Cory Eldridge was relieved. He was finally having dinner with Dr. Mutei Asir, a West Bank ophthalmologist whom he desperately needed to interview for an upcoming story for JO magazine.
But before Eldridge could start asking questions, Asir’s pager buzzed; a 3-year-old girl had ruptured her eye by falling onto barbed wire. She would be in there in five minutes and was in danger of permanently losing her sight. Asir asked Eldridge if he wanted to come along.
Eldridge quickly grabbed his camera and the doctor’s prescription pad for notes while they made their way to Asir’s operating room. Besides, thought Eldridge, this might makefor a good story.
The Overseas Press Club Foundation thought it did.
Eldridge, a senior majoring in Magazine Journalism, was one of only two undergraduates in the nation to win the foundation’s prestigious $2,000 scholarship. He was selected for his article and photographs depicting Asir’s midnight surgery.
The foundation annually awards 12 scholarships to students who aspire to become foreign correspondents.
The almost two-hour surgery surprised Eldridge because Asir was without the technology that Eldridge, who has some medical background, was accustomed to seeing in hospitals.
“He wasn’t using any machines during this,” Eldridge said. “He was cutting her eye with an obsidian scalpel by hand. But surgery fascinates me; I don’t think it’s disgusting.”
Asir told him that he wouldn’t know if the surgery had been a success until the next day. Eldridge had to leave early in the morning.
“That was one of the most disappointing things: not finding out what happened,” he said.
Eldridge, who had never previously traveled abroad, spent nine months in Jordan through a study abroad program while writing for the English-language magazine JO.
He met Asir in the Palestinian town of Jenin, which is home to approximately 13,000 refugee sand is considered by Eldridge to be the suicide bomber capital of the world. Eldridge says Asir lives a peaceful life amid the violence.
“I would be surprised if he ever shot a gun,” Eldridge said. “He’s a politic-less hero.”
Born in Boise, Idaho, Eldridge said that an inquisitive nature is what brought him to the Middle East and to journalism.
“If a journalist isn’t curious, then I don’t know why they’re doing it,” he said. “I was curious about the Middle East.”
His mother, Janice Eldridge, said that although she was originally skeptical of allowing her son to travel to the Middle East, she felt it was the right choice for him.
“I felt confident that this was what he was supposed to do,” she said. “It was just a mother’s intuition.”
Eldridge initially received an e-mail with news of his award before being invited to the awards ceremony at news-provider Reuters’ New York headquarters on Jan. 27.
“To be honest, I was scared that (the e-mail) was a mistake,” Eldridge said.
After traveling to New York with his parents, Eldridge met with professional journalists from around the globe as well as other scholarship winners.
“It was a very humbling experience when I met these other people,” he said. “It was just surreal.”
Jon Bailey, a friend of the family, shares the foundation’s enthusiasm for Eldridge’s writing.
“Cory’s one that can really set the mood and put you in the place when he’s writing,” Bailey said. “He has a knack for letting you envision how it was.”
Eldridge said that he would like to spend his summer in New York interning with a magazine or possibly head back to the West Bank.
His final goal is to be a successful magazine writer for a major publication.
Despite his award-winning talent, Eldridge maintains a modest attitude of where he wants to be in 10 years.
“Hopefully, I’ll be eating on a regular basis with some good by-lines,” he said.