“I have a serious question,” said Galang.
“Yes?”
“When do you sleep, woman?!”
Zia laughed. “Who needs sleep when things need doing?”
“You crazy,” said Galang, shaking his head. “I require all the beauty sleep a man can get.”
“I just can’t stand the feeling of surplus bandwidth,” said Zia, a brittle truth. “If my job isn’t all-consuming, why am I doing it?”
“As the coach I never had would have said: leave it all on the field, or don’t play,” said Galang. “I guess your work does have its upsides, though. I get to see you, Aafreen, Kodjo, Daniela, Vachan, Selai, Li Jie, and the rest whenever a story takes me to the right place. It’s always like this, a brief opportunity for catch-up. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the group chat you set up, we would all have fallen out of touch with each other. But you’ve spent months at a time with each of them at various points over the years.”
“Directing disaster response in their respective countries isn’t exactly the kind of bonding opportunity any of us are looking for,” she said. Typhoons. Fires. Floods. Droughts. Ecosystem collapse. This was the montage Galang wanted screenwriters to dramatize.
Galang shrugged. “Well, I’m only here because of corrupt assholes, so take what you can get, I guess.”
“Fair enough.”
“How’s this particular catastrophe treating you? I was hacking up a lung from all the dust on the way out here from the airport. And the lines out of your supply station are insane.”
Zia winced. “That dust is topsoil lost to wind erosion. This region is an agricultural breadbasket, but it’s been three years since the last real monsoon. Crop failure. Bankruptcy. Malnutrition. We’re focused on distributing supplies to the needy and teaching dryland techniques to farmers so that India doesn’t turn into a Dust Bowl.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Zia hesitated.
Galang narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”
“It’s just…”
“Yes?”
She thought of Himmat. Of Selai. Of paint, peeling. She hadn’t meant to bring this up, hadn’t even really admitted it to herself. But Galang had this way of drawing her out. For all his little jokes, he was a good listener. That, more than anything, was what made him such a great reporter.
“I started doing this work after my mom died,” said Zia, stumbling over the words as she tried to navigate a slew of muddled feelings. “After the funeral… I just couldn’t imagine dedicating my life to diplomatic cocktail parties, you know? Better to wade directly into the fray, serve the powerless and save the day. Basically, how all twenty-three-year-olds get into humanitarian aid.” Her laugh rang hollow. “If I couldn’t bring back my mom, maybe I could rescue others from similar fates. The disasters I’ve responded to are bad, but thank God we haven’t had anything anywhere near the scale of the Heat Wave.”
Galang reached across the table and put his hand on hers, which further constricted her already tight throat. She took a steadying breath, then continued. “After responding to natural disaster after natural disaster you eventually start to realize that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster. There are only human disasters revealed by nature.”
“What does that mean?”
“When New Orleans is destroyed and rebuilt again and again, is that a failure of the Army Corps of Engineers, or is it the inevitable result of trying to build a coastal city below sea level? When that earthquake hit Ecuador, every death could have been prevented with better building codes. Those wildfires in British Columbia wouldn’t have been so destructive without decades of counterproductive fire suppression. I mean, look at the story you’re working on. How much less screwed would most Maldivians be if their own government wasn’t trying to profit from tragedy? The real disasters are poverty and shortsightedness. Systemic injustice turns the disadvantaged into human shields against the brute force of nature pursuing its normal course. We create victims, and then we congratulate ourselves when we show them small mercies.”
“You got out of politics only to realize that the real challenge of humanitarian aid is… politics.”
“Exactly!” It was as if the scab Zia had been covertly scratching had finally fallen away. She tapped a finger on the table. “Right here, the people suffering the most are the poor farmers who had no savings or other skillsets to rely on. I come in with my team and treat the symptoms without ever getting close to affecting the real cause. And what makes it even worse is that people resent us. Nobody wants to be a victim. And the people with real power, the power to make a difference, they hate the fact that they need foreign help. My personal political toxicity prevents me from making progress toward any longer-term solutions. Most of the officials I deal with are looking for an excuse to fire me, so I wind up running air cover to give my own people the space they need to get anything done at all.”
“Have you asked Vachan whether he knows anyone in Delhi who could help?”
Zia pressed her lips together into a tight line.
“Oh right, of course not, because you’re Zia.”
“Isn’t it bad form for journalists to pass judgement?”
“Is that what I am to you? Just a journalist?” Galang shook his head and donned a mask of ridiculously overdramatic pain. “Would just a journalist have brought you Zachary’s?”
Zia laughed. “So you do bribe people for scoops!”
“If it’s any consolation as you cross your existential Rubicon, I’ve been trying to ford a similar stream,” said Galang. “I work my butt off exposing the wrongdoings of some politician or CEO and then when the scandal fades, some other jerk takes their place and the whole cycle starts all over again. It’s like I’m on a treadmill powered by the dark side of human nature. Bonnie, my editor, says I need to chill out and come to terms with the fact that journalism is and always has been a Sisyphean task suited only for workaholic attention seekers with guilt issues.” Galang heaved a sigh. “Sometimes I wonder whether my heart’s still in it. Will I ever write a story that makes a real difference?”
“Well, you’ve won a couple of Pulitzers.”
“Which makes it all the more maddening. Every aspiring reporter puts you up on a pedestal and thinks you’ve got some secret sauce that they just want a taste of and I’m all like, My secret sauce tastes a hell of a lot like self-loathing.”
Zia raised her chai. “To commiseration.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They drained their cups and enjoyed a moment of companionable silence.
“Hey,” said Zia. “This is fun. Seriously. I miss this.”
Galang’s smile was melancholic. “Me too, love. I wish I didn’t have to go to the airport.”
“Go on, then,” Zia shooed him with her hands. “Don’t let me make you fall off your treadmill. There’s a scandal for you to expose. It’s getting late, and I need to get back and figure out who’s going to step in for my supply chain manager who just went on maternity leave.”
They stood and hugged.