Living like a fugitive

Te most famous television journalist in Pakistan lives like a fugitive. Hamid Mir tells no one where he is going, how he will get there or where he will spend the night.

At Mir’s office, his curtains are always drawn. He uses at least two cellphones and, until recently, he rotated among three residences to obscure his precise location, even from friends.

Even with all these precautions, Mir is anxious and jittery, most of all when he gets into the back seat of his bulletproof car to drive to the television studios for his show, “Capital Talk.”

This is the first installment in an ongoing series examining the human cost of reporting the news around the world.

“Most nerve-racking part of the day,” says the 49-year-old father of two, clenching the grab bar above him on a recent morning as the driver careens through the city taking last-minute instructions on which roads to take. Mir ignores incoming calls from unknown numbers and swivels from side to side, watching traffic to see whether any vehicle stays too close for too long.

His only escapes are trips overseas. Several months ago, he went out to dinner in Dubai with his wife. “It was like a prisoner came out of prison,” he said, cracking a rare smile.

He has sent his children out of the country. He said his wife is angry that he has not left.

Large, yellow concrete barriers fortify the outside of one of his homes on the outskirts of Islamabad. Three guards and barbed wire are conspicuous at what otherwise appears to be a typical middle-class house. The traditional candy and nut bowl is covered in plastic wrap, a sign he’s not usually here.

When Mir travels by car these days, he waits by the front door of his home for his driver to start the vehicle. Once he hears the motor running, he dashes into the back seat, behind tinted window shades.

Twenty minutes later, after Mir’s car passes around the barricades of Geo’s headquarters and through the security gate manned by three guards, does he finally relax. He is eager to get to work.

“He’s out there reporting, covering things that no one else is covering, saying things that no one else is saying. . . . It would be devastating if he were in a position where he had to leave,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Some believe Mir is motivated by money and fame. Others believe he is driven by a need to defend his colleagues.

“If I leave the country, a lot of young journalists, they will be discouraged,” Mir said he tells his children.