Daily Times employees not paid for months

Daily Times newspaper has not paid its employees for at least a month.  The reporters and staff are suffering but for fear of losing their jobs have been unable to protest.

Dr Rubeena Kidwai wrapping up

Dr Rubeena Kidwai tells me she is wrapping up her clinic at the Pakistan Association of Mental Health. The most appropriate reaction is panic – I have three months to become completely non-mad. Can you become codependent on your shrink?

I join SAMAA TV as the website editor

I joined SAMAA TV as its website editor after I left Daily Times.  My direct boss is Amir Zia. He used to work at AP and Reuters, I think. He’s worked with Kathy Gannon, known as the Iron Lady in some journalism circles because she’s tough as nails and was the first journo allowed into Afghanistan when the Taliban took over.

I also work with Server Moosavee and Amir Jahangir and an incredibly bright Fatima Akhtar, who is the manager of the Interactive Solutions at SAMAA.

But all of that is by the way. This much I know; the media is changing and we’re trying to keep up. Sometimes I’m reminded of Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock.

I’m not sure why one should blog at all. Perhaps some people are fascinated in seeing their own words in ‘print’ or somewhere print-like. But don’t you have something to say – have some credible information – to be worth reading?

Februaries – 2 years since Nisha’s death

I point out to Abbas that after I revived this blog I realised that I was remembering Nisha February upon February.  She died in Feb 2007 when we did the stories on her. I wrote the blog briefly and then gave it up, only to pick up in Feb 2008. I then left it and after a year, now Feb 2009 , I go back to Khosa to ask about her death.

I think about her sometimes. It’s been two years since her death. What we keep wondering about, Abbas and I, is why she didn’t run out of the kitchen towards the front door? Why were there burn marks only in the kitchen, and that too in one corner?

When I mention it to Khosa, in his sterile white tiled office at the Arambagh police complex, he goes silent. If there had been anything, he says, he would have arrested the father. But his story had been corroborated by a shopkeeper, that he had been out to get something.

But then, I say to Khosa, what if he knew that she would go to make tea or something in the kitchen, leave the gas on and wait?

I go back to talk to the cop on the case

It is February 2009, two years since Nisha’s death. I quit my job at Daily Times after returning from a journalism fellowship. In the days when I am looking for a job, I decide to spend some time at Sachal police station. The thana is located at the end of University Road, in Safoora Goth, and to get there I have to pass NIPA chowrangi. I pass Ibn-e Sina Hospital. Each day, as I drive by I think of Nisha because one turn to the right would take me straight to the place where she died.

One day I decide I have to call SSP Niaz Ahmed Khosa up again.

Distance and Imagination

I send out small messages into space – there is no guarrantee they will be received but perhaps that is not important.

Distance allows the imagination to expand and breathe, like a small animal with sharp eyes and a heaving chest.

Distance also perhaps allows space to expand; perhaps the limits of communication grow blurry, the boundaries breathe as well. It’s blank

Back on track?

I gave up writing but now I’m thinking of taking it up again. Things are so very different.

The howlers that reporters come up with.

This was written by Farhan Ahmed, who joined us recently from The Nation. He covered the JPMC symposium on Sunday and filed this. I must add, however, that he is very hardworking and the boring doctors were at fault here: 

“The cervical cancer is very killing cancer and its mortality is very high and patients should be looked after and they need multi disciplinary approach and every patient should be diagnosed with the oncologist so that a treatment plan could be made,” said Dr. Nadeem Abbasi while giving presentation during plenary talks on the topic “Current practice and future trend in the management of cervical cancer”.

 

Hunting down the religious right over Zill-e-Huma’s murder

I marvel at how Zainab manages to communicate while simultaneously giggling and spluttering through the words. “How can they stay silent!” she squeaks. “We must speak to them.”

“Fareed!” I yelp and gesture wildly across two desks. Fareed, our mullah party reporter, looks up languidly and after a few moments realises that it’s not just enough for him to hear what we are about to say. He needs to get up, traverse the distance of two desks and come and stand next to me and Zainab.

“Fareed, this Zill-e-Huma murder…,” I begin and then jerk my head at Zainab giving her the cue to launch forth.

“All the maulvis will be saying their prayers,” he replies in answer to her request for the telephone numbers of the biggest, most important maulvis. “They all switch their phones off for Isha prayers.”

“I’ll talk to them! I’ll talk to them!” Zainab splutters and thus began Zainab and Urooj’s excellent adventure into mullah party reporting.

