SEVEN WEEKS BEFORE the wedding, Dex and I met up again in Islamabad. The Pakistani government had made a large public display of their internal battle against the Taliban, and we flew in to cover, among other things, the thousands of Pakistanis displaced from the Swat Valley into camps on the outskirts of the city of Mardan, the second-largest city in the North-West Frontier Province.
On a Friday morning, Raza showed up at my guesthouse door at five thirty. He brought with him an unexpected addition, Teru, an old friend and fellow photojournalist from New York, who asked if he could ride along with us. Dexter had decided to stay in Islamabad and report that morning, and I was happy to have Teru’s company. We drove to Mardan, where the camps for Pakistani civilians fleeing their Swat Valley homes were swelling by the day as the government continued its offensive against the Pakistani Taliban. Teru and I spent the morning photographing in the camps as Raza shuffled between us, providing us with rough translations for our photo captions.
We had a successful morning. We were in the heart of the story, in a region I cared deeply about, less than a year after I had photographed the Pakistani Taliban, and we were working in a safe area. The soft morning light eventually turned too harsh for photographing, and we packed up our gear and headed back toward Islamabad to file pictures. The plan was to meet Dexter back at the guesthouse that afternoon.
Around 1 p.m., Teru, Raza, and I stopped for gas along the highway and had some tea, biscuits, and nuts to tide us over until we reached the guesthouse in Islamabad. Raza filled his tank with gas and handed me the receipt, along with the receipt for his hotel room. I had insisted that he sleep in Islamabad the night before—rather than Peshawar, which was a two-hour drive away—so that he was well rested for our journey that day. We got back into the car and I resumed my natural position when on assignment: horizontal in the backseat, making up for sleep lost to days of hard work. I sent texts to Dexter and Paul saying how great the morning was, tucked my camera bag into the nook of a triangle made by the recline of the passenger seat in front of me, and dozed off.
I was in a deep sleep when I felt my body being pulled to the left. I assumed I was dreaming. My muscles tensed up; I heard a loud screech and waited for the sound of the crash, as if I were a spectator in my own dream. But then there actually was a crash, the world went blacker than in my dream, and a gentle warmth washed over me.
Since I was a little girl I often had nightmares that I died in strange ways. But I always woke up in time. This time I was unconscious. I don’t remember how much time passed before I started to be cognizant of my surroundings: chaos, frenzy, noise. I couldn’t actually see. I wasn’t coherent enough to react or strong enough to move. It was the first time in my adult life that I couldn’t move without assistance, and it came with an unfamiliar sensation of submission.
For a brief moment I opened my eyes to a minivan and a man with a mustache. The man with the mustache was carrying me. I was still horizontal.
And then I was on a concrete slab in what seemed like one of those rudimentary roadside clinics. I couldn’t figure out what had happened, and I had no idea what country I was in. I looked around to see strangers in the room, many of them heavily bearded men. I couldn’t move; I was injured. My back burned, and my bones sent intense waves of pain through my shoulder.
A nurse with a head scarf stood over me, to my left, holding a giant needle full of fluid. I asked her if the needle was clean. She looked at me as if I was insane. Where was I? An image of a refugee camp flashed before my eyes. More bearded men. I wondered why I wasn’t wearing a head scarf. I raised my right arm, the one I could still move, and felt the top of my head for my usual hijab. My hair was exposed, but I knew that I should have had my head covered.
To my right I heard a man let out a series of rhythmic, gut-wrenching groans. I looked over, and it was Raza. Oh, Raza, I thought. My Pakistani driver. Next to me. Moaning. To my right. Raza. Making noise. It seemed like the most natural thing: Raza and I on adjacent concrete slabs, in a Pakistani clinic similar to ones I had spent years photographing around the world. Now Raza and I were the patients.