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A year ago this week, Kabul fell to the Taliban. A year ago this week, Bushra Seddique tried to leave. At 20 years old, Seddique had never lived under a Taliban government, but as a journalist and a woman, she realized she could not stay. It was an agonizing decision; while a friend helped her and her youngest sister get a place on a flight, her mother and middle sister had to stay behind. This essay focuses on a seemingly small thing — the journey to the airport — but conveys so much. In an instant, Seddique's prose pulls you closely into this tight-knit family, leaving you pulsating with the sisters' turmoil as they reel between emotions. The joy: when after three days of waiting in fear near the airport, they are sent home and see their family. The grief: when the airport briefly opens again, forcing them to flee before saying goodbye. The excitement: when they are finally on a plane to a new country. The constant underneath it all is a deep sadness for a home that is disappearing, a place where just a few weeks ago "[p]eople were going out to sing and dance; music played in restaurants and taxis." I vividly remember the scenes at Kabul airport playing out on the news last year: people clinging to planes, the bomb, the chaos, the filth. This essay takes you back — and removes any detachment you may have felt along the way.

Each decade seems to bring with it a new version of social panic around hip-hop, generally rooted in sex or violence. In the '20s, that mantle so far has been laid on drill rap, and especially New York City's version of the scene. But while the moralizing around drill had already ramped up, the February 2022 murder of Bronx teenager Jayquan McKenley brought a simmer to a boil. And as Simon van Zuylen-Wood captures in this affecting look at the McKenley tragedy, it gave NYC mayor Eric Adams and many other people the perfect symbol for a crackdown. This is more than a profile of a sweethearted teen, though. It's a sober, neutral-minded tour through the fallout of the drill scene's uniquely inflammatory recipe, from the artists who engage in hyper-personal social-media baiting to the NYPD detectives whose investigations often collide with the music. It's not a fun read, but it's a necessary one