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Protected: On Eating out in Peshawar
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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The inseparable H’s
Hashir’s obsession with the kid next door i.e. Hafsa is getting out of hand these days. She is an adorable and intelligent seven year old who happens to visit us frequently. When she doesn’t for a day, you find Hashir raving like this.
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The Auburn Fall and a Verse
Here’s another October heralding the onset of perhaps my favourite season i.e. autumn. While taking a leisurely stroll in the front lawn of our apartment building, as I walked over the withering, auburn leaves accompanied by the music of their melodious rustle, I took this photograph to save the beauty and timelessness of the fleeting
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For the Love of Naples
I am not a scholar of Italian culture but it does not take a college degree to observe that as one travels south from Milan to Florence to Rome to Naples, there is a palpable difference in the air. From the stench of urine outside Rome railway station to the aroma of freshly baked Pizza
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43 Notifications
There was a timewhen a seductive, blood-redFacebook notificationwould trigger in mewaves of dopaminewhich flooded my bloodstreamlike amiodarone, lidocaineand a handful otherdifficult-to-spell drugswhich i hopeyou never learn to spell,as they enter my papathrough an IV cannulawhile he lies sedatedamidst beeping, blinking screensand a flock of apathetic doctorsdesensitized bytoo much diseasetoo less equipmentand too often death.For too
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Your serpentine curls
When fresh from the shower your black serpentine curls fall down to your waist like hot Icelandic springs And your fragrance spreads like Mongols on fire When your chapped winter lips quiver with sadness and you rush to the kitchen to hide your tears When your shores are gently washed with waves upon waves of
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Hashir
Meet Hashir. The tiny owner and CEO of the Shit and Spit Factory (my wife came up with this comic name tonight). Born in turbulent times amidst fears of an impending nuclear war, outbreak of the deadly nCov virus and subsequent global recession, he can currently afford to be blissfully ignorant of the turmoil around
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Mevlana
I’ve an unresolved affinity for Maulana Rumi (Mevlana in Turkish) – an intuition that he might be the only saviour I will ever have. I taught myself basic Persian 3 years ago only to read his Masnavi and I still haven’t read it. What if he doesn’t live up to my expectations of him? What
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Peace
If it were up to me I would wish you peace of all the things in the world because it’s been too long that you’ve been fighting unknown battles on faraway fronts. I can see you wearing out breaking down as the hands of clock are running round; living the battles alone I had once
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Mediocrity
ٰAs I am advancing in years, the transition seems more from abstraction into concreteness than in age, really. I preferred to think of myself as some sort of a prodigy, a precocious savior of humanity who is prowling in the dark alleys, waiting for his time to rise and shine. Unfortunately, as it turned out,
Eastern Vagabond
Essays on travel, cities, memory, and the unnoticed textures of the world.