The speaker phone is hauled out from Resident Editor Sarfaraz Ahmed’s room after they cling to his door frame with pleading looks on their faces for 15 minutes. The bewildered telephone operator is given Mufti Munibur Rehman’s number and then they wait for the phone to ring back.

Deodorant and Nisha’s room

When I went through Nisha’s wastepaper basket I found many things but what keeps coming back to me are the several mini cans of Blue Lady deodorant spray. For me, these objects represent the essence of this case.

A family I know is really poor. They live in the centre of the city in a colony and I remember noticing in their bathroom how they never bought a bottle of shampoo but the tikki packs that you get from the corner store. Nisha’s use of the mini deodorant spray cans reminded me of this strange aspect of poverty.

Nisha had gone through at least three of the Blue Lady cans.

Burning to death

It must be one of the worst deaths.

WARNING – GRAPHIC MATERIAL

This is a photograph that came on the wires to me on Feb 14, ten days after Nisha’s death. Two children were burnt alive in Mirpur Mathelo, in the interior of Sindh. The photograph is by PPI. I am putting up this picture as it is similar to what I saw ten days ago.

Some1

I discussed Some1 with Abbas. He was sceptical. “Bohat time ho jaeyga,” he said. “Case go phir koi ghas nahi dalega.”

Keeping news alive in the press is one of the mosts difficult things to do for one simple factor – reader fatigue. It’s something that people in the business are well aware of and so acutely that a reporter won’t touch a story after a while because it’s a ‘purana issue’ or ‘is me aur kya de sakte hain’.

I quote the Sonia Naz case as an example. This was a series of brilliant reporting by I believe Rauf Klasra of the News. However, while the issue was running everyone was reading it – then there came a gap and then whenever the case was reported it was relegated to the inside pages of newspapers for the most part.

It may sound artificial to keep something alive in the press one has to keep these things in mind, but like any system it has its quirks.

Whenever you start a story it has to have a peg, a latest development or newsy angle. Something new. A development that is new. That is at least what I generally follow as a principle. In Nisha’s case, Abbas and I would sit down and decide what the peg was. Many days, it was absolutely clear but as time wore on we struggled to find a technical justification to run the story. If we kept running the story by just saying ‘The case is still unsolved’ as a headline not only will no one read it but also that is not ‘news’ and people would then really question our motives. Also, this is a type of reporting that other newspapers started which I don’t agree with. We do things differently at DT.

What people accuse me of in Nisha’s case

“What’s your problem?”

Admittedly, it does appear that I have a problem. My problem is that at the desk, whether it was at TFT, Dawn or the Herald and now at DT, I keep coming across shitty reporting on violence against women. Men do the reporting, not women (in general). Women don’t get to go to mortuaries at 3:00 a.m. and really see how the police and women medico legal officers deal with the case. Women don’t go to police stations as they are forbidding and ‘evil’ places. So first of all, I needed to break through that for myself. Those barriers.

This was the personal element of pursuing Nisha’s case which only unfolded slowly before my eyes. Each step of the way I had no idea what would come next or if anything at all would come next. So I kept moving ahead with the reporting to become the kind of reporter I wanted to be. Ultimately, of course, to be a good reporter means fame for yourself, but this fame, as any media person will tell you, is fleeting. Journalists can’t rest of their laurels. Who is going to remember the brilliant reporting you did a day later? AS A JOURNALIST YOU HAVE TO PROVE YOURSELF EACH DAY IN THE NEWSROOM.

“Why are you getting so personal?”

This accusation at first confused and angered me. It seemed as if it were the easiest thing to accuse me of. When you, a stranger, start poking your fingers into a family’s dark secrets, you go through a dead woman’s rubbish bin, read her slam book, try to get to know her life, you are getting into her personal life. There is no dispute about that. Every person has the right to privacy.

However, the question arises, when the does privacy become open? That happens when others need to step in because something has happened to that person and they are helpless – or dead. Violently dead. Let’s pretend for a second that Nisha’s spirit could talk to me and that she died as she did. Don’t you think that her spirit would say, go through my rubbish bin, you will see XYZ evidence that I was burnt. I do. It’s a stretch, but I do.

Privacy does become invaded when there is a murder. A family has to answer a lot of questions when there is a murder. Otherwise people would kill their daughters and wives and no one would bother to intervene because they would be invading their PRIVACY.

That is what all the feudals say when there is a karo kari in the interior of Sindh. They say, oh, it’s a family matter. We killed our daughter because she dated a boy and that is our family matter. Should the police not go in then? How is Nisha’s case different?

