Serial has an ending, but it's not the end

On Thursday the world’s most famous podcast, Serial, came to an end.

Since October, almost five million people have downloaded the weekly episodes, which tell the true crime story of the January 13, 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a Baltimore County high school student.

Lee’s ex-boyfriend, Pakistani-American Adnan Syed, who was 17 at the time, is currently serving a life sentence plus 30 years in prison for her murder, largely based on the testimony of the prosecution’s ‘star witness’, an acquaintance called Jay, who claimed to have helped Adnan bury Hae’s body.

A forgotten story

For the past 15 years, the story of Adnan Syed was largely untouched by the US justice system, and pushed back into the memories of those he grew up with, including members of the tightly knit Pakistani community of Baltimore, Maryland.

Then, in 2013, lawyer Rabia Chaudry, older sister to Adnan’s best friend Saad Chaudry, who had spent years sifting through evidence and court documents, decided to look for a media outlet hoping a journalist could investigate the case in a way she, as a lawyer and someone intimately connected to the case, couldn’t.

Serial’s host and producer, Sarah Koenig, was the first person Rabia contacted, saying she believed Adnan had been wrongfully convicted and sending her the evidence she had. The very next day she got a reply. Koenig said she was “totally hooked” giving birth to a podcast that has since shot to global stardom.

“I wasn’t sure if this radio thing would work for us. I needed someone who could build a career on breaking this story,” Rabia told Dawn.com.

Building a career on breaking the story is exactly what Koenig has done the past year.

Serial’s host and producer, Sarah Koenig. —Photo courtesy of Meredith Heuer

The weekly episodes can best be compared to a cross-pollination of a high school tale of love, sex, drugs, and lies a la Gossip Girl meets the riveting, confusing and gripping sharp turns of True Detective. Koenig’s style is a most arresting and gripping form of storytelling. And the fact that Adnan, who is currently in prison in Cumberland, Maryland, is frequently on the phone with Koenig, adds a layer of compelling emotional connection for listeners.

In the past two months, Koenig has dissected the case against Adnan, piece-by-piece.

She has brought forth new witnesses to light – some that Rabia, who has spent years sifting through the case, admits she didn’t even know about. Along the way, Koenig has dismissed some red flags pointing towards Adnan, while raising others that leave listeners and even Koenig confused. She has asked and answered disconcerting questions, dismantled lackluster evidence and solved unresolved issues.

There are moments when the listener simply forgets that this is real life – a 17-year-old girl is dead and a teenage kid was sent to jail for a crime he may or may not have committed.

Because of prison rules Adnan, despite being a big part of Serial, hasn’t been listening. His brother Tanveer Syed told Dawn.com that Adnan gets the transcripts.

But how to explain to someone who has spent life removed from the age of social media the power of Serial in bringing people from around the globe, rallying for or against Adnan’s innocence, through the likes of Reddit (which contains a highly active Serial subreddit), Twitter which has a #FreeAdnan hashtag, and countless blogs?

“He’s smart, he keeps on top of stuff. He knows Reddit, how Twitter works, he watches a lot of news,” said Rabia who sends Adnan #FreeAdnan tweets.

“Telling him the full impact will not necessarily make him feel great. It’s weird for us on the outside so it would be weird for him because on one hand, we need the public support but on the other hand, it feels like a theatre show.”

Tanveer explained to Adnan the concept of Reddit trolls (who routinely gather to play amateur detectives) by analogy to road rage.

“I said to him it was like the difference between seeing someone on the street who is normal and nice but then behind the wheel they become a completely different person,” said Tanveer.

Another friend used a Superbowl analogy to explain the impact of Serial, “I said to him ‘you know how millions watch the Superbowl? The same number is listening, every week, to your story.”

Life after Serial: What’s the point?

The final episode started with Adnan cheekily asking Koenig the question we’ve all been asking ourselves (and, our spouses, colleagues around the water cooler, fellow commuters on the train, etc.):

“So … you don’t really have no ending?”

Serial did, in fact, have an ending. Just not the definitive one that many rabid fans wanted.

What the podcast didn’t do was exonerate Adnan. In hindsight, how could it have done so based solely on the strength of 12-weeks worth of episodes?

There was no smoking gun, no surprise witness, and no deathbed confessions. Listeners were left with the same thing they started with: the tragedy of a beautiful teenager’s life violently cut short, Adnan’s effortlessly charming voice and eerily peaceful, controlled demeanor, Sarah’s masterful manner of storytelling, and hours worth of whodunit evidence that didn’t close any loops or give closure, but only brought more lingering questions to the surface.

But what the podcast did do was strip naked, in the cold light of day, a brutally flawed justice system. We live in the era of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless wrongfully convicted currently languishing in prison cells from Guantanamo Bay to Pakistan’s notorious Death Row.

Serial’s narrative is the ultimate exposé. It’s a gruesome tell-all memoir of shockingly questionable police tactics, unethically aggressive prosecutors, incompetent defense attorneys, shady key witnesses, half-assed evidence – all things lightly glazed with a pre-9/11, pre-Islamophobia veneer of racism.

It’s also a reminder that we need level-minded, intelligent and attentive people serving on juries.

“If it were post 9/11, it could have been a different trial. It wouldn’t have been easier but post 9/11 the American-Muslim community can articulate better. We have an organised response to Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry. We would’ve put our foot down on the anti-religious, prejudicial and biased stuff that came up at trial," said Rabia. "But at the time, we were blindsided.”

