By Tarannum Ahmed
Before it all began, I knew it in my bones, that I could never kill a soul. Human lives, you know, are precious. In every religious book I have ever read, God always preaches one to value human life as if it is the epitome of sacredness, blessed with intrinsic value. If you live in this world as a human, you have the greatest power to seek the image in which God created you. To take a human life, is to degrade your own value to nothingness. At least that is what I was always taught by the people around me.
There are some things you need to know about Ramina Mosaf in order to completely understand why I did what I did. I assume after death, most people who do not know me, must be judging my actions. They perhaps will never understand where I stand, what my views are, why I took this drastic step to destroy my own life. Now that I have mentally prepared myself to be behind bars for the rest of my life, I can finally give voice to the thoughts which drove me into this in the first place.
Ramina and I used to go to the same university. We took philosophy together. Her ideas, the way she conveyed them to the professor, truly blindsided me. She valued human life beyond just religion. She did not care much about religion anyway. She believed humans exist because of pure luck of being born as humans. We could easily have been born as a dung beetle, she used to say. Therefore, we must take advantage of our sheer luck and make the most of it. None of it should matter– our gender, our ideologies, our geographic location, our family background, nothing at all. We all deserve equal opportunities to pursue happiness. It all seemed so simple when she spoke of life as something so incredibly attainable.
We never spoke much. To say we were even acquaintances, would be a stretch. I saw her with her rather cognizant friends in the cafeteria sometimes. She was quite political, you see. Her ideologies were visible both when you met her in real life, or stalked her on social media. I would mostly do the latter, a bit too much if I am being completely honest. She was fascinating. She would write endlessly about gender equality, banning child-labor, increasing minimum wage for tea workers, queer rights, better healthcare for transgenders, even women’s rights to safe abortions. With each scroll on my screen, I got more and more staggered. I wondered who taught her about these things. Did her family share similar values? Did her friends teach her so or did she learn about them on social media? Or did she learn about these from all those woke events she used to go to? We will never know.
She never shared such extreme views in class. Perhaps she was afraid of the faculty judging her extremist views. She was quite vocal on social media though. I would look at her in hopes of seeing her reaction when someone would share views, similar to what I was always taught, in class– she would just roll her eyes and whisper to her friends sitting next to her. She was not a fan of those ‘too religious’. She used to throw the word ‘feminist’ here and there a lot. I never truly understood what she meant by it. At one point I realized that she was groomed by the unnecessarily ignorant people on social media, who choose to reject our history and what we have been taught. They wish to reform such traditions.
I never gathered the guts to send her a friend request, her account was public, therefore she would never know I even followed her. Other than her account, my feed was squeaky clean. I never came across posts about the LGBTQ+ community or their rights. I never came across a single advertisement for the NGOs she used to volunteer for. Those that serve no purpose to the community whatsoever. Why did she spend so much of her time caring for these communities when she could have been doing something productive?
A little part of me wanted to be friends with her. I wanted to know what they talked about after class. Why were they able to have so much fun while I could not? I wanted to dress how she did. I could not, of course. I could never. I should not. I wanted to go to those exhibitions, and those meetings where they shared their ideas. I longed to experience the sort of camaraderie they shared. For a short while only.
By now, you must have guessed the kind of childhood I had. My parents belong from a simple neighborhood, we believe hard work earns us an honest life and we practice precisely that. I was taught to pray everyday and dress appropriately in order to avoid the male gaze. When I was younger and my uncles used to visit us, I was told to wear a scarf around my neck to not seem ‘too mature’. Of course now, it is a given. I do not throw tantrums about wearing clothes which reveal the shape of my body anymore, like t-shirts or jeans. I wear what my mother buys for me. I am happy that my father has stopped belittling her because she allows me to dress immodestly. She has suffered enough, you know.
I was blessed with a wonderful family. But even so, I could not help but continue to visit Ramina’s profile to see what her latest post talked about. The last post I saw before it all ended was her criticizing religious leaders. Before all this, I could understand that she had her own opinions she wanted to write about on social media, even the university magazine– but to blatantly reject such a noble individual’s speech about the importance for women to seek marriage and bear a child, is blasphemous. I could understand her choice of not doing something, but forcing her ideas on everyone who knows her, surely I could not let her get away with that.
You should have seen the likes her share got. The original post which supported the leader’s words, declaring a woman utterly useless unless she lived in accordance with the divine scriptures, was flooded with people laughing behind a screen. Mere losers with access to the internet. After seeing such comments, I felt embarrassed to share the original post in solidarity. Everyone was sharing it ironically, as if agreeing with it meant that I was betraying my own. Was I, really? Is it wrong for a person to disagree with someone?
After that, it is all a blur. I do not remember what truly pushed me to be so brave. I hid a knife underneath the layers of my clothes and attended philosophy in PA 202 like any other Tuesday. I waited until her name was called for attendance. Shortly after that, I followed her to the women’s room and before she could close the door, I went in and stabbed her as many times as I needed to, in order to know for sure she was not breathing anymore.
I heard countless screams getting closer. No one dared to stop me, they all waited until some guards and faculties took control. They probably thought I had gone mad. I could not care less. I do not regret anything. If she had not clouded my mind with her woke views and made me regret my upbringing for even a second, she would still be alive. If she had not committed blasphemy, I would not have dared to commit a sin either. And why does it matter anyway, if I had not done it, someone else would have. Would she not be glad it was at least done by a girl?