sidewalk scribbling

The thunder woke us up.   The sky outside glowed blue, purple, white and the light and thunder poured in from our bedroom windows and the open door across, shadows jumping all the way from the adjacent room windows, across the short corridor, toppling onto the carpet into our room. Our pale curtains billowed out and then sunk back into the window alcoves, a giant practicing deep breathing – we could hear the rain falling in waves, the drunken trees dancing without abandon and see the lightning glow in the distance, rapid, short lapses in between, just long enough to let the clouds clang their response. The thunderstorm (the very first I’ve seen in England since we moved here almost three years ago) took me back home – the sheer life of the rain was just like the storms we have in Pakistan.   The rain in England, as I have droned on many times, is terribly mundane routine wet boring.   The rain in Pakistan – much like the country – is chaos and madness with ro...

February 22 I admit, my preferences for weather have changed since I came to the US. If I wake up to an overcast sky and the sound of slow rain, my face doesn’t light up with a terrifyingly big smile. I do not feel the need to throw open my window (which in my case would require me using a brick to break the glass cause the window in my room isn’t really a window) and lift my face to the light cool breeze. The reaction is more whiny here. A melodramatic groaning and turning over in bed. My heart complains and my body cringes in the anticipation of the cold wetness that will envelop me as soon as I step out of the house. One of the reasons I don’t like rain here is obvious: human nature is designed to appreciate rarities. A gray sky hanging low with clouds and cold rain felt good in a warm, humid city like Karachi or in the burning heat of Lahore because it would be a welcome, seldom break. Another reason of course was that I did not have to walk around everywhere and travel ...