When there is a murder/suicide/suspicious accident there will be questions that are difficult to ask but they need to be asked. You can’t just look the other way and say that it’s a personal matter. For that matter all crimes are personal except for official embezzlement.

Crimes are committed by men and women and children. If they are not officials or the military then they are citizens. If they are common citizens and they commit a crime, they need to be questioned about it. That means privacy is invaded at some level. Do you mean to say that only officials and the military can be questioned, as they are working in official/society capacity? Remember, citizens commit crimes too.

Should a girl burn in her kitchen like that and no one ask any questions? Answer this.

And at some level the personal is there for every writer. When I write, I am putting down what I think. I am opening myself to the world and putting my privacy at stake. My cell phone number was on Orkut. Anyone can reach me at the office. Anyone can follow me home if they really wanted to. Anyone can stop and ask me any questions or pick me up in the middle of the night. I set aside my privacy in this case.

So I do have a problem when a girl burns to death. I do need to know what happened so that if anyone did kill her, they are brought to justice. You can’t just kill people and get off with it. If Nisha were my sister or my friend I would have done the same. And if Nisha’s name was Tabassum or Bismillah Begum or Kainat I would have done the same.

The Urdu newspapers have picked this case up and perhaps the Herald will too. What the hell do you think the press is there for? To just report on flyovers and how wonderful the government is? Read your Jurgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky and Edward Said and Howard Zinn. What did Michael Moore do? Stay quiet?

The last story

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20072\13\story_13-2-2007_pg12_5

This is our windup story…

Now the rest lies with the police.

Nisha is a Russian name

МЕНЯА ЗОВУТ НИЩА.

Minya zavoot Nisha

My name is Nisha

И ЕТА МАЯ ИСТОИЯ.

Ee eta maya eestoria

And this is my story.

Ich bin mude – I am tired

I’m back from work; it’s 2am and I just talked to Abbas about a comment someone posted on the blog. I’ve been reading Howard Zinn and David Barsamian’s ‘Original Zinn’. Next I have Charles Bukowski’s biography ‘Locked in the arms of a crazy life’ and side-by-side Kiran Desai’s ‘The Inheritance of Loss’.

I’ve been listening to Minnie Driver’s ‘Deeper Water’, Ute Lemper’s ‘The case continues’ and Bronksi Beat’s ‘Run Away’. In the car I have Abida Parveen’s Dhoom Charakra and Madonna.

I wore white cotton today and feel as if I’m running out of clothes. I may go to Unbeatables and buy something new or buy new lawn kapra. But all of that takes so much effort that I know it won’t happen. I just go to work and sleep and come home.

I never thought life would be like this at 30.

How strange to be 30 but at least I’m writing again – how long ago was it Montreal 1999 snow and Rene Magritte, Mikey and Herky and poetry each day.

Sophie sits in my lap with one paw on the desk. She sleeps with me at night and tries to curl up on top of my head. I wonder where Nisha’s cats are, Sweeto and Sweetu. I can’t say I like the names but I understand them.

Perhaps it’s time for bed now. Wahid Khalfe and the world can wait.

The more I interact with them and Kamal the more I realise that I don’t care to be a journalist that they think I should be. I’m only doing this job for what I feel is right. If Nisha’s followup deserves to be on the front page then it will be on the front page. If I need to carry her story for a week I will. That would never happen in Dawn unless it were a major military coup.

I’m glad I’m in charge of the pages. I’m glad I can write women. Today we have a story on a gang rape. But nothing is the same as Nisha’s story. No one equals Nisha’s story. A girl I never knew.

Just goes to show that you don’t need to know people to believe in them.

Although, with certainty I can say that if I knew Nisha in real life I probably wouldn’t have liked her.

For Some1

Abbas and I want Nisha’s case solved and disclosed. However, we feel right now that because of unseen pressures the police is keeping us distant from the facts. For this you would have to help us a little. This would be just between us. All contact will be kept confidential. Do not call my cell phone, but get a copy of the Daily Times and go to the Op-Ed pages – at the bottom they give my office numbers in Keamari, Karachi. Call and ask for me or Abbas between 7 and 8 p.m. tomorrow. I would give you our cell numbers but it’s better if you call the landline. If you or that person close to Nisha could call us we would be able to do something about this case. We need that one person to just answer two questions. If that person doesn’t then the case will grow cold. That happens really fast in Pakistan.

We have been working on this case in a way that is different from routine journalism. Normally no one follows a case in such depth and detail. We wouldn’t have either that night, but I believe now that it is Nisha’s fate that we are following it. I can’t say that her spirit is with us but there is something that keeps us going when no one else is willing to come forward.

