My first exposure to violence came in April 2007 when, barely a month after joining a newspaper, my supervisor asked me to visit a suicide-attack site. About 30 people had been killed and scores injured when an attacker detonated his explosive payload at a public meeting of then interior minister Aftab Sherpao, in a tiny village in Charsadda district. When I arrived at the scene, it was still a gut-wrenching mess. Towards the back of the blast site, women were thronging to a railway shed. Out of curiosity, I followed them. Inside, I saw a huge jute bag, full of human limbs that had been collected for burial. I was not able to sleep for over a week afterwards.
This nerve-racking experience proved to be the tip of the iceberg, as terrorist attacks became more frequent and deadly. I covered at least 30 of them in my work, besides personally surviving two.
