The Man Who Wrote Knowing the End
He woke knowing
the road had narrowed,
that helmets followed shadows,
that silence had already rehearsed his name.
The phone rang.
The city breathed.
January leaned forward.
He had written himself
into danger long before
the bullet learned his address.
They warned him with clubs,
with courts,
with laws bent like mirrors
that punish truth for reflecting power.
They told him
to leave.
To sleep elsewhere.
To be reasonable.
But reason, in his grammar,
meant refusing the lie
even when the lie wore a flag.
A journalist, they said.
But he was more than ink.
He was the question
that would not kneel,
the sentence that refused erasure,
the margin note history feared.
Each threat
was answered with a column.
Each summons
with a byline.
He wrote knowing
that words outlive men,
but men pay the price first.
That morning
the motorcycles already knew him.
They circled like punctuation marks
around an unfinished thought.
He wrote down number plates
as if law still listened,
as if order remembered itself.
He called friends.
He called power.
He was told to keep driving.
History has a habit
of telling the brave
to proceed.
They stopped him
on a busy road,
where ordinary life pretended not to see.
A commando sentence.
A period placed violently
at the head.
The crowd gathered too late,
as crowds often do.
Someone lifted him,
not knowing
they were lifting a nation’s conscience.
At the hospital
the phone kept ringing.
Truth, unanswered,
has a terrible persistence.
Three hours later
the newsroom fell silent,
and the country pretended surprise.
They said they were shocked.
They promised inquiries.
They blamed conspiracies.
But fear does not need fingerprints
when impunity walks free.
The presses slowed.
The writers counted exits.
Exile learned new names.
Yet he had already written
the final editorial—
not for the paper,
but for time.
That in countries
where truth must wear armour,
journalists become targets,
and targets become warnings.
They buried him with thousands,
because courage,
when murdered,
draws witnesses.
And even now,
years later,
when justice remains an unfinished paragraph,
his words still stand
unbowed,
unafraid,
asking the question
no gun can silence:
Who will write
when writing costs a life—
and who will answer
when the writer falls?