The person close to Nisha can’t wait too long. Evidence grows cold. The police grow cold. In a city of bomb blasts, one girl’s death is nothing. Everyone is against us and now Abbas feels that we have exposed ourselves in the wrong way. People will question our motives.

In fact, many journalists who were following the story felt that I must have been a friend of Nisha’s which is why I did the story for so long. I had to and Abbas had to clarify it to people that no, we were really just doing it because she died a terrible death. Everyone has questioned us and insulted me over this case. No one believes that anyone would do this on their own without accepting money or some kick backs. And trust me it’s not fame as some of her Orkut friends said. I am already ‘famous’ as the first female city editor for a Karachi daily newspaper. I worked at The Friday Times, Dawn, Herald and have been with the Daily Times since it started.

Abbas is this city’s best crime reporter. I am lucky he was with me on this case. Nisha was lucky.

That person close to Nisha should email me at work mahim@dailytimes.com.pk or call me or Abbas or even SSP Niaz Khoso. Time is running out. We ran our last story today.

One blogger’s comment

asmat:
i dont know where to start from, it was a sad incident that hapened on 4th of feb in gulshan iqbal,the sadest thing is that no one cares about it everyone is too busy the police and the goverment is reluctant to take any proper action, i personaly am sure that its nor an accident neither a suicide, it was a murder straight away and now the qustion is who murdered her and i know it was no one else but her own father mr Qazi Amin.there was an empty container of petrol found in her apartment and about a litre of kerosine in a tub, wound on the head was found i even heard about scizors and hair was seen, mr Qazi is a well known fraud and a black mailer he murdered his second wife nisha,s mother in 1989 when nisha was very young about 2 0r 3 years old, money is Qazi,s biggest need and weekness he is a very greedy person he would do anything for money the apartment he was living in was nisha,s her father faught over it all the time with nisha to surender the apartment to him

1:42 am 5 minutes ago

Nisha’s uncle – Pakistan Christian Post to the rescue?

Someone has come to the rescue. Dr Nazir Bhatti and his daughter called me up from the US and have said that they want to know what the hell is going on. I know that Bhatti was involved in the Sangla Hill thing and has friends in high places. If he went through his embassy there would be a huge stink on it. The police would be forced to do something.

Abbas and I called Raja Sohail, and as Abbas put it, ‘Us ki phatti hui thi’. Why is everyone so scared, we wonder. We’re talked about the ISI link to Nisha’s dad and are aware how scary that is, but look at all the people from Balochistan who are protesting their loved ones’ disappearances allegedly at the hands of secret agencies. No agency is that powerful.

The worst they could do is kill me or Abbas. Fine. Pick us up and kill us. Perhaps that would be an honourable way to go. I’d rather go down over Nisha’s case than any other stupid thing. And I know how scary it can be. My editor Najam Sethi was picked up and tortured. It’s not a joke.

Enough of this morbid stuff.

Back to Nisha.

Today was a very depressing day. I realised that remembering Nisha takes a lot of hard work. I need to take myself back to the mortuary that night and imagine her face. She was horribly burnt. In fact, the word burnt doesn’t quite describe what she went through. I can’t imagine dying like that. When I burn my finger it hurts so much, burning your whole body must be the worst ever. I know she did not commit suicide. I know she was killed. I pray God strengthens my hand so that Abbas and I can put our heads together and get to the bottom of this.

And so I try to conjure Nisha. How funny that the college education and all the post colonialism and women’s studies and feminism doesn’t directly help but indirectly make you clear headed and purposeful. It’s a beautiful thing to feel like that. To know that you have the strength to go after something that you know you need to.

I am not afraid at all of pursuing her case. I know that when the ISI comes in or any other secret agency it becomes really scary. But I believe in life we need to live without fear. If we live in fear, we live half lives.

What saddens me is that so many people question my motives.

Raja Sohail, Faisal’s brother speaks to me

I called him. At first he was rude and I put the phone down on him. I’m not interested in talking to people who question my sincerity on this case. I don’t have a “problem” and I am not trying to “rake mud” on her. If her fiance doesn’t care about her death and neither does her family then why the fuck should I? All her stupid friends can do is write soppy messages on orkut.

They can all go to hell.

I’m closing this case.

The ire of some readers

A girl called Sara scrapped me on my orkut account that was opened to access Nisha’s. She was considerably angry with me and I suppose I understand that. It seems as if I am milking Nisha for my blog and publicity as Sara put it. I answered her. I think part of the problem is that not many people have seen journalism like this. I’m not saying that we wrote the best ever reports. In fact, if I put our copy in front of Mussawwir Sahib in Lahore, he would have slashed out a lot of stuff. But I am glad we pursued it and continue to do so. I only hope that this case comes to a proper conclusion. It shouldn’t die like this.