All friends and family interviewed agreed the podcast has lifted a lot of burdens – not just for Adnan’s family but for the Pakistan-American community of Baltimore County.

Initially, the community stood in solidarity with the Syed family during the trials. But after losing at the trial and then at the appeals process, many backed away.

“There was this wrongful assumption that the American court system knows what it’s doing. People in the [Pakistani] community started thinking ‘he keeps losing, maybe there’s more to this story than we know’,” said a friend of Adnan’s.

Adnan became a sort of folktale – a bogeyman used by Pakistani-American parents to warn their kids.

“My mother said ‘this is a lesson for you guys – if you date around, get mixed up with the wrong people – this will happen to you,” Adnan’s friend Omar Javed told Dawn.com.

“But really, all of us had cell phones, all of us had girlfriends. All of us were doing things that Adnan was doing. And, it’s like we got to have our lives but he didn’t. We got to grow up but he had it taken away from him. There is the sense of survivor’s guilt in that.”

Another friend of Adnan’s described the year of his conviction as a “bad year” for the Pakistani community. Following the conviction, a prominent figure at the mosque was allegedly discovered to have been molesting two young boys.

“So many Pakistani kids don’t admit what they do, what they feel, and who they are to their loved ones. So, when something like Adnan’s story happens, the parents and entire community is shocked like, ‘what? My kid smokes weed? My kid went to a dance?’ These are the repercussions of having a hush-hush society,” said Adnan’s best friend and Rabia’s brother, Saad Chaudry.

“Muslim adults will laugh at a lewd joke but won’t talk about alcohol or sex in an adult manner. A lot of people in the West and in Pakistan are living a so-called double life. A lot of people are realising now this could have happened to us, he could have been me.”

Since Serial, the community has come together.

“People are supportive. Even if there are episodes that make Adnan look bad,” said Tanveer.

Shortly after his brother went to jail, Tanveer left home. “I felt like I had failed Adnan. I felt like it was my fault that he was involved in those activities and I should have intervened. It was guilt.”

But after the podcast aired, Tanveer returned.

“Serial and hearing Adnan’s voice has helped bring the family back together.”

Another day in court

For friends and family, the way Serial ended was not a surprise.

—Yearbook photo of Adnan Syed

One friend said, “It bugged me that people were listening to it like it’s House of Cards. I always knew it wouldn’t end tied with a bow.”

Omar voiced worries that with the end of Serial, the public pressure might also end.

“The legal process [which is starting now] is so slow. I just hope the case stays in the news somehow.”

Another friend said, “All this momentum, all these social media forums – he probably doesn’t fully know that they exist. I rather him not know or understand because if he were to fully grasp the hype I worry he’d get his hopes up too high.”

But overall friends and family remain positive that although it’s the end of the podcast, it’s not the end of Adnan’s case.

“Legally, a lot of things are happening,” Rabia tells Dawn.com. “There are four legal teams working on the case.”

Fifteen years later, Adnan will have another day in court this January.

After losing at both the trial and appeal level, Adnan is at the last step of the legal process – post-conviction relief. His lawyer C. Justin Brown is arguing that Adnan’s former lawyer, Christina Gutierrez, incompetently executed a flawed defense strategy.

Gutierrez knew of an eyewitness who, till this day, maintains she spoke to Adnan at the high school library at the same time prosecution claimed Lee was killed yet Gutierrez never pursued this potential alibi.

A team from the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project has also come on to fight on behalf of Adnan.

Currently, they are trying to pinpoint whether previously untested DNA from Lee’s body can be traced to a potential serial killer that was linked to other murders in Baltimore around the same time. They have also identified other potential suspects.

All hail ambiguity

Saad spoke to Dawn.com convincingly about a dream his mother had a year after Adnan’s conviction. Upon returning from hajj she told her children she’d dreamt Adnan had emerged from an underground chamber, squinting in the light, after being captive for a long time. She said he looked like he was in his mid to late 30s.

Saad says he has strong faith in his mother’s dreams.

“I believe he will be freed. It’s just going to take some time. In the dream, he was a grown man. Today he is 33. I still feel his being freed is a couple years away but Insha’Allah he will be exonerated.”

Adnan, who is described by everyone in contact with him as “at peace with his situation”, knows about this dream. He has always said he expects something [good] to come from Allah, according to Saad.

“He’s said to me that in the past he wasn’t the best Muslim so Allah is punishing him for his sins on Earth instead of the Hereafter. He’s shared with me his inner peace and belief that the truth will come out. He always thought it would be a lawyer or a witness out of the blue that would help exonerate him – not a podcast. But he isn’t shocked that any of this is happening. He’s patiently waiting,” said Saad.

Ultimately, as a species we need to know.

After all, the TV shows, films, and books that grip us always build towards a resolution with a nice three-part process:

Stage 1: Present character with problem
Stage 2: Make the problem messier and murkier
Stage 3: Resolve the problem and seal it off with the kiss of true love, or, in the case of Serial, a get-out-of-jail card.

But on Thursday only one thing was clear – real life is a lot more complicated and while Serial has an ending, it’s not the end.

Just like all of us, Adnan’s life will continue well after the hype around Serial dies down.

Whether it will be in prison or not remains as inconclusive as the evidence that put him there in the first place.

Maria Kari is a freelance writer from Vancouver, BC. She tweets @mariakari1414.

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