A Letter To No One.

Dear friend,

I am writing to you to tell you that I am doing good in life but I am confused. I am confused because I spent a lot of time thinking about how there are so many broken homes in this city and all over the world and bad things are happening out there and I don't know how to fix that. I don't know how to help fix it except promise myself that I will never let myself give in to the desire of doing bad things and maybe that isn't humanly possible so I promise that I will try. And I don't know why people think that what they do doesn't matter because it does. Every inch of it does. All the pauses in the universe and all the time we take up forming our sentences and the little seconds I start walking just a little bit slowly to see the night sky and the moon sandwiched in between two tall buildings, it all leads up to something such as now and such as today and such as the time somebody shouted at me because I was late. 

So I know the things that we do matter. And it mattered when the robber shot somebody I loved in the head and a whole house fell apart and this sombody I loved had gray hair and he never completed his last poem. And it matters when a bomb goes off in the city and everybody misses the eyes of the person who goes away. And it matters when your sister cries or your brother cries or you mom cries or your dad cries because you feel things for people you love too. And I think it's just a colossal mess and everything is a chain of events and we come somewhere in between that chain. So we matter too and when the ball is in our court, I hope that we find the strength to direct it the right way. 

There is war and there is hatred and then there is this. My hands are cold today and I am trying to find comfort in my favourite book that I bought only a few days ago. And I know that somewhere out there, there is fear and there is anguish and I am quiet in respect for that. So I'm trying to figure out how to do something that will stop another bad thing from happening and right now all I can work is right here with me, it's my own hands and my own eyes and my own stomach that sinks at the thought of other things and other people. 

So this is my life today and I live in a broken world but there's always a but and maybe that's because there are things like hope and dreams and a thing called strength to counter all of this so I will try to do that today. It's like they say, it's not over until it is. And I'm trying not to say things I don't mean, not even to a little girl so last night I just read things from her favourite book to her and she liked it. I liked it too. Things sound good when you mean them. 

Thanks for listening. I am infinitely grateful. I am infinitely blessed. 

Love,

Me. 

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

This is a good time in my life. I am so thankful for that, you wouldn't believe. This is my favourite part of the day because there is the six'o'clock sunset I can see every day through my window and if I crane my neck I can see the Sun dip slowly. My best friend is asleep beside me and I can only hear things like my fingers striking the keys - I wish this was a type-writer - and the crows squawking for the last time in the day before they come back tomorrow. It's a good time because every thing feels exactly as it should. Sunday chores, a laugh with my best friend, hitting her for no reason at all, my sister going about her day like usual and talking about things like silence over lunch but sometimes I go overboard and I am told to shut up but that makes me laugh. "I love winter because it's so..." My sister and I finished that sentence with "silent" at the same time.

But I know things won't stay like this forever and I am wondering how that could be. It makes me want to collect everything that is happening around me and it makes we want to write about how my favourite part of a drive around Karachi is the highest point on the KPT bridge and I can just look down on so many neon head-lights from hundreds of car rushing forward to some place they can call their home and that makes me feel better about everything somehow. It makes me nervous that things change and it makes me nervous that time will grow with me and it will cause an uproot of all these times I have now. Everything's going to change soon.

I'm finishing high-school soon and I want to do so many things and it feels like being a part of Oxford street again because everyone's rushing past so quickly and I'm still staring at the billboards and the signs trying to direct myself. I think it's the same courage that I wanted to have when in tenth grade the class was playing a game of charades at the back of the classroom and I wanted to join them. But I didn't. I think it's the same courage I wanted to have when my friends had to leave for something and I wanted to talk to someone else. But I couldn't. But I stayed around and I promise you that I am learning. I am learning that fear is the biggest burden but courage will help me carry it if I am brave enough. Sometimes I feel so brave in my silence like I am ready to take on the world. I want to feel and I want to feel everything from heartbreak to nostalgia and I am going to, just like you. And when I feel it, I'll feel it wide and I'll feel it good and write to you about it. I look forward to that. I always will.

But for roughly four to six months, I think things will be okay. Like one last turn on the merry-go-round before we have to step off. I'm going to enjoy it, okay? I feel sad about things sometimes but I am fine. And it makes me smile when I say that. I'm doing fine. Thank God.

I was reading up on J.K. Rowling and she said, "And rock-bottom was the solid foundation that I built my life upon." I hope you keep going no matter what it is. It's important to be alive.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To You.

Dear You,

I'm writing this to you tonight because I feel like talking. It's strange but sometimes I feel like my words slowly die down as background noise in someone else's life story so here I am, writing to you so that you hear everything loud and clear. I like to be heard but I hope you believe me when I say I like to listen, too. I like to listen to everything you have to say to me and everyone else has to say to me and for a moment I start to live someone else's life, someone else's joy and someone else's day-to-day doings in between conversations. I like conversing once I get over the initial shock of it. I love to speak but sometimes I can't. I've never told this to anyone before, but one time in this oratory competition, I walked upto the podium - and I blanked out. I stood and stared at everybody while an image of a dusty road crossed my mind and an old man crossing it. And that was that. I stood and stared until my time was up and walked off. It was embarrassing.

