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.

A Letter To No One.

Dear friend,

It's really silent now and I keep saying that in all of my letters because I love breathing it in. I guess silence runs in my blood and it's good to see the chaos quietening down, almost asleep but gently breathing because I can hear everything clearly and I can hear myself and I just find it fascinating. I've been up since the crack of dawn, but I don't mind. I love the cold and I love my city and I guess on some days, it's just good to be alive.

This may sound silly, but I wanted to tell you that I wanted the world to be beautiful again. Not the everything-is-happy, nothing-is-wrong kind. Just in the way it is. Broken and empty sometimes, but alive all the same. And gradually I'm able to see that. I'm able to see that in long-sleeved sweaters and beautiful smiles and just watching two friends having a laughter fit at nothing at all. And I joined them. I laughed and they laughed. But the universe keeps contracting in my stomach and spins round in circles sometimes when I think about what is to come. Sometimes it's just as simple as my eleventh grade result that seems to be on everyone's mind. While my stomach lurched at the very though, I looked around and I guess I smiled a little to myself because I was reminded how it felt like to still be alive, to still have something to worry about, to still have a weight at the back of my mind and the future laid out before me like the stars lining up on the night sky -  it's dark but it still holds the greatest things in the universe.

I suppose I'm getting a bit carried away here. It's just that I was thinking this morning how I could not quite understand how people believed how precious life was. I didn't understand why people thought it was meant to be lived and not merely exist - if that makes sense. And then I thought about how the biggest irony of life was that the most tragic thing that could happen to it was death. And the death of things was always sad - whether it was love, life, hope or friendship or even memory. And I guess I don't need to explain to you how that feels because you know what it's like. To not want to get up and to not move on and stare at the traces instead and believe it is still there. Maybe you know that feeling. And I think that's when you realize how important it is to know about how important it is to be alive. You matter to a thing, a person and a part of the universe that could never exist without you. Without you, it's always going to be incomplete. I guess why I believe we're miracles is that we never know just how many lives we've found our places in - we never know how far kindness goes. A good thought could travel down a generation and a good letter could be found by the most random of people and leave its mark on their memories.What I'm trying to say is: if you're alive, then to the universe, you are just as important as anybody else. The story would never be complete without you.

If you're wondering how I'm doing, I'm still the by-stander. I still watch everything from sidelines but the best part about that? I've started to like it. All the things that will go on without me, will do exactly that no matter how much I want to change it. So last night, I was in a grey chair while everybody played cards and I laughed a lot. Accepting myself is the greatest thing I've ever done.

I've been reading this book and it says that when you stop looking for something, it shows up. But it turns up, it does. And it always takes you by surprise.

For laughter, for oreos, for pretty book covers and friendship, I am infinitely grateful. I am infinitely blessed.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

It's been a while since I wrote to you. So much has happened in between this letter and the last. It is already the seventh of October and I won't be sixteen for long. But I want to write to you while I still am. I want to tell you that the world is still beautiful as it was when Summer had just begun and so many stories have grown by the end of it. The wind at my window is an introduction to winter and I know I will learn to love its silence. But for now, I am alive and I am breathing, I am what I am now, I am quiet and I have three unread books by my bedside and they are friends.

Last night the sky was alive. I lost count of the stars and that's when I knew I didn't have to hold on to everything. I didn't have to take a picture of everything and I didn't always have to remember. You can sit under the night sky and stare out in the distance and you can be a part of a painting nobody is going to paint, a poem nobody is going to write. And that's alright too. Because it's all the words I don't write and all the words I don't speak that overwhelm me and sometimes they can just rest in my memory. Like last night's moon and how I could almost reach out for it. Almost.

It's a good day if I can see the sunshine. It's a good day if I can still speak and it's a good day if I can still hear the littlest of sounds that let me know that there is still life around me. It's a good day as long as I can believe in it. Sometimes the faith slips away, but I try to go looking for it. And when I go looking for it, it comes back to look for me. And if I can just learn to love it, we can always keep finding each other and it will help me pull through. Again and again.

God was always kind. I do not think prayers are God's promises. I do not think we will always get what we pray for. If you ask me what is going to fill the gaping hole that disappointment leaves and if you ask me what will help you fill your voids and if you ask me what to do when the silence gets too loud, I would always ask you to Pray. Those prayers don't magically untie knots you're struggling with, but they do give you strength to try to figure it out yourself. And there are so many miracles around us that we could never recognize if we do not find the strength to believe in our prayers. And I think while sometimes our prayers don't bring us what we want, they bring us better things. Infinitely better. And that's enough reason to keep going.

For life, for hands and for a good Sunday breakfast, I am infinitely thankful. I am infinitely blessed.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Me.

she wore the stars on her hand and she

wore the sky on her sleeves and she wore

the wind in her hair while the evening breeze

wound 'round her hand like a emblem of love

and she walked and she walked and she walked

she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

she wore her dreams broken, she wore her dreams whole

love-bites of her life on her skin and her soul

and she stood in the haze of the dimming days

but she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

you can find her and tell her that she is a dream

the most beautiful silence that you've ever seