When you request a stack of ancient newspapers from a library, there’s a weird feeling that is accompanied by excitement, expectation, and the hope that the story you’re looking for is among them. The more often you open a bound file that hasn’t been opened in fifty years, all you get is the dust from decades ago and the fear that the delicate newspaper pages will shatter under your fingers.
My colleague Tooba Masood Khan and I had the notion to investigate the Mustafa Zaidi case in 2019, but as we got started, our interest turned into a hacking cough and an overwhelming anxiety that we would never be able to obtain any official records. Four years later, over a dozen archives were visited.
