[ONLINE] PAKISTANI ACID BURN SURVIVORS START OVER IN BEAUTY SALONS

“'She was rude. She was impolite, and I thought, "Oh my God, [it's the] end of the day and here is a difficult client,"' [Mussarat] Misbah recalls in lilting English from her office in Depilex’s Lahore headquarters. Her exasperation turned to shock when the woman removed her veil. 'I sat down because I thought there was no life left in my legs,' she says, 'because right in front of me was a young girl who was without a face.'

'"You claim to be a beautician and go on TV to give beauty tips, now do something for me,"' the acid burn survivor demanded. These words struck a chord with Misbah, who didn’t think it was enough to provide manis and pedis to the country’s elite anymore. She vowed to help the woman before her, and when she was unable to reach her again, pressed on anyway. 'That was the beginning of [the] Depilex SmileAgain Foundation.'"

Find out more about how the head of one of Pakistan's most celebrated high-end salons came to serve acid burn survivors -- and how those survivors feel about their clients complaints of split ends or overgrown cuticles given the severe damage wrought on their faces and bodies. You can read the article over at VICE.

[ONLINE] TWISTED CONFLICT SPECTATORSHIP IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

"For Allan Sørensen, the shock associated with these viral photos and videos points to a broader issue that underlines the conflict outside of the domain of social media. 'Almost no one sees the obvious link there exists between the Arabic demonization of Jews and the Israeli demonization of Arabs. For both parts, it's a matter of maintaining the myth that there is a difference,' he wrote in an article.

'Most importantly, some Israelis and some Palestinians try every day not to face the enemy in the mirror.'"

Read the rest of my article about "Sderot cinema" and rocket rallies in Israel and Palestine over at VICE.

[ONLINE] A MOTHER'S BELOVED COOKING, A DAUGHTER'S BITTERSWEET INHERITANCE

"My mom cooks in a makeshift kitchen in the garage because she doesn't want the smell of simmering onions — the start of most of her dishes — to settle into the walls of our house. Even when there's a foot of snow on the ground, I find her there pulling jars of spices out of mismatched cabinets and stirring stews in a pan she brought from Pakistan when she couldn't find anything big enough to entertain with in the States. That's where she is Sunday morning, preparing curried chickpeas and potatoes plus a sweet halva for brunch. Her father bought these items from the bazaar almost daily during her childhood in Pakistan, but here, my mom, Tahira Ahmed, tells me while stirring cream of wheat into sugar she's caramelized, 'If you want to keep the tradition, you have to work for it.'"

Read the rest of my essay for NPR.org on my mother's cooking and its connection to our culture here.

[ONLINE] LOST OCEAN ROVER LEAVES GAP IN ALZHEIMER'S RESEARCH

"It was early morning on May 10 when the control room went dark aboard a research vessel drifting through one of the deepest points in the ocean. Transmissions from Nereus—the deepest-diving of the few unmanned deep-sea exploration vehicles in the world—would never reach the surface again. [...]

'It was a horrible feeling of denial and disbelief,' says Timothy Shank, deep-sea biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and chief scientist on the expedition.

The rover’s destruction left a massive void in scientists’ ability to study the hostile environment, and it’s not the first to have gone down. It joins a list of five deep-sea exploration vehicles that have been lost or near-fatally damaged on the job since 2003. They went AWOL all around the world—from the waters around Antarctica to just off a Japanese Island—for a host of reasons. Still, the secrets contained in the least hospitable parts of the ocean reveal why sending millions of dollars of machines after them is worth it."

Read the rest of my article about the loss of this unique vehicle and its contributions to science for The Daily Beast here.

[ONLINE] PAKISTAN'S TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY IS HIDING OUT IN A HOSTILE CITY

“'Even if I give up dancing, everyone will still call me a hijra so what’s the point? Why not do what I love?'” She adds that even if she were to become a traveling evangelist, her family would still regard her with the same disdain. 'I’m better off staying a hijra.' [...]

While they occupy a marginalized space across Pakistan, hijras are probably worst off in Peshawar. In all of the other major cities in the country, they are frequent sites at traffic intersections or in shopping centers where they offer a prayer for a few rupees. Many passersby fear denying them might mean a curse and so will either oblige quickly or turn away completely."

My latest is about hijras who move for fear of attacks, in the shadows of Peshawar -- a city racked by militancy. Meeting with this troupe of dancers showed me a way of life I'd never before seen, and really got me thinking about gender binaries, especially amid a society that's largely segregated along those lines. I hope you'll read through this piece that I wrote for VICE.

[ONLINE] HOW TO AVOID SELF-INCRIMINATION VIA SMARTPHONE

"There’s no clear prescription yet from the Supreme Court on whether and to what extent police can search cell phones at the time of arrest, but justices have already started debating the merits of allowing warrantless searches based on the cause of an arrest or else allowing for some aspects of a phone to be searched and not others. The decision will replace the various stances taken by individual states, with some banning such warrantless searches entirely and others allowing them for even minor traffic violations. From the extensive debates around these issues, it’s clear that police are eager to use the same technology that makes our lives easier to make their jobs easier. In the end, the limitless connection we have to our phones will make this decision from the Supreme Court—expected in June—that much more critical. As the youngest Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan, pointed out, 'Most people now do carry their lives on cell phones.' Sure, it’s convenient to keep track of everything from the miles you run to the money you spend to the random photos you took while raging last night on your phone, but the personal nature of these activities means it’s a good idea to prevent your mobile device from triggering a police investigation the next time you get pulled over for speeding."

I write along with Eric Elder for Vice on some steps to take to keep data on your phone from incriminating you. Read the full article here.

[ONLINE] THE BIZARRE GUT WOUND THAT CHANGED THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

It didn't look like Alexis St. Martin would survive when he was shot accidentally in the side at close range on Mackinac Island in Michigan in 1822. "In a few weeks, however, the wound began to heal and a year later, St. Martin was in good health — with one notable peculiarity. His skin had fused to the gunshot wound through the wall of his stomach, leaving an opening into his body. At first, the fistula was source of awe to Beaumont who could peer through it to the inner workings of a living man. Over the better part of the next decade, the doctor made this medical oddity the source of 238 experiments, which contributed previously unknown insights into the process of digestion."

Read more about this unique study in my article for Atlas Obscura by clicking here.

[ONLINE] A NEW NYC LAW GRANTS UNPAID INTERNS LEGAL RECOURSE FROM SEXUAL HARASSMENT

"In 2010, Lihuan Wang was a 22-year-old journalism graduate student and unpaid intern working in the New York offices of Phoenix Satellite Television, a major Chinese-language broadcaster. So when the company’s D.C. bureau chief, Zhengzhu Liu, asked Wang to stay and speak privately after a professional lunch in New York City, she was thrilled at the opportunity to pitch herself for a permanent job. Instead, she found herself trapped in a cab and then a hotel room with Liu as he became increasingly inappropriate and sexually aggressive. When his advances got physical, Wang fled the room. Many victims of such incidents never report the perpetrator or even talk about what happened, for fear of negative judgment or professional repercussions. But, Wang chose to stand up for her rights, and convinced several coworkers to stand with her. That’s when she found out that she didn’t have the right to seek legal recourse—as an unpaid intern, Wang wasn’t protected by federal, state, or local laws covering sexual harassment."

Read this article Eric Elder and I wrote for Medium about a new law to protect interns in New York City -- and how it skirts the bigger issue of illegal, unpaid internships.

[ON AIR] HOW ONE MYSTERIOUS SCHOOL CLOSING COMPLETELY CHANGED A PAKISTANI VILLAGE

"[F]or now, in the village of Jhanger Hakim Wallah, a whole generation of girls aren’t going to get the same education their mothers and older sisters were able to get."  Find out why by tuning into my story for PRI's The World which I reported with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crises Reporting below, or reading it here.

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[ONLINE] ON REPORTING ON EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvpTALQzkHM

In this short video, I describe some of her experiences reporting on education in Pakistan. While this issue was made urgent by the shooting of Malala Yousafzai by Taliban gunmen in 2012, the country's educational “emergency” began long before then. Ahmed discusses the conspiracy theories suggesting Yousafzai had ulterior motives and explains one reason why the coverage and accolades for her campaign for girls' education might have become so controversial.

[ON AIR] GIRLS GET ANOTHER CHANCE IN MALAWI

"It was during this difficult time that a young man named Christopher came into Marita's life. Although she was just 15 at the time, Marita says that their relationship moved along quickly. 'He proposed to me and later on, he impregnated me,' she says, in her native Chichewa language.

When Marita was five months pregnant, Christopher left her. She went from the life of a sixth grade student to that of a single mother, forced to stay home to care for her baby. She moved in with her grandmother."

I report on the group of mothers who helped Marita back to school for Deutsche Welle's World in Progress. You can listen to the story below or by clicking here. You can also read it here.

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[ON AIR] HOW IS CORRUPTION AFFECTING HEALTHCARE IN MALAWI?

In just a few short months, Malawians will take to the polls to elect their next leader. The current president, Joyce Banda, has championed the issue of healthcare in a country with one of the highest malnutrition, HIV, and maternal mortality rates in the world. But many question her commitment to the cause and say she’s not only out of touch with her people, but that she's involved in a scandal that sent government dollars into the accounts of political officials. I report for Deutsche Welle on how corruption has affected service delivery and morale among healthcare workers from the Malawi’s capital Lilongwe. Listen to my piece below, or to the full episode of WorldLink here.

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[ONLINE] TALIBAN TV

“‘I will guarantee to you that in the future, if there are any instances of terrorism, or instances that the state considers to be ‘terrorism’ or an attack, and the Taliban accept responsibility for it, we’ll give you proper space to give your point of view that will be broadcast on TV or detailed in newspapers without any slant,’ Chaudhry said on air. ‘But for this, I’d like a guarantee from you that you won’t attack anyone in the media.’ Ehsan, the TTP spokesman seemed amenable to the offer: ‘Of course, God willing,’ he replied before adding a critical caveat. “I’ll promise you that if the Pakistani media gets out of the war and holds to its practice of journalism and doesn’t promote propaganda then we won’t have to attack them.’”

— my article for Foreign Policy about the public affairs war between the Pakistani Taliban and the country’s media

[ONLINE] CONFRONTING A SEXUAL RITE OF PASSAGE IN MALAWI

[Grace] Mwase was just 10 when she was led, along with about a dozen other girls, to remote huts outside her village during winter vacation from school in August. The girls were accompanied by older women from their village in Chiradzulu district, near the border with Mozambique. The women, known asanamkungwi, or “key leaders,” told them that when they returned to their villages they should cook and clean—and have sex. According to Mwase, most of the two weeks she spent at the initiation camp were dedicated to learning how to engage in sexual acts. She had been excited for this time with friends away from home, but that feeling quickly gave way to dread as she learned the true purpose of initiation. “They taught us only how you can handle a man,” she says, looking down at her hands. “So you should be dancing for the man. The man should be on top of you and you should be dancing for him, making him happy.”

The anamkungwi told the girls to lie on top of one another and get a feel for the various positions described to them. They then encouraged the girls to “practice” what they had learned. In fact, girls in Malawi are often told that if they don’t have sex upon concluding initiation, their skin will become dry and brittle. This will mark them for life, and they will be ostracized if they don't complete the custom as their mothers and grandmothers did before them. These guardians often force their daughters to go through with the ritual for fear of breaking with tradition.

Read more about the custom of initiation in Malawi and what one girl is doing about it in my article for The Atlantic.

[ONLINE] THE HERO OF HANGU

Mujtaba was at home on Monday when he heard there had been a blast outside of his brother’s school. The 30-year-old ran to the site of the bombing and asked what happened. “No one was willing to tell me,” he recalls after some coaxing. “Even my friends from the village turned away from me. Finally one of them told me, ‘Your brother has been martyred.’ That’s all I was told.”

Immediately he began to weep — the two had been close, spending hours together every day. “At that time, I was so sad. So, so sad,” he says. “Finally, one friend told me what Aitzaz had done. I had no idea. Then I was happy, but still, I couldn’t stop crying.”

Read the rest of my article for The Friday Times about Aitzaz Hasan, a 15-year-old boy who gave his own life to stop a suicide bomber he saw outside of his school.

[ONLINE] GETTING LOST IN AN INDIAN LABYRINTH

"Climb up a dark, well-worn set of stairs at an outdoor corner of the building means stepping into a maze. A true labyrinth of high, white-washed walls, dirtied by the fingerprints of centuries of people feeling their way through the narrow passageways. Down a few steps and the narrow halls split off in two — go right and meet a dead-end. In fact, there are hundreds of passageways through the labyrinth and a nearly 500 identical doors to further confuse. A number of these turn into balconies overlooking the hall below, or the road on the opposite end of the building. Though these vantage points should provide some sense of place, turning from them and walking just a few paces means totally losing one’s bearings in the structure which seems like it was built out of a myth and not the rough cement that actually comprises it." Read the rest of my story about a perplexing labyrinth in Lucknow, India at Atlas Obscura.

[ONLINE] CLEANING THE MESSES THEY COULD NEVER AFFORD TO MAKE

"I know my aunt givers her daughters’ discarded clothes to Parveen, but sometimes I wonder how she feels wearing those hand-me-downs to the house for work. After all, she’s only 11 and at that age girls tend to long for pretty little things—the very sort that fill the house where she works six days a week." For more on domestic servants in Pakistan, read my piece for Medium here.

[ON AIR] SAVING DETROIT, ONE HOUSE AT A TIME

John George started the Motor City Blight Busters in Detroit over 20 years ago. The volunteer group demolishes derelict buildings that would otherwise become centers for crime and drugs. Tune in to my story about George's work over at Deutsche Welle's Worldlink here and read a profile of him here.

[ONLINE] IN PAKISTAN, IT'S NOT JUST SOLDIERS WITH PTSD

"Khan says that after this strike, the hum of the unmanned planes began to claw to the forefront of his mind. 'It sounds like a broken fan. It clacks constantly,' he says. Then, after some thought, he adds, 'When you fall into the kind of depression I have, you hear these sorts of sounds all of the time.'"

Read more about PTSD among civilians in Pakistan in my article for NPR.

[ONLINE] PAKISTAN'S ANTI-DRONE LAWYER

I report for Deutsche Welle's WorldLink on Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer who is fighting to win justice for the civilian victims of drone strikes in Pakistan. Tune in below or listen to the full episode here: [soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120090146" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]