Today, one week later, we still mourn

We never wanted anything to do with politics or the media. We just wanted to be left alone.

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.

Two days earlier, a friend of mine asked me why I don’t wear the red and green thread (signifying the red and green color of the Ismaili flag) on my hand like I used to in university.

“Are you kidding me? I will be killed on the field!”, animatedly I said.

And then, a week ago today, something terrible happened.

Day one – The bus that bled red

I came across houses that I dared not enter because the screams coming from inside were enough to shake my insides.

It made me really angry when some news channels said “43 jaanbahak” instead of 43 shaheed. We are Ismaili Muslims, but the news channels perhaps forgot that little fact while they were running around in the frenzy of getting inside the colony at its most vulnerable time.

Are we not Muslims? Are we not equal like all Muslims?

I was fuming when I told a fellow reporter about how angry the word ‘jaanbahak’ made me. Even the foreign convoy that died in the Gilgit crash was named ‘shaheed’ but we Ismaili Muslims weren’t. That’s how misunderstood we are. But no matter what, whether we call them shaheed or not, the truth is that they were just innocent victims on a bus going towards their destination when they were brutally murdered in cold blood.

The first call that I got that morning was from a friend who was freaking out.

“Don’t tell anyone you are an Ismaili okay! Just don’t tell anyone!” she said.

“Okay! Okay, I won’t”, I said.

The mayhem inside, I was in the midst of it. I can’t possibly describe in words the things I saw, the things I felt and what happened after the first three days. Words end where reality starts.

Day two – 43 funerals

It was like reporting the death of one of your own family members. Family after family, one dead body after another – it was never ending.

I was ushered to a house after the funeral and kept along with other media and newspaper representatives since they knew that I was a reporter too. I tried convincing them that I had no intention of talking to the families at this time – a friend of mine had also lost her father recently and I understood what it’s like when people ask insensitive questions at funerals. They didn’t believe me. And I didn’t push it. I know how overprotective my community is and that our guards are on high alert, more so than ever after this tragedy. Their trust deficit was making me angry but I understood the reason behind it, so I backed off. But I was determined to show people how much we were hurting. The world deserved to know and feel the loss we felt that day and today.

I met another Ismaili reporter for the first time later that day who seemed quite jealous that I was permitted inside and he wasn’t. He was especially summoned to Karachi from another city to cover this incident because of his identity as an Ismaili. The owners of the organisation may have forgotten that we are as affected as those inside the colony. They were us and we were them.

Day three – ‘Me’ as the manifestation of my community

It’s like the news vanished – it was no longer on the front page of news websites or newspapers. I wished that the whole incident was just a really bad dream and that I had just woken up. But it wasn’t and I knew why it was erased in two days from the newspapers and media.

I felt detached from all the Facebook posts about photography, food and people in general. I just stared at the screen.

You feel lost. It’s like when your mom says something and you can’t comprehend until she repeats it three times. That’s how absentminded you become. I felt so disconnected that it started affecting my work. You also can’t relate to other people’s reality anymore. When people talk about their work or their love life or anything really, it’s all just a big blur to you. All you can do is sit there and stare at them because you’re so detached. Later that night, I dreamt that my boss asked me to cover another shooting and I just couldn’t do it. So I ran. As fast as I could. Out of breath. But I couldn’t do it.

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.