Today, one week later, we still mourn

Never in my wildest thoughts did I ever imagine that my eyes would leak like an open tap of water when writing a story about brutal murder. I was a reporter, after all. I had seen the worst and reported on things people wouldn’t bare to imagine. But this time was different. 

When we first start reporting, we are taught to keep our own biases and opinions out of our stories. Under no circumstance are we to get involved. Objectivity is key, they taught us.

This time, it was personal.

Today, a week later, I can’t get the smell of the blood or the images of the blood-soaked sand out of my head.

“I wish I could tell you that this won’t happen again, but the truth is that it will. You are a reporter and you have to learn to deal with this,” said my boss.

I remained silent.

I was lost. Speechless. When people asked me how I was doing, I had absolutely nothing to say. I just remained silent.

“I don’t know,” I would say after a long pause.

I didn’t want them to ask. I wanted to be left alone. I just wanted to be left alone and so did my community. I was manifesting the emotions of my entire community. I felt the same way they felt. All of us just wanted to be left alone – this wasn’t an ordinary loss and we knew that – it wasn’t something we could guarantee would never happen again and we knew that too – but after such an emotionally exhausting and terrifying ordeal all we wanted was to be left alone.

We never wanted anything to do with politics or the media. We needed time to just come to terms with the fact that something like this actually happened.

We just wanted to be left alone.

And to those of people who committed this barbaric act, if you think that this will make us, Ismailis cower down and miraculously change our religion, all I have to say is, if I ever get a second chance at life, I would still choose to be Ismaili. And I say this on behalf of everyone from my community.

Read the complete story via The Express Tribune | Blogs | Today, one week later, we still mourn

By Anonymous R Published: May 20, 2015

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