A Little Love

When his first child was born, Anjan Sundaram was torn between the new world of fatherhood and the old world of work — more specifically, conflict journalism. As his wife nursed their daughter, Sundaram pored through research about the Central African Republic, where a war had turned into a coup, and the insecurity thus unleashed was hardening into something even scarier. Sundaram couldn’t shake the call to cover a conflict few in the world had even heard of, but when he did, he couldn’t shake home. Sometimes, it buoyed him; other times, it haunted him.

For “The Cutting Room,” where authors share pieces they loved but ultimately had to cut from their latest books, Sundaram offers the original first chapter of his book Breakup: A Marriage in Wartime. By turns more raw and more melancholy, it calls forward his daughter as a leading character in his journey far away from her, one that ultimately cost him.

— Jina Moore Ngarambe for Guernica

My dear child,

This is your father. I have waited for this moment. I have found a way to speak to you and make a connection that is intimate, that is