Every July, my body remembers before my mind does.
There is a particular week of July that I have come to dread. A week where the air feels heavier, where my chest feels tighter, where breathing feels a little harder.
Because five years ago, I lost my friend, Noor Mukadam.
I still cannot believe it has been five years.
People often say that time heals everything. I spent years hoping that maybe one day I would wake up and the pain would feel lighter.
There are losses that become easier with time. And then there are losses that change the person you are forever.
Losing someone you love is devastating.
But losing someone to homicide is something else entirely.
It changes the way you see the world. It shatters the belief that terrible things only happen in movies, somewhere far away, or to someone else. It forces you to confront the darkest parts of humanity and question everything you thought you knew.
Alongside grief came guilt.
The irrational kind that survives logic.
The guilt of continuing to live a life she never got to have. The guilt of celebrating birthdays, making plans, getting married, while she remains forever twenty-seven. Then there’s the guilt that somehow, maybe, I could have done something differently, even though I know there was nothing I could have done.
Grief also does not always follow logic.
For the last five years, I have spent countless hours speaking to the media, attending court hearings, following every update, and running a Twitter account to make sure Noor would never become another forgotten headline.
Because in Pakistan, women are killed every single day.
Their stories become statistics. Their names become headlines for a few days before the world moves on. Their families are left carrying a grief that most people will never understand.
We read the headlines, feel the anger, and then continue with our lives, never believing it could happen to someone we know and love. In September 2020, I stood beside Noor outside the Islamabad Press Club protesting for justice for the survivor of the motorway rape case. Just ten months later, I found myself standing in that exact same place, this time protesting for Noor.
But Noor was not forgotten.
Her name remained. Her story remained.
Her murder forced conversations that Pakistan had spent far too long avoiding.
Conversations about femicide. About violence against women. About coercive control. About entitlement. About patriarchy. About a system that so often asks what a woman did, instead of asking why a man believed he had the right to take her life.
Noor’s case became a painful reminder of a reality many women in Pakistan face – the fear, the violence, the silence, and the injustice that surrounds crimes against women.
Even in death, Noor was blamed for her own rape and murder. Even in death, she was put on trial.
People questioned her character. They searched for reasons to justify the unjustifiable, while trying to find ways to hold her responsible for the violence committed against her.
Running a campaign for five years for her justice opened my eyes to a society I had heard about but never truly understood.
Or maybe, a society I did not want to believe existed.
Every morning I woke up to messages and comments filled with cruelty. Strangers questioned Noor’s actions. They also questioned mine. They reminded me just how deeply misogyny lives within our society.
To this day, I still struggle to understand how someone can look at a woman who has been murdered and choose hate over compassion. I struggle even more to understand how a system meant to bring accountability can become so consumed with moral policing.
Something changed in me during these five years.
Sometimes I think there is a version of me that existed before Noor was murdered.
A version of me who believed the world was safer. A version of me who believed justice was simple. A version of me who believed that when faced with unimaginable tragedy, people would choose kindness.
And then there is the version of me that came after.
The version that has spent five years watching how quickly people can dehumanize a woman. How effortlessly they can blame a victim. How easily truth can be buried beneath misogyny, power, and hate. How difficult it is to get justice in this country.
I am still learning how to live in a world that looks the same but feels completely different.
There are moments from these past five years that will stay with me forever. Sitting in the courtroom only a few feet away from the man who murdered my friend. Looking at him and wondering how someone could commit such unimaginable brutality. Why he did it. What made him believe that he had the right to take her life. But there are no answers that can ever make sense of something so brutal and senseless.
I remember sitting outside the courtroom after the verdict was announced. I thought justice would bring relief. I thought it would bring peace. Instead, I felt empty. Because justice could never bring Noor back. It could never undo what had been done.
Over time, I have found some comfort in knowing that, at the very least, Noor received justice in a country where so many women never do.
Noor’s death changed my entire perspective on humanity.
It changed how I see people. It changed how I move through the world as a woman.
What happened to Noor didn’t only change me, it brought everyone’s attention to the realities women face in this country. It exposed the systems that often fail to protect them and forced society to confront uncomfortable truths about violence, accountability, and silence.
But Noor was never meant to become a symbol.
She was meant to simply be Noor.
She was meant to experience all the ordinary things of life. To make new memories. To celebrate birthdays. To fall in love. To dream. To have a future.
When people speak about Noor now, they often speak about the case. The trial. The verdict.
But I think about my friend.
I think about our pizza and Nando’s dates. I think about the sleepovers. The conversations that lasted for hours and all the special moments we had.
I think about her laugh.
God, I miss her laugh.
Her life was not just taken but her future was stolen too.
The hardest part of losing you is also grieving a future I will never know.
A future where you were still here.
Sometimes I wonder who you would have become. What kind of life you would have built.
Those questions will always remain unanswered.
Five years have passed.
The court case may have reached its conclusion, but grief does not end with a verdict.
Justice cannot bring you back.
It cannot return you to the people who love you. It cannot give us the years we should have had with you.
Every July, I find myself back here.
Missing you.
Grieving you.
Remembering you.
Trying to make peace with a world that made no sense the day it took you from us.
I hope, wherever you are, you are finally somewhere gentle. Somewhere untouched by fear. Somewhere that knows only peace.
You are gone from sight, but you will always have a place in my heart.
I miss you.
And I forever will.
Credits:
This article was written by Shafaq Zaidi and is republished here with her permission. All credit for the original work belongs to the author.