Ricochet

In June 2003, a few months after that incident on the Euphrates, I traveled back to Iraq to document Ali Sattar's fate. Back at Mishkab, I spent an hour showing residents the newspaper covers and photographs of the boy before I was finally directed to his house. His father walked out with Ali in his arms. The boy's leg injuries had been massive, and he hadn't been able to receive proper follow-up medical care from the local Iraqi hospitals. Ali couldn't walk without a painful limp, so his relatives mostly carried him everywhere.

We spent that afternoon together on the banks of the Euphrates, drinking Pepsis and Iraqi tea and sharing M&Ms as I showed the family the photos I had taken of Ali. He was a typical shy little boy, but he was enamored of the picture of himself, though his farming family didn't understand why it was such a big deal. As we said our goodbyes, an airplane passed above. The noise of the engines panicked the 4-year-old, and fear spread across his face.

Ali would be about 9 now. I don't know where he is, though I wonder about him sometimes. I wonder whether he has grown used to war and conquered his fears. And whether he's fully recovered and able to walk. I know there was a time when Joseph wondered about Ali, too.

* * *

Joseph and I hadn't had much time to speak in Iraq, except for spending a couple of hours together the day after I took the photograph, so I was surprised to get an e-mail from him one day a month or two after my return to Mishkab. I think he was back in the States by then, or at least not in Iraq, and he wanted to know whether I knew what had happened to the boy in the photo. I e-mailed back and told him about my trip to find Ali.

"I can't believe you went back to Iraq. . . . I was afraid the kid didn't make it," he replied on Aug. 6, 2003. "I wish I was there with you back at that village."

In November, he messaged again. "Hey Warren it's Joseph Dwyer the kid you made famous. Hope your [sic] doing well and staying safe." He asked whether I had any other pictures from that day that I could send him and whether I'd heard anything more about Ali.

In January 2004, I was slated to return to Iraq for a third stint. But after two rotations in Afghanistan and two in Iraq, I decided that it was time to hang up my cameras. The war had taken its toll on my family, my friends and me. I couldn't find it in me to go back to Iraq and risk my life again. That's the difference between me and soldiers like Joseph Dwyer: I had the privilege of calling it quits whenever I wanted to. The men and women of the Armed Forces don't have that luxury.

I left journalism, moved home to Miami and soon after enrolled in law school. I heard from Joseph a couple more times, casually. He didn't tell me that while I was struggling with Contract Law, he'd been struggling to fit back into civilian life after his three-month stint in Iraq. I first learned of his problems with PTSD in a 2005 news story about his arrest in Texas after a standoff at the apartment where he was then living. He thought there were Iraqis outside trying to get in, and he was shooting at the phantoms.

The last message Joseph sent me was on Dec. 1, 2004. "When I first got back I didn't really want to talk about being over there to anyone," he wrote. "Now looking back on it, it's one of the greatest things I've ever done. I hope you feel the same about what you have done. I truly believe you played an important role in this war. You told everyone's story."

Even as I transcribe that e-mail, it gives me pause. What happened to him after he wrote that? And did I do what he said?

U.S. soldiers perform courageous deeds daily, deeds that go undocumented -- and unrecognized. The difference between Joseph's act and theirs is that I just happened to be in front of him with a camera when he did his job. If a camera could follow U.S. soldiers in action around the clock, newspapers would be flooded with images of their valiant actions.