But this other time, I was reading out a piece from "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory." I was narrating the part where Grandpa Joe miraculously bounces off his bed and onto the floor and I had so much fun doing that because I felt like Grandpa Joe's happiness. I felt like the "spark of wild excitement" dancing in his eyes and I was the spitting image of it. It felt like the story was pouring out of me right, left and center and I want to tell you that this boy in the audience was smiling, just this great big grin on his face and I looked at everybody else and they were looking back and a girl was looking back at me with smiling eyes. It was such a good day.

I was home then, I am home now. I want to tell you that my city is unorthodox and beautiful, unconventional in its beauty to me. It's not the prettiest place in the world but you cannot imagine my fascination when I look out of the car window when the Sun is blushing profusely and the sky is a dancing crimson lullaby. A girl with chocolate brown skin on a motorcycle was just as enchanted by the spectacle as me and she was looking around her and I was looking around me and there were so many people just staring out into the distance. A boy in a taxi, half smiling at a joke I did not hear. Someone on cold, dusty grounds resting upon a charpai, someone outside a utility shop with their arms folded, someone inside a rickshaw at a stand-still and someone with smoke-figurines erupting at the end of their cigarette. My city looked so contemplative and it was beautiful to me.

Sometimes I feel like people are fresh off The Potter's Wheel, the clay of their skin fresh from the wheel-head and God, the eternal craft-maker. The little embellishments on their face like a pea-shaped nose and a half-smile, that's what makes them special to me. Inside the Physics laboratory, my class was spread out across the room and they were all fresh off The Potter's Wheel. I remember thinking how everyone was a masterpiece and if that sounds exaggerated then I just want to tell you that there never could be another You or another I and I hope we can make the best of that.

Don't be a stranger. Talk soon.

Thanks for listening. I am infinitely grateful. I am infinitely blessed.

Love,
Me. 

A Letter To God.

Dear God,

I want to talk to someone so I will talk to you. Karachi is finally cold and it even rained a few days ago. I am wearing my favourite sweater and things are quiet. I am closeted behind silence, behind cold skin and ordinarily black eyes. Or maybe they are the darkest shade of brown. I don't know. Sometimes in class I feel nomadic and faraway but that doesn't mean people around me aren't beautiful. Because they are. They're beautiful when they talk animatedly and they're beautiful when they laugh and it makes me smile because I am painted there somewhere in between all of them but I feel alright. And I am thankful.

I keep thinking about how the world keeps breaking. I can almost hear the Snap! as a crack widens just a little bit more. Believe me, I am aware of the suffering around me but I also know that people and me, we find things that make it okay. Like how it is when we're all waiting for the other teacher to enter the classroom after the one teaching the last class leaves and that is the moment somebody stretches, somebody else makes a stupid comment at the back of the classroom, some people start talking loudly and I can hear them. At that moment, everybody is brave because they leave behind stories and they leave behind pain and they leave behind so many things to just let themselves be and it reminds of this song that says, "Sometimes nothing, it keeps me together at the seams."

Thanks for everything. I want to keep saying that even when things around me end and begin, even if sometimes at night the future scares me and I want to be okay and even when there's nothing that I can do. I don't understand a lot of things but I wanted to tell you that I want to. I keep hearing and reading how hate is too great a burden to carry and I think that is true. Maybe because we understand the people we hate when we become the people we hate. I think people make bad choices all the time but we've done that too, haven't we? I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that nothing should be left unfixed. That apologies are hard but all it takes is twenty seconds of insane courage, twenty seconds of embarrassing bravery. Last night I was thinking about Aurooj, who studied with us in college until she passed away last year. I wished I had stood up for her but I hadn't. So a few days ago, somebody was crying and I was hesitant to approach them but then I thought I couldn't take more guilt and that people can be saved, people can be fixed while they're still alive, while they are still fixable. So I told them it was okay and they smiled. And the day went on and I'm sure she got through and another day welcomed her in that she lived to see. I'm trying to learn. Most things just take courage.

I also think quiet people are braver than they look. There's so much going on but I always turn to you. Because you're the only one who can truly help me. I see things on the news, about my country and about the world and I wonder if it is realistic to pray for everyone but I do wish that when you get time to read this letter, I hope you add a little bit of patience in all of us so we can keep getting through one day at a time.

Thanks for listening. To this and to all the things I could never say. I don't mind being a wallflower. I get the best view of the universe.

Love always,
Me.