This narrative has been published in partnership with the Guardian.
Coffee is my therapy. Every morning, as soon as I get out of bed, the first thing I reach for is a cup of coffee. At the same time, I pick up my phone and check the latest news from Afghanistan, especially anything related to women’s lives. I look through our team’s work group and open my pseudonymous email account to see what assignment my editor has left for me.
Yes, I said a pseudonymous email—because I am an undercover journalist in one of Afghanistan’s northern provinces, working under the alias Sophia Malek.
My days unfold in a 12-square-metre room, with a small desk, a mobile phone, and a laptop. My job is to spend the day working with an exiled media organization. Emails arrive constantly with new assignments and stories to pursue. Sometimes I write, edit, or do the final review of reports based on interviews my colleagues have gathered from different provinces and that have been forwarded to me by our Persian editor.
Working from home, spending long hours at my desk, and staring at my laptop and phone all day is not easy. Every so often—usually around noon or two in the afternoon—I take a short break. Most often, I spend it drinking another cup of coffee, eating some fresh fruit, reading a few pages of a book, or listening to music.
In many ways, I have a flexible work environment. But one thing that has become increasingly frustrating in Afghanistan is the frequent power cuts. Because of the intense summer heat and rising electricity consumption, outages happen repeatedly, sometimes disrupting my work for hours.
Beyond that, being an undercover journalist comes with its own challenges. The fear of being exposed is constant. Every time someone knocks on our gate, I panic. Whenever I hear the sound, I immediately hide my laptop under my mattress, because its screen—and several other open tabs—contain sensitive reporting.
I have already lived through two house-to-house searches by Taliban officers. Since then, every knock at the gate fills me with dread. What if it is the Taliban? What if they enter the house while I am working on a report about a killing, interviewing a transgender person, or writing the account of a survivor of violence? In those moments, a thousand scenarios race through my mind, and fear consumes me.
Last week, I left home to interview a woman with a disability who had experienced domestic violence. She lived on the outskirts of the city. A friend accompanied me on the journey. To reach her house, I had to change taxis twice. The trip was filled with anxiety because she lived in an area where restrictions are especially severe. Women wear burqas there, and it is considered unacceptable for a woman to move around without a male guardian.
We walked through dusty, unplanned alleyways, winding through countless narrow turns before finally reaching her home. It was a small, impoverished house where poverty seemed to seep from the walls themselves. The faded walls barely let in any light. Because she was living with a disability and caring for several young children, the house was in disarray, with belongings scattered everywhere. At one point, one of her children tried to reach something on a high shelf. Suddenly there was a loud crash as tea tins and other household items tumbled to the floor. That moment seemed to capture the reality of their daily life.
In the end, I completed the interview and took two photographs documenting both her living conditions and her disability. The entire time, I was terrified. I had never met her before; she had only been introduced to me through someone I trusted. I did not know what kind of place I was walking into or whether I could safely trust the situation.
She asked me to make sure that none of the photographs could identify her and that her voice would never be published. When I returned, I told my editor that we should not write or publish her story yet. I feared that, after publication, the Taliban could use the city’s expanding network of security cameras to trace my movements and identify me. This is the reality of working under Taliban rule: reporting in an environment of censorship and the near-total suppression of press freedom is extraordinarily difficult.
Returning to my daily routine, after finishing my reporting work around four in the afternoon, I prepare for my private English class. I study with an online language academy because learning English is very important to me and will help me advance professionally. I usually devote about two and a half hours each evening to my lessons.
After the evening prayer, as my family gradually returns home from work and other errands, we begin preparing dinner together. We spend time as a family, and I usually end the evening with them.
Before going to bed, between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., I check our work group one last time, read my work email, and write down the next day’s priorities in the notes app on my phone so I know what to tackle first when I wake up. Then I follow my skincare routine, place a bottle of water beside my bed, smile at the day I have completed, give thanks, switch off the internet, and finally go to sleep.
*Sophia Malek is the pen name of Zantimes’s Journalist who is based in Afghanistan.
