Caryle Murphy, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting for The Washington Post from Kuwait during Iraq’s 1990 invasion and went on to cover the intense battles of the Gulf War, died on Oct. 19 at the age of 79. Though thrust into conflict reporting, filing dispatches on tactical maneuvers and geopolitical posturing, her focus was always on people. After leaving the Post in 2006, she returned to Saudi Arabia in 2008, where we met while covering a very different kingdom. I was focused on oil, money, and geopolitics, while Caryle tried to understand a younger generation of Saudis who, just a few years later, would help transform their country. (She wrote a book about them.)
Over long dinners in Riyadh, I learned from Caryle about the humility needed to be a great journalist, the eye for detail, and the courage to rush toward the scene as others fled. One of my favorite stories of hers — which I returned to when I switched to conflict reporting a few years later, and still cite to those who arrogantly dismiss Gulf militaries as ineffective or cowardly — was her dispatch from the Battle of Khafji. It is a footnote to the first Gulf War: Twelve US Marines were trapped in the Saudi town by as many as 600 Iraqi troops before being freed by a joint Saudi-Qatari force. A dozen Saudi soldiers died in the battle, according to her report.
Almost two decades later, Caryle and I were among a group of reporters meeting with Prince Khaled bin Sultan, who had commanded the joint Arab forces during the Gulf War and was then leading a campaign against the Houthis. The prince recognized Caryle, but couldn’t remember where they had met. I immediately blurted out that she had been in Khafji even before Saudi forces broke through, eliciting a laugh. The two then reminisced about the war in a way that only those who had witnessed it could.
— Mohammed Sergie