December 16, 2014, the day the news broke of the Taliban massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar, I received a frantic phone call in Karachi. On the line from Islamabad was the BBC’s Pakistan producer, Wietske Burema. “This is big. We are all heading to Peshawar. More colleagues are flying in from London. Could you please get yourself to Islamabad and hold the fort?” she asked.
Within hours, I was on a flight to Islamabad. On the plane, I was wondering why was I going to that city when the story was in Peshawar. Everyone wanted to know how it happened and why the militants were able to kill so many children at a school run by the army?
But as we neared Islamabad, the plane had to be diverted to Peshawar due to bad weather. I wasn’t meant to be in Peshawar, but somehow ended up in front of the APS to report on one of the city’s, if not the country’s, darkest moments.
The BBC was among the first global broadcasters to gain access inside the school. British colleagues who had already arrived on the ground went about gathering exclusive material for our radio, TV and online coverage. I was positioned in front of a camera next to a satellite truck with the Army Public School behind me. We all knew what we had to do. In this instance, my job was to provide radio and television lives for our global and British audiences.
Shahzeb Jillani reporting on APS on that day for BBC
On big global stories, it is usually a relentless process: every hour, top of the hour you are on-air talking to a program presenter about what has happened. Anyone who has ever had the privilege of doing this job will tell you that, pretty soon, it gets repetitive. It doesn’t make a huge difference that you are often catering to varied audiences on different BBC networks. The challenge is to sound fresh and to tell it in a compelling way—not merely state the obvious facts such as what happened and who did it, but if possible to also say how did we get here and will it change anything?
When you are in the thick of it all, the adrenaline rush keeps you going initially. Standing outdoors for hours, I felt that Peshawar’s freezing temperature didn’t matter, and neither did going without food for long stretches.
At one point, I was asked if I wanted to go inside the school to see it all for myself. I declined the offer mainly because colleagues had already been in there. But I also truly felt that there was nothing to be gained from such an experience. During the course of my work, I have visited quite a few places to report on suicide bombings and massacres. I know what those places look like. The sight and smell of human flesh stays with you for a long time.
It was in the afternoon on the second day, that I took a short break in between my live broadcasts and decided I needed to take a walk. I wanted to speak to some of the people who had gathered outside the APS gate: students who had lost friends and teachers, as well as grieving parents who had been devastated by the loss of their children. They had set up vigils and showered rose petals in front of the pictures of their loved ones. Some of them carried posters and banners. One statement in particular caught my eye. It read: “Smallest coffins are the heaviest.”
But as fate would have it, as we neared Islamabad the plane had to be diverted to Peshawar due to bad weather conditions. I wasn't meant to be in Peshawar, but somehow ended up in front of the APS to report on one of the city's, if not the country's, darkest moments
That line made me pause and reflect on what it must be like for a parent to bury a child killed at school. In that moment, I hit my tipping point. I went to a corner and sobbed. This was only the second time in my career that this had happened; the first was during the October 2005 Kashmir earthquake when I saw the bodies of children being pulled out of a school building that had collapsed in the town of Balakot.
After some time, I wiped my tears. As I started heading back to my team, I could see Wietske pointing to her watch for me to hurry up. It was time to take my position in front of the camera for the next set of radio/TV lives.
@ShahzebJillani is a former BBC correspondent currently working for a Pakistani news channel as a senior executive editor
