He was in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, the day the Saddam Hussein statue fell. For him it was a strange moment, with mixed feelings of relief that the regime itself had ended and of foreboding as he wondered what was ahead.

Anthony Shadid, Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize winner for International Reporting in 2004, is on campus Tuesday and Wednesday. He will use his two books, “Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the New Politics of Islam” and “Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War,” as a platform to discuss the intersection of political Islam and democracy, and Iraq respectively.

“The stories are about ordinary people forced into circumstances that are anything but ordinary,” Shadid said in a telephone interview.

Shadid, 37, currently living in Lebanon, said the Middle East is a challenging region, but the experience is rewarding.

Shadid was shot in the back as he was walking to his hotel, while he was on assignment in the West Bank for the Boston Globe in 2002.

The bullet went in his left shoulder and out his right and the wound bled profusely. A friend helped him to a checkpoint where he received first aid.

“When you’re in a dangerous situation, you don’t have time to think about the danger itself,” he said. “The danger is part of covering the story, but it’s not the only thing. I try to not think about the danger, but how important the story is.”

An Oklahoma native of Lebanese descent, Shadid is fluent in Arabic because of his college studies and his immersion in the language while working for The Associated Press in Cairo, Egypt, from 1995-1999.

He has won several awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ award for deadline writing and the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad.

“Night Draws Near” is a finalist in the general nonfiction category of the National Book Critics Circle Awards.

“It’s very sad, very compassionate and very compelling,” said Jamie Storm, member of Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort of Champaign-Urbana.

Storm has been a personal fan of Shadid ever since she read his book.

“He’s a story teller, and storytelling is a powerful medium to make the situation real and learn about individual people.”

The event is co-sponsored by the Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort, Muslim Women’s Outreach, the University’s Department of Journalism and almost 20 other organizations.

“The purpose is to provide information and to encourage discussion of issues related to U.S. foreign policy,” Storm said. “We want to broaden and diversify the audience by bringing a Pulitzer Prize winner who has written a book based on his personal experiences in Iraq before and during the American invasion, and into the occupation and the insurgency.”

Shadid will also be speaking in various classes including Stephen Hartnett’s Rhetoric of Social Justice graduate seminar. Hartnett is an associate professor in speech communication, who had his students read parts of “Night Draws Near.”

“It’s a very personal, firsthand account of life in Baghdad under the occupation – a perspective that students haven’t heard before,” Hartnett said. “I hope people will feel enlightened about the situation in Iraq and feel empowered to raise their own voices.”