Back to the grind. The CPSP and the Captn Akhlaq Hussain Abidis of the world.

Nisha’s family member contacts me

As I was leaving work today someone from Nisha’s family called me up. I knew who this person was but can’t reveal their identity yet. This person just asked me for details and said they were very concerned but it seemed to me that they were confused about what they could do. I urged them to speak to SSP Niaz Khoso.

Abbas receives a threat

Abbas received a threat today. Someone threatened to kill him. We’re not sure if it is Nisha’s case or just a stupid joke.

Trail growing cold

Abbas is against filing a story today. Sunday, a week after her death. This week has flown by. We’re back to Akhlaq Hussain Abidi and the MQM. The fact of the matter is that there are no new developments in her case. There is nothing new in the investigation. The police have only done so much. We are waiting on the cell phone records and the post mortem which Abbas says will take a long time.

However, the fact of the matter is, whenever there is a high-profile murder or case all this work gets done faster than a speeding bullet. Nisha isn’t important to the police or her family right now. No one is pursuing her case. It will die a death just like she did.

For all those people who could help and aren’t, perhaps you should have had the guts to go to the mortuary and see her body. Do you know what a burnt girl looks like?

Nisha in death and Nisha in life

There is a vast difference between the two. The body that I saw was a terrible sight. The pictures and photographs were completely different. I wonder why seeing someone matters, the visual is the memory.

That is what keeps me coming back to this case.

Essentially I feel for Nisha in death. I feel for the body, the corpse, that burnt lump of battered flesh and bone. Poor thing. She was parched. It was not a normal body, but a body so disfigured that it reminded me of something you would find in the ice ages, the frozen blackened body of a Neanderthal man. Something out of National Geographic.

The Nisha in her pictures and in her photographs and in her friends’ eyes was not a Nisha I liked. I could not relate to anything from her except that she wanted to get married and get out of there as soon as possible.

I understand her desperation. Every Pakistani girl who grows up here does. It’s a disease they give us when we are born and it stays with us forever.

Nisha was tall also. She stood awkwardly confident in her photographs. Not a pose that would indicate someone open and standing confidently, someone who had achieved something in this world. The way she stood and the way the other girls stood in the photographs was as if they were hiding something, recoiling from the air in front of their bellies. The cling to each other in the photos as if to say, let’s be bad together. Photographs could get into the wrong hands.

Their bodies were not open. Their heads would not be held up high and straight but cocked to a side, shyly. This is the pose that is expected of me. I can’t forget the way her mother looked.

Our mothers’ gardens.

Nisha lived a small life that was bursting out of its seems with desire to make it big. It was a frenzied, quiet, scurrilous life full of flurries of text messages, emails and clandestine communiques to the frontlines. She would make small missions, retreat and refuel and recoup and then foray out again. Everything in her room was big trying to be small. She needed more space and more life.

It was also a small, tight and restricted life, policed by her father and society. They found scissors and cut hair in the kitchen. Did her father cut her hair, her long hair off as a final insult? Did he kill her?

This father didn’t understand his daughter. What do fathers know about what their daughters want? The Elektra complex.

Where did Nisha’s life think it was going? Would she marry Faisal and go and live in Dubai? Have children and grow quiet and complacent?

To me Nisha is a wild child. And for the life of me I can’t understand why she has died and who killed her. I know someone killed her. I keep going back to the mortuary. I think that if they caught the killer and indicted him or her and they went to jail it would not mean anything to me. I want to know how she died. That is the real mystery to me.

Why did she not run out of the kitchen?

A crazy night and an upper class bitch

Again, the screaming, late at night. Abbas went to Dawn and everyone met him and pestered him about the Nisha story. He screams at me over the phone. I’m an upper class bitch to him. I will always be an upper class bitch to all these reporters. That is what a lot of them call me. I suppose it doesn’t bother me now. I know where all this ire comes from.

Nisha and her friends. Nisha’s story. My story. Abbas got so much praise from the Dawn City Editor Wahid Khalfe, Tahir Siddiqui, Bahzad, Reza Hassan. Good for him. I think he needed it. He needed to know that when you go and do a story like this you are doing the right thing. Perhaps he will learn from this experience.

Working with men is terribly difficult.

