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Metra Media
Mina shuffles the papers in front of her while she waits for the cameraman to show up. She checks her phone again. He is late
even by his lax standards. It will be just the two of them today. He probably knows this. The producer must have messaged
him as well.
She clicks on her messaging app and sees the missive her producer sent her last night.
Forgive me but I cannot bear the thought of my wife and children paying a price for my work. If I am killed or imprisoned,
what will become of my family? I beg you, look after yourself. They will not take lightly that you broadcast your criticism
of them. I say this with deep respect.
She wonders how far he has made it by now. Perhaps they are in Mazar already. Mina can hardly blame him for fleeing. On the
contrary, she’s glad for him. She will feel relief when her phone pings with an update that he and his family are out of the
country and tells him as much in her reply.
But where does that leave her? She did not burden him with this question. Nor did she tell him that last night, when she received his message, she’d been sitting on the small bench by her door, her shoes in her hand. She’d been staring at the cemetery dirt caked onto the soles.
She wishes that the sound of Soraya’s laughter weren’t so clear in her ears. Then again, maybe if she’d been around the family
more, she would have realized just how dangerous that hotheaded boy had gotten. Maybe she could have saved Soraya somehow.
A new message pings.
I’m sorry I’m not there. I’ve been thinking. Let’s not record a program today, the cameraman writes. It’s not safe. It’s especially not safe for you.
Mina puts her phone facedown and rubs her eyes, still puffy and pink. Of course it’s not safe. She didn’t choose to become
a journalist for safety. They could each name a handful of media figures they knew personally who had been killed in the past
ten years. But journalism had summoned Mina as clearly as the azaan that reverberated through the streets five times a day.
Truth telling was her calling; it stirred her from her repose.
A small voice sings for her the song lyrics that once resonated so deeply within her spirit. It is Ahmad Zahir’s voice, the
crooner of the seventies who left a nation lovesick and swaying. A half century later, still no singer is as beloved as he.
Life is an onward march to an end
Spend not this vanishing moment enslaved
For a life that is lived in shackles
Is a life that is lived in vain
Like Mina, Soraya had lived by this verse and look where it got her. The last lines repeat in Mina’s head, a broken record.
For a life that is lived in shackles is a life that is lived in vain.
Those lines alone are a complete ballad.
Mina pulls a splinter from her finger. The wooden coffin she purchased for Soraya hadn’t been easy to find.
The coffin makers were swamped with demands after the airport bombing, but a year ago she had interviewed two brothers, Qadir and Kareem, who had stumbled onto the fact that coffin making was a solid livelihood.
Their craftsmanship was simple, for these were not luxury purchases.
Many people followed tradition and buried their dead wearing only a shroud.
But victims of detonated IEDs or suicide bombers were reduced to pieces.
Families claimed whatever body parts they could identify.
Other bodies were too charred or deformed to look at.
Those families wanted coffins. The younger brother, Kareem, was more sensitive than his older sibling.
He always had been. When a request for a child-size coffin came in, Kareem would get to work without telling his brother.
Alone, he would cut the short planks that would house a truncated life.
It was Kareem who answered the phone when Mina called; Kareem who heard the grief in her voice and toiled late into the night to make Soraya’s coffin.
Mina clears her throat, mostly because the room has been too silent for too long. She tries to reread the script she has written
for herself, about the new disaster that has rocked Kabul.
Americans carried out a deadly drone attack today, killing ten members of a family in their home. While the American military
claims this was a “righteous” kill, information we have received locally differs. Relatives of the victims tell us that Zemari Ahmadi, the target, worked for a U.S.-based humanitarian organization that provided nutrition and education to those in need.
What were thought to be jugs of explosive materials were, in fact, containers of water. Relatives relayed that several of
the family members worked for international organizations and some even had visas to travel to the United States. Seven children
were killed, the youngest a two-year-old girl named Sumaya and a two-year-old boy, Ayat. The others include Faisal, age sixteen;
Farzad, ten; Malika, six; Arwin, seven; and Benyamen, six.
No one ever wants to read the names of dead children, but to Mina it is of the utmost importance. She wishes she could sit
the American generals down, make them stare at pictures of these precious faces, and read these names to them until their
ears bleed. Sumaya. Ayat. Faisal. Farzad. Malika. Arwin. Benyamen.
She turns the paper over and huffs. Who will say Soraya’s name?
She has gone over this a thousand times.
It may not have been the Taliban who killed Soraya, but it is their new presence, their looming authority, that emboldened Soraya’s cousin.
The Taliban will likely clap her murderer on the back, grateful.
How many more women will be killed with impunity going forward?
Mina also knows that speaking about Soraya publicly will only bring more attention to her mother and brothers, brothers who
only now regret that they hadn’t pushed back harder against their cousin’s vitriol. If their family’s shame were to become
public, Soraya’s mother would suffer a stroke, and Mina doesn’t want to be responsible for that. But the real reason Mina
won’t talk publicly about Soraya’s murder is because she can already imagine the way her niece’s name will be desecrated online.
Salacious lies will be told to turn her into the villain and her killer into a hero.
So Mina buries the story, just as they buried Soraya’s body. The omission makes her complicit. Diminishes her as a journalist,
as an aunt, as a woman. She shoves the papers off the desk, discards everything she’d been planning on reporting to her viewers.
They drift to the floor like autumn leaves. Silent. Weightless. Inconsequential. Mina releases a wail from the depths of her
soul.