LISTEN UP, LOCAL JOURNALISTS

My brother, David, nicknamed Daoud, is going to show up in this blog from time to time. Occasionally I've gotten the feeling our local media types think they’re “all that”, and I always wanted to say, “You think you’re bad, but my brother was the real deal, and you couldn’t carry his boom mike.” But of course I never did, since McDonalds are polite creatures. At least I never did until now.
Let us pick up the story in Cairo where my brother had pursued his wife-to-be when she left Minnesota. He ended up interning at a small news outfit called Visnews. During the Achille Lauro hijacking he got Mubarak to answer some questions and the video was featured on NBC’s Today Show, and news broadcasts. That video still turns up now and again - it was his breakthrough to the big time.
Along the way my brother and his wife had 4 kids, who were born in Cairo, London, South Africa, and Manila. There’s a reason Shannon, the oldest and the one born in Cairo, was named after an airport.
Before David retired he covered some of the biggest stories of the last 25 years. Try sitting in a garden with Nelson Mandela the day after Mandela’s release from prison. Or hanging out with Mother Theresa. One turning point in Daoud’s decision to retire was when he missed Shannon’s graduation from a school in Beijing because he was being detained by the Chinese police. So many stories: The Berlin Wall, Iraq, Hong Kong, and on and on.
To give you an idea of how risky his career was, one day my Mom called and said, “Be sure you watch the NBC Nightly News tonight. Your brother’s on it.” “What’s he doing?” “He’s carrying a TV camera and running from the South African police.”
That video was later used to promote a CNN special called “Dying to Tell the Story”, about the dangers of journalism. My brother didn’t die but he looked like he was about to die.
Daoud was a bad-ass journalist. He did not cover snowflakes falling. He covered the world. The reason I’m reviewing this tonight, (and becoming emotional), is that Shannon, freshly graduated from college, has just arrived in Cairo to experience the place she was born.