I’m listening to Ute Lemper now. Quand j’ai habite a Montreal, je n’ai pas une idee que je vais travailler comme une journaliste. A ce temps j’ai pense que je vais etre une ecriteur. J’ai oublier tous. Mais je n’ai pas oublier Herky… je ne regrette rien.

Heute abend hatte ich mit meiner vater gesprechen. Il m’a dit qu’il pense que le pere de Nisha a la tue. Je le crois. C’est pas dificile. Maintenant je pense que je dois travailler a ce homicide jusque le fin. Mais Abbas. Que’est ce que je vais faire avec lui? Il est fache avec moi et il a bu beaucoup. Quand il boit il parle avec moi comme ca. C’est la vie…

Was werde uns machen uber Nisha? J’attend le post mortem report. Et je vais appeler SIO Raja Tariq pour les records des cell phone.

Laisse moi tranquille Nisha

It’s about 11:30 p.m. and I’m waiting for Khurrum to finish writing the MQM press conference after the NA-250 bye-elections in Karachi. There is an eerie silence in my head over the Nisha case.

I was suddenly reminded today that this girl burnt to death, to a crisp, in fact in her kitchen. What a horrible way to die. Fires destroy so much of the body, not like bullets or knives. I remember her body on the cement slab in the mortuary.

Some Sara Qazi Qazi contacts me

Some of Nisha’s friends and people who claim to be her cousin have been contacting me. But no one is willing to offer any help aside from allegations which legally are useless to the police. We spoke to SSP Niaz Khoso and he said that there are limits on registering an FIR. It seems no one cares she is dead beyond their silly, emotional rhetoric. We care for Nisha but are not willing to help the police find who did it. Whatever.

Going through Nisha’s rubbish bin

The day started with a mad dash to pick up Abbas to go to Nisha’s flat where we heard the police had gone again. When we walked in everyone was in the burnt kitchen which was in a total mess. I felt there was nothing there so I went into her room.

We saw her dressing table but then my eye caught the dustbin and all those Patricia Cornwell books I read on flights to Montreal came flooding back to me. I squatted and started going through it.

Pringles, chocolate wrappers, an earbud, and the waxen strip that came off the sticky part of a sanitary napkin/pad. She was probably on the tail end of her period. That rules out pregnancy.

A sheesha and tobacco, old text books, clothes, trinklets. But nothing to lead us anywhere. By the time I was finished I was exhausted. Tomorrow is the bye-election to NA-250 and I will be flooded when I get to work.

We go through the rest of the apartment with the police hounding us to get out. SIO Raja Tariq keeps making sarcastic remarks to me.

We manage to get into her new computer but aside from pictures it yields nothing. If I were the police I would have whisked the computer away to an IT specialist and hacked into her email and found out what the hell was going on with her.

Went to Nisha’s flat today

This is a photograph of Nisha’s flat. Inside the kitchen where she burnt to death.

A turn of events

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=200729\story_9-2-2007_pg12_7

This is the link to the fourth story we have done. I am not happy with the way the police investigations are going. ”Arey bhai, koi esa nahi jo is case ko pursue karay,” Abbas told me. Thus, if there is noone to pursue a case it doesn’t get investigated properly?

Nisha – send us a clue goddamnit. What happened?

Nisha’s death was not an accident

Abbas and I just met Qazi Amin, Nisha’s dad, at the office of SSP Niaz Khoso. We have done the story and it will be published tomorrow. Nisha’s death was not an accident. Where is Faisal?

Going to meet Amin

It’s Thursday at 3:15 p.m. and Abbas and I are going to meet Qazi Amin, Nisha’s father, at the Shahra-e-Faisal police station. I’m apprehensive as I know he is biased against us. But SIO Raja Tariq will be there. We are not taking our photographer. He’ll freak out if we do. I don’t want to exploit him in any way. We just need to ask him some questions. It’s very important.

I wonder how he feels – his wife died and now his daughter is dead.

Why was Nisha ‘naked’? – Inside the mortuary

Saad Durrani’s comment brought me back to a part of the story that stumped Abbas and me initially and perhaps still does. When we reached the JPMC mortuary there was just one policeman, ASI Mirza from Gulistan-e-Jauhar’s police station, an “old ranker” as he described himself as he accepted Abbas’s light for his cigarette. We were standing outside and as part of the road had been dug up there was hardened mud that puckered the surface. A pool of dirty water and a half open sewage pipe were slightly visible. There was a single yellow streetlight above our heads, casting an eerie glow over everything. An Edhi ambulance stood outside, parked with its back to the mortuary’s gate with the dikki open as Nisha must have been wheeled out on the stretcher.

