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Metra Media
“Esteemed viewers, welcome again to tonight’s program, where we bring you news from around the country and beyond. I am Mina
Noori of Metra Media.”
Mina’s voice is somber, flattened. It is the voice of a doctor announcing a child has not survived a virus. For the first
time, she struggles to look directly into the camera’s lens.
“Today is a tragic day in our nation’s history. Despite all the reassurances from our president and his cabal of officials
that Kabul would defend itself from a Taliban conquest, our city has fallen.”
Mina lowers her head briefly to conceal her trembling lower lip.
“Thousands have flocked to the airport in hopes of securing a flight out of the country. We received reports today that President Ghani and his people, in what people are calling an act of extraordinary cowardice, fled from the presidential palace in helicopters to an unknown destination. Ghani made no public announcement and his whereabouts remain a mystery. Afghan army forces usually stationed at the airport were nowhere to be found by this afternoon, very possibly disappearing into the city after hearing that the president had absconded. While the public does not have the president’s resources, they do have a mighty will and many muscled their way into the airport, breaking through barriers and moving past American soldiers.
The Americans have maintained control of the airport, while the Taliban have set up several checkpoints along the road that leads to the airport.
They seem to be letting through some people with proper travel documents, but they have also violently turned many away.
The heat has resulted in exhaustion and dehydration.
The area near the airport has already claimed many lives.
“The chaos at the airport has also resulted in separations of families. Recently, a family passed their infant son into the
hands of an American soldier at the airport. It was another thirty minutes before they were able to get through the gates
themselves. They could not find their child inside. Relatives reported to us that the parents were told the two-month-old
had likely already been flown out of Kabul and that they would be reunited in the near future.”
Mina takes a deep breath. The desperation to escape is nauseating and well-founded. She is a young woman in a country of young
women. War, poverty, and disease have made for abbreviated lives, which means that most Afghans have no recollection of the
previous Taliban regime. Still, their brutality is well documented. Young women who have grown up with the opportunities and
relative liberalism of Kabul can’t fathom living under such a regime. For God’s sake, Mina has her own news program named
after the Zoroastrian deity, the protector of covenants, light, truth, and justice. Mina has been free to talk about whatever
she pleases and criticizes any member of government whose hypocrisy needs to be examined in the daylight, even if talking
has resulted in little change.
But there will be no free speech in a country of mandatory beards. Schools closed for girls. Public executions. Whips lashing
at exposed ankles or painted fingernails.
It is already hell to be a woman in this country.
Afghanistan is consistently ranked as the worst place on the planet to be a woman.
A woman has to be willing to be insulted and ridiculed if she wants to have a career.
So many women she has interviewed in government, women in charge of making laws and representing districts, have told her in confidence that they’ve had to negotiate their curfews with their husbands.
If her headscarf slips two inches while she is on-screen, Mina can be assured that someone on social media will call her a whore.
Hell, they call her that even when her headscarf hasn’t moved.
And how many women are tolerating abusive marriages because divorce would strip them of custody of their children?
On her way to the studio today, Mina felt the urge to scream.
That same urge overcomes her now, the camera fixed on her face.
Instead, she straightens her spine. She is a professional journalist, and she will do her job.
The cameraman can sense she might fall apart. He decides he will turn the camera off if she does. No need to expose her vulnerability
to her viewers. He thinks of her as a sister and feels a duty to protect her, though she would probably scold him for his
old-fashioned thinking.
“Taliban soldiers have been roaming the streets of Kabul in police vehicles. And surely by now, esteemed viewers and fellow
countrymen, you have all seen the photos and videos of Taliban fighters roaming the rooms and halls of the presidential palace.
They posed for pictures, bearing rifles in the rooms reserved for the nation’s leadership. We may not have had the highest
regard for those who worked in the palace, but we most certainly should have held sacred the order, structure, and civility
those spaces represented. Today, civility was lost.”
“We have heard and confirmed from knowledgeable sources that the American ambassador was flown by helicopter from the embassy
to the airport. Embassy staff have been destroying sensitive documents as they abandon their post and wait for their evacuation
from the country. It seems even the Americans did not anticipate that the Taliban would trespass into the capital this quickly.
Though, esteemed viewers, you all surely remember that the language of the withdrawal agreement the Americans signed with
the Taliban conveyed that they did, in fact, anticipate the Taliban assuming a role of authority. They only misjudged the
timeline.”
Mina looks straight into the camera. She took a risk in launching her own show, and she did it just so she could have moments like this, opportunities to infuse her own views into her journalism.
Her following practically built itself, and while she doesn’t read all the comments on her social media, she’s read enough to know her work is appreciated by many.
“Beloved viewers, today we are a country without a president. For the past twenty years, the west fought the Taliban on our
soil, and today, they partner with them to control the crowds of citizens rushing the airport to flee a homeland that has
fallen to these same Taliban. I want to be optimistic, but as a student of our history, it is hard to be so. The past is the
future. The days ahead will reveal how dark our world will become, how much we will lose. I pray for your safety and well-being
and will continue in my duty to report the truth. When our so-called saviors have all left, when the dust of those planes
has settled, may God leave us some dignity.”