the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

“Bomber,” he said.
Over the years my notebook had become my insulation. Around such
destruction, such death, I simply took notes. I could deal with it
emotionally later, but right now, I had to work.
“Head,” I wrote. “Possibly bomber.”
I wandered around, talking to people, eventually deciding to climb
the ladder on the back of Bhutto’s truck to see what was there. The
police escorted me as if I were an investigator. On the deck of the truck,
I saw blood, shrapnel, pieces of twisted metal. A Bhutto supporter
showed me bullet dings in the bulletproof screen, insisting that
someone was shooting at the truck when the bomb—or bombs, no one
was certain—exploded.
Tired, I grabbed the railing of the truck, and felt something wet. I
froze for a few seconds, not wanting to look down. Finally I glanced,
realizing what I had done. I swallowed and looked at my left hand,
wondering what I should do now. I wiped my hand on my jeans, then
wrote in my notebook: “Pieces of people on the railing of truck.” More
than a hundred and forty people had died, including many who had
sworn to give their lives for Bhutto, who was unharmed. I had seen
more death—the tsunami, two dierent earthquakes. But I could
somehow understand natural disasters. This was a human disaster, and I
couldn’t make sense of the hate. We agged a ride back to the hotel
from a man named Mujahid. I walked quickly to the lobby bathroom,
pulled o my tennis shoes, and yanked hand towels o the roller as fast
as I could, pumping soap onto them and drenching them in hot water.
Then I scrubbed my shoes, trying to get the paper towels into the
grooves of the soles, trying to clean them. I cried as the water ran pink,
then clear. I shut o the water, looked in the mirror, dabbed my eyes,
and walked back to the hotel room in my socks. I dropped my shoes
outside the door, next to my boyfriend’s. I went inside to write.
Looking back, if my adrenaline addiction had a rock bottom, this was
it—wiping my bloody hand on my pants, scrubbing the blood of
strangers o my shoes, pushing away the tears so I could write a story.
Years later, I realized that never again would I get this close to a bomb
scene, never again would I report inside the perimeter, because never
again would I want to. But at the time, a mark of how far down the
rabbit hole I had fallen, I saw it as just another tragedy I needed to stu