We entered the gate. And here I must let you know that this was my first time in a mortuary. I had seen pictures of the Civil hospital one as we monitor all wire service photographs that comes through each day, but I had never been in one. Let me tell you, they are nothing like the one’s on Law and Order or Six Feet Under. Abbas has been to this mortuary several times. He’s a veteran.

The JPMC mortuary is a forbidding place. From the outside it just has a small white gate which is inevitably shut. And whenever I have gone there, just on the outside, or passed by, an air of trespassing surrounds it. While there is no sign, it feels as if a very big one hangs over the gate saying: No entry for unauthorised people.

We entered the gate. The smell was overpowering. Oddly though, it disappeared as soon as we entered the mortuary. But from the gate to its door there was the smell of death. I couldn’t understand why it lingered there as the space was open to the air.

“Did you smell that,” Abbas asked.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I replied. I was glad there was a smell. There had to be a smell even though it was a smell that made me afraid. The smell of death is one that you won’t get anywhere else. It’s not a smell that you encounter in your daily life in any place, not even the Empress Market butcher’s hall where there is plenty of guts and gore. There is something so new about the smell of death for me but I am afraid it will catch me. Plus, it was not the smell of Nisha’s death. It was the smell of many deaths. 

When we entered I was taken aback by the body. Her knees were bent oddly and her arms were folded over her chest. She was shriveled, as I knew that no matter how thin, this was not a normal body size. Later, we learnt that in a fire so much gets burnt away that you shrink from your normal size. Abbas and I didn’t talk.

Inside the small office adjoining the place where the body was kept on a wide cement and tile table we found Woman Medico Legal Officer Dr Farida. She was on duty that night and it was her job to do the post mortem.

We went back to the body and after Nisha’s sister’s father-in-law left we talked to the SHO who had come. “Show them the body,” he said to ASI Mirza who started undoing the top of the knot that held together the sheet wrapped around her. It always surprises me at how willing people (as in the police and hospital people) are to show reporters bodies. Often in the photographs we receive at the office on our emailed wire service you will see some hospital or police flunky holding aside the sheet and staring into the camera with the dead person exposed down below. It is as if in death nothing is hidden in Karachi. And while at Daily Times we never ever print photographs of the dead there are Urdu newspapers whose photoraphers scramble to get a photograph. To the best of my knowledge neither The News or Dawn print pictures of the dead either. There may be one exception for all three of us, and that is a suicide bombing if no other photograph is available. But this too is rare.

Someone close to Abbas died a long time ago of burns and I know that he would not have seen Nisha if he could avoid it. “There’s one thing,” he keeps saying to me. “Allah mujhe pani ki maut se bachae.” He says that when you drown your body becomes incredibly disfigured and ugly and smells to the high heavens. He’s seen drowning victims and I also know that he doesn’t know how to swim. Nisha reportedly told her friends that she never wanted to die a death from fire. I am floored by the terrible irony of these comments.

As I wandered in between these thoughts ASI Mirza had unwrapped Nisha’s sheet. There was a teenage girl standing next to me in addition to two under-ten boys. “Beta, are you related to her,” I asked. She replied that she was the SHO’s daughter.

“Oh, they’ll be fine,” he said. And it struck me how strangely the three children had been roaming around the mortuary. Not disrespectfully, but I mean, for God’s sake there was a body lying there.

I cringed as ASI Mirza struggled with the knot. Abbas was standing behind me. For a second I thought that I didn’t want to see. But I knew that I had to for this case. I was filled with trepidation – images of the flagellation in The Passion of the Christ made me recoil – what if there was something that would make me sick? I have a fairly strong stomach thought. Both of my parents are doctors. My father is a surgeon and my mother a dentist. And when a relative tried to commit suicide by slicing their throat open I had to stand there in their lounge holding a heated saucepan as my father stitched their throat up. I was holding the saucepan that had been heated for sterilisation. He kept putting the scissors and needle in it. So I’ve seen blood.

But this was not blood.

She was burnt beyond recognition. I stared at the high cheekbones that appeared even higher as her face had shrunk so much that her tongue protruded. Her skin had gone dark chocolate and in patches was yellow from where the fat showed through. Human body fat is yellow, jaundice yellow. Her eyes were open but only because the eyelids had retracted in the fire.

“There are no clothes,” someone said.

That’s when it started.

“She’s covered in a sheet and there were no clothes,” one police officer said. I forget which one.

Abbas and I looked at each other.

“What was she doing naked in the kitchen,” one of us asked the SHO.

‘We have to wait for the post mortem report,’ was what he said. I put this in single quotes as I can’t recall his exact words. But they were to this effect.

We walked outside.

“Her clothes could have burnt off,” I said.

“Hmmm. But then when you burn the clothes melt onto the body. There would be some evidence left.”

“But if she was naked…what would she have been doing naked in the kitchen,” I said. “Did the father rape her?” Was she being raped at the time? By anyone.

Abbas looked at me. We were discussing ugly things. We had no evidence. I felt like an amateur. Surely this was the job of the police. I comforted myself with the fact that none of this would get into print. We weren’t interested in blaming or accusing anyone. We just wanted to know what happened. The evidence would speak for itself.

Certain facts would come to light later on to clear this situation up but at that point we had a lot on our minds.

We waited. The post mortem was being conducted till about 2:30 a.m. We were growing hungry and thirsty. We sat in the car and played naughts and crosses on the misty windscreen. I beat Abbas twice and created a situation where no one could win in the third. We wrote our names out. I had just gone to the tenth of Muharram jaloos. “Ya Ali Madad” I wrote.

We grew tired and irritable. He got out for a smoke. My neck started to hurt from craning to see if anyone had emerged from the mortuary.

Finally ASI Mirza, the family and Dr Farida emerged. We waited for ASI Mirza to finish talking to the family.

“Yes, there is something definitely wierd,” he said to me and Abbas separately. “There weren’t any clothes.”

We looked at each other. “Nothing melted into the skin,” I asked. “No traces?”

I can’t remember what he said in response to this but he did say that he was suspicious.

We had to wait for the post mortem report.

(To be continued….)

Work today

We’ve just finished the pages, and while that statement fits into five words, there are a million things that go into it. For example, today Cecil messed up on the headline for the page 2 lede. ‘Rape survivors ignored despite WPB bill’. It’s a classic mistake.

Urooj has left. She was screaming bloody murder when the food was late. I’m hungry also but I’m not sure I want to eat. The damned crappest thing about working in this shit-hole of Keamari is that there aren’t any food places around. Abbas is sitting behind me and sighing: “Uss me likhain ke me nay bhi subah ka nashta kia aur us ke baad kuch nahi khaya.”

Fareed is checking if the MMA leaders were booked for using their loudspeakers. Abbas places another phonecall. The MMA leaders are always booked for violating the loudspeaker act; it’s really quite funny.

“Feel like tea?” Fareed asks.

“Ask them for half a cup,” Abbas replies. The phone rings.

“Abbay yaar, abhi baat hui he, Allah ko mano yaar,” Abbas says into the receiver. The operator dials again and apparently gets through this time.

“Han, kuch nahi hua,” Abbas says. No FIR against the MMA. “Baki khair he? Ok. bye.”

The entire day has been a series of phonecalls. Abbas carries two cell phones. Urooj’s cell phone has a cat’s meow.

I’m going to sign off for now. When I go home Sophie and Yoda will be waiting. It takes hours to leave the newsroom behind. Nisha follows me around.

I think I now understand why I started this blog. It’s not about Nisha. It’s about me. I need to reach out to people. I can’t be alone with Nisha. Someone needs to share this with me.

Nisha’s mother’s picture

When we came across Nisha’s mother’s picture off Orkut it immediately hit me how surreal it was that Seema had covered her mouth, as if gasping when hearing about her daughter’s death.

There is something about this case.

The photograph is blurred and her clothes are pale. In some of my old family pictures from the 1970s even if the picture is blurred and washy the colours are always strong. It disturbs me that all Nisha had was a pale picture of her mother.

I said to Abbas that the mother and daughter were probably together now.

He doesn’t seem as involved in this case as I am. He started treating it like a story in the middle, perhaps he did from the beginning. And while I do not grieve for Nisha, oddly, in any way, I don’t know why I am not happy with his reaction.

Nisha’s mother

How I feel about Nisha

I met Nisha’s aunt Romana today. I can’t say where she lives but suffice it to say that it’s run-down. She appears a desperate woman and I was forced to talk to her like a child.

“Just start from the beginning,” I said, as part of me wondered how many stories would be told for Nisha. I am also telling a story, one that keeps growing. There are stories in her story and now I’m writing her story and my story of her story here. I sound like Gertrude Stein.

Romana was bitter and another relative I met was even more bitter. Part of doing this story means meeting with people who don’t always have good energy. Something is rubbing off on me. I’ve had a falling out with Abbas, who can either be extremely charming to work with or a complete ass. Perhaps this girl’s death has rubbed off on us.