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Iranian women share lunch after planting rice. 

Mazandaran Province. Near the village of Zirab. Iran, 2001.

He was a master storyteller, and a master baby whisperer, having rocked my 7 month old to sleep in the middle of shooting our episode of @PartsUnknownCNN in #Gaza. I wasn’t sure what to expect of him, but upon first setting foot in Gaza where we met, the first thing he said to me was that he was absolutely dumbfounded at what he’d witnessed in the West Bank and Jerusalem. “That is something seriously (expletive) up. And one has to see it to believe it. I told the Israelis-you are not gonna like the cake you’re baking-it’s only a matter of time before it implodes.” He also later confided to me that the episode almost didn’t air “We fought like hell, though, to tell the stories we did–best we could tell them and I’m, on balance pretty happy-though definite reservations. In any event, all the right people are infuriated.” The Peabody Awards describes him best when they said “He (was) irreverent, honest, curious, never condescending, never obsequious.” RIP @Bourdain 

In Arabic we say that hearts are the homes of secrets; some secrets love to torment us and some stay with us until we die. We also say that a life that gives is a life that never ends. That is small consolation to Islam and to me and to so many others who are forever touched and changed by Anthony Bourdain’s wild and daring life.

Tony, we send you love in your transition. You once confided, ‘I wish I didn’t have to leave all the time.’ I hope your feet find their grounding in the other realm.”