Hello, and happy Friday!
I’ve returned to London after a whirlwind week in the Hashemite Kingdom of over-caffeination and knafeh-nation in time for an important anniversary: Tuesday marked my first full year since joining TIME.
There are plenty of puns to be made: No, I don’t know where the TIME has gone. Yes, TIME really does fly. But in all seriousness, this past year has been a deeply rewarding one filled with exciting projects, fun challenges, and opportunities to work with and learn from some wonderful people. I can’t wait to see what year two brings.
In podcast news: I joined this week’s Oh God, What Now? panel to discuss all the latest in British politics. You can tune in wherever you get your podcasts and, now, even YouTube!
What I’ve written (from the archives)
As I’ve been working on long-term projects this week, I’ve decided to share a few of my favorite stories from this past year instead.
What I’ve read
This gut-wrenching story about a child who was raped in the heart of abortion-ban America (TIME)
Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. It’s August and pushing 90 degrees, which means the brown patterned curtains are drawn, the air conditioner is on high, and the room feels like a hiding place. Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant. She is 13 years old. Soon she’ll start seventh grade.
This heartbreaking long read about the disabled children that America hid away (The Atlantic)
Strange how seldom we think about who our parents were as people before we made their acquaintance—all the dynamics and influences that shaped them, the defining traumas and triumphs of their early lives. Yet how are we to know them, really, if we don’t? And show them compassion and understanding as they age?
I was 12 when I learned. My mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table when I wondered aloud what I’d do if I ever had a disabled child. This provided her with an opening.
Her name is Adele.
This moving essay by Rana Ayyub on what India’s 76th Independence Day means for the country’s Muslims (Substack)
The murder of three Muslims on the train by a railway police officer was not a result of overnight outrage or anger. It was a result of slow-burn othering. The animosity created through forwarded messages on family WhatsApp groups; the hatred on our film screens; the everyday demonizing seen on our news channels; the distorted history the government is putting into our textbooks; the language of impunity at dharm sansads (religious gatherings) and hate rallies where cops play silent observers.
What I’m thinking about
About the World Cup final, and the possibility of football coming home for the second time in a row! I wrote some thoughts on this, and whether a World Cup victory can finally make England fans happy, in a dispatch for TIME’s Extra Time newsletter. Subscribe here.
Until next time,
Yasmeen