The Scratch of the Official Notebook

Dear Delyara, I had to give a formal witness statement to a young constable at 3:45 AM regarding a flatbed truck that cleared our gates before midnight. I watched his fingers—red from the freezing river wind—carefully press a ballpoint pen into a small, black-bound pocketbook, his handwriting neat and deliberate despite the cold. There was something intensely human about that small notebook. In a world governed by digital tracking scripts and automated security algorithms, the law out here still comes down to a person standing in the rain, writing lines on paper to make sense of a messy world. I gave my details clearly, matching his steady pace.