Sabeen was killed six days ago, Masood Hamid a week earlier and the Queen song “Another one bites the dust” keeps playing over and over again in my mind.
I find myself singing it as I drive back from Islamabad on the Expressway, bathing my son and even while attending a protest outside the Press Club. I look at the faces of the hundred or so who have turned up and recognise most of them. They come out every time something like this happens.
Sabeen and I were contemporaries. I remember her as a 16-year-old when we spent a winter working on a computer project. It was the first time I had seen an Apple Macintosh. We worked and listened to Bon Jovi in an office above Bata in Clifton; we belonged to the same social circle.
Also read: Idealism didn't kill Sabeen, bullets did
I reconnected with her three years ago as I was organising a hackathon on Sanitation issues and she had already blazed that trail. She shared everything she could with me, thrilled with what we were doing and went out of her way to help.
That’s what she did. She did things before anyone else and did them with a panache that was her own.
Masood sahab was introduced to me when I began my first job in Television. He was the quintessential “Marketing Man”. He spoke well, joked well and always about the finer things in life. Finesse, he said was not acquired but inborn.
Also read: In memoriam: ‘Mere Dost’ Masood Hamid
He was a cut above and always at the end of the line to give advice, offer suggestions and help.
What troubles me about their murders is that both Sabeen and Masoodsahabwould have gone out on a limb for the rights of those who murdered them.
They could never be faceless and yet, their murderers are.
They functioned at the 500 plus vibration level. Magnetic, charming, strong and so so alive. So I blink back the tears and come back to the protest. I’m here, now what?
As I walk back to my car, I ask myself what can the law do to bring justice to Sabeen, Masood sahab, the children in Peshawar?
I think of calling, writing, faxing, and emailing the MPA and MNA in the constituency they lived in; Samar Ali Khan and Arif Alvi of the PTI. I want to ask them to raise the issue of the safety of their constituents in the Provincial and National Assembly. I don’t think it matters if Sabeen and Masood sahab voted for them.
I feel helpless and I know why: freedom of expression is being strangled and I do not know how to stop it.
Where and how does one create a space where we can discuss everything, where you don’t have to pick sides, ever?
The reality is, whether I like it or not, I have joined the ranks of the so-called liberals, and we are against the faceless, nameless, cowards who threaten and follow through with their threats.
I’ve been trying to find answer, a solution, but I’m stuck, you see, we use words and they use bullets. Any guesses on who will win?