. It gave me a sense of purpose, that I was still important in the world, that I was still doing something useful. It meant everything.
Updated 03/07/2024 9:26 a.m. ET: Photograph was updated.
Correction: 03/07/2024 1:07 p.m. ET: Photo credits have been corrected
