National Post (National Edition)
NO GOING BACK
What happens when a journalist puts a subject’s life at risk? The CBC’s Carol Off writes about crossing the line from observer to advocate in All We Leave Behind: A Reporter’s Journey into the Lives of Others. This is the first in a series of excerpts fro
By the time Asad Aryubwal was in his 40th year, he had been compelled to leave his country three times. The first was to escape being drafted into the Soviet-led Afghan army. The second was to elude the wrath of the Taliban after it invaded Mazar-e-Sharif. The third was to protect his family from the American bombing campaign and to avoid being conscripted into General Dostum’s Northern Alliance militia. After each escape, Asad returned. Afghanistan was his home.
But the fourth and last time he had to flee was because of me. And on that occasion, there was no going back.
He had survived Soviet despots, the Taliban theocracy and the tyranny of warlords. He had kept his wife and children safe through three wars. But he couldn’t escape the consequences of speaking his mind to a journalist. The penalty for that was banishment.
My first inkling that Asad was in some kind of peril came in the fall of 2007 when I received a phone call at work from Mohammad Fahim, a man who claimed to know Asad. He asked if we could meet. He wouldn’t say what it was about, except that Asad had asked him to look me up when he arrived in Toronto. Our rendezvous point was a strip mall in a down-at-heel part of Scarborough, at an Afghan restaurant I had never heard of. I was dubious about this encounter — it felt a bit cloakand-dagger — but I went.
Fahim said he had located me through the operator at CBC, which seemed odd, since I thought the family had my contact information. He said that Asad needed my help but he Fahim had never actually met Asad — he was only the nephew of a friend —and was simply following instructions that came from his uncle: “When you get to Canada, find this woman — Carol Off. Tell her that Asad needs her help.” I didn’t know what to make of it.
I met Asad in Islamabad in 2008. He was there with his wife and daughters while the boys were still in Kabul. There were a few chairs in the cramped room and we all gathered as best we could on or around the bed. There were no laughs, no gleeful hugs, as there had been when I’d seen them in 2006 — just a feeling of quiet desperation.
We sipped warm orange pop as I tried to absorb what Asad was telling me. At first he was vague on the subject of what had brought them to Pakistan and I thought his reticence was because of my fixer’s presence. But I realized that he was actually just doing his best to avoid casting blame on me. I told him not to spare my feelings. As he spoke, Asad’s predicament became clear. Rashid Dostum’s people had threatened to murder him because of the interviews we had done with him. He had been compelled to get out of Afghanistan to avoid being killed, possibly along with his sons.
My head was spinning and the sugary soft drink was sticking to the back of my throat. I was remembering our times together in Kabul: the lively dinners, the feasts of chicken biryani and lamb, Asad’s daughter Ruby’s stories as she spoke perfect English to strangers from Canada, Asad’s laughter as we recalled road stories of our adventure in Mazar-e-Sharif. All of that was now gone, as was their home.
At some point I asked Asad point blank why he had risked so much to grant interviews to strangers, for consumption in a world he could barely imagine. “Why did you agree to talk about Dostum? To criticize him? You must have known there would be consequences.”
He answered in Pashto, so at first I didn’t know what he was saying, but his wife and children all broke into tears at the same moment. Ruby translated: “Because if I had not spoken up, if I had not told you the truth of what was happening, I would never be able to look into the eyes of my children again.” I then saw Asad for what he was: a man who lived by a moral compass of his own design, assembled from his own ideals. In a society of conformity, he charted his own course with that compass as his guide.
It’s true that he had agreed to the interviews of his own free will. But no matter how much he tried to diminish it, my role in his predicament was large. As I glanced at the anxious faces, I knew that, despite whatever code of conduct existed for journalists, whatever imperatives there were in our business to be disinterested and keep a distance from the subjects of our stories, I was about to cross the line that artificially separates a reporter from the story. I was about to get very involved in the lives that were now jammed around me in that hotel room.
This excerpt has been edited and condensed. Excerpt reprinted by permission of Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, from All We Leave Behind: A Reporter’s Journey into the Lives of Others. Copyright 2017 Carol Off.