sidewalk scribbling

Let’s paint a picture.  You’re sitting in a small waiting room at a train station in a global, multicultural city like, say not Charleston, South Carolina, and there are people of different ethnicity around you – an African American man reading a book, a couple of white ladies listening to something on their respective iPhones, an Asian couple wearing matching Adidas sneakers with a very cute very chubby baby sleeping in a pram in front of them, and a Pakistani (or maybe Indian – let’s say South Asianish?) woman in her late 50’s. You’re scrolling through pretty photographs of everyone in the world who has a better life than you on Instagram when suddenly you smell a strong spicy, garlicky scent emanate from somewhere in the room. Instant reaction – before you look up to see who has opened up the Tupperware of spicy curry- what comes to your mind? (If you're honest you'll admit:) You think about that Pakistani lady in the corner and wonder why she had to ope...

The door opens and she slips in quietly, rubbing her cold hands together, then as the door closes behind her, she steps forward, walking past people sitting on small wooden tables and blowing her icy breath at them, chuckling to herself as they shiver and reach out to wrap their hands around teal cups of hot coffee. At least that’s how I imagine it because every time the door opens, there is a short pause before the cold air reaches me, a languid passing by, almost distracted, like the smell of someone’s perfume as they pass by or the suspension of smoke in the afternoon light inside a dim room. Fahad and I have divergent views on civil protests and demonstrations – while thousands of people, friends and strangers, gathering together to speak out for human (or animal) rights tugs at my heart strings and pokes at my tear ducts (enough for 2-4 tear drops), Fahad scoffs at what he calls ‘idiots getting together for something they have no idea about’ or more succinctly - ‘hypoc...

The vocabulary box given to young girls born in the late 1980s in Pakistan had many words to play with – dolls, sleep, cry, eat, pink, white, Ami, Baba, hello, bye. And as they would grow, more words would be plopped into the box or sometimes slipped into it when they were sleepy or too busy to notice – work, kitchen, care, compromise, weak, patience, strength, clean, sacrifice. Why - a word that I only realized is essential to grow and develop and learn and understand was really discovered in university, and I am forever thankful to LUMS for teaching it to me.  The skill and art of questioning. We aren’t encouraged to question, generally, and the more check boxes ticked against your name, the further they put the word away from you – female? Two rungs up the ladder; Pakistani – three rungs higher; young? Two rungs up. Wait, did you say female? Let’s just put it up where you can’t even see it so it’s more comfortable for all of us.  We were taught it is ...

From where I’m standing Right now, It’s not really clear; I see some clouds And a grey fog Perhaps I can lean over And draw Some silver linings Around The dark A box of crayons Always by your side Reds and blues and greens And the brightest yellow And while it may be Too easy To let the box drop And drown In the gray It might be better To lean over And draw silver Around The dark. Hello, new year, another year. I think at some point I stopped owning the years – you know, how when we were younger and in school, we’d start off the new year by always writing down last year in the blue and red margins of our notebooks – but then eventually, we’d grow used to the actual date and our margins would stop being all smudgy.  For some reason, now when another year steamrolls into me, there are two thoughts that come one after the other (like a race between two close runners, with one leading and then the other overtaking and you don’t know wh...