Becoming the story

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/10/2017 (3104 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For many of us, our evening ritual begins with the first few bars of Curried Soul by Canadian jazz artist Moe Koffman. The flute-driven funky groove marks the beginning of CBC Radio’s long-standing show As It Happens, hosted by the likes of Michael Enright, Barbara Budd, Mary Lou Finlay and, most recently, celebrated journalist Carol Off.

Off joined the AIH team in the late 2000s (with her co-host Jeff Douglas, of Molson’s “I am Canadian” ads) following some impressive international journalism, which took her to some of the most dangerous areas on the planet, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was during this time, the late 1990s and the time before and after 9/11, that Off reflects upon in her latest book, All We Leave Behind: A Reporter’s Journey Into the Lives of Others.

Part history of modern Afghanistan, part memoir and part existential crisis, All We Leave Behind recounts Off’s interaction with one particular family, the Aryubwal family — a relationship that began in the early 2000s and was made famous by Off’s Gemini Award-winning documentary In the Company of Warlords. In the book, Off describes, through captivating prose and painful honesty, how she met the father Asad, an unplanned interviewee who would become forever intertwined with her life.

Asad and his family, once privileged Kabulis, are tortuously made to leave their home of Afghanistan on several occasions. As Off describes, “He (Asad) 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.”

And herein lies the tension of the book. As a journalist, Off describes the struggle between the perceived role of a journalist — that of being fully objective, one where the truth is sought without emotion and then the journalist suddenly leaves, no matter the consequences — and the moral obligation many journalists feel towards their subjects.

As a veteran reporter on some of the world’s most recent atrocities, it is Off’s connection with the Aryubwals that has her reconsider her purpose. Can she simply leave these people behind when their peril is a direct result of interviews Asad gave to her? This is the moral crisis Off considers throughout the book, and perhaps one all journalists need to contemplate.

Off makes the decision to do what is hardest, a sign of doing the right thing. Along with numerous players, Off and the Aryubwals surmount apathetic workers at UNHCR (the UN’s refugee agency), crooked schemers who lurk outside Pakistani UN buildings, obstacles posed by the Harper government and a refugee application system that seems determined to leave some of the world’s most vulnerable in the lurch.

In a story of the enduring human experience and the search for meaning — Off pulls in the spirit of Viktor Frankl — Asad and his family beat the odds and are able to come to Canada and settle in Hamilton. While acknowledging her privilege, Off risked her reputation as a journalist to do the right thing and, at the same time, has repositioned what it means to be a journalist. Perhaps there is room for compassion, relationships and moral responsibility in our 21st-century understanding of journalism. As we bear witness to an era of massive human displacement, perhaps the line between journalist and “the story” will forever be blurred. Here’s hoping.

While Off never seems to reconcile this tension — and perhaps she never will — she does offer this to the reader, and perhaps to the Aryubwals: “Overall, I’m not sorry about anything because if we had not gone through the ordeal together, beginning with the interviews that landed Asad in hot water, I would not know these people and I would not have such friends. I’m sure that explanation is little comfort to those whose lives I turned upside down…”

Such is the stickiness of western privilege, but at least Off has pulled off the veil and ignited a conversation about the moral obligation of journalists in the field.

Matt Henderson is principal of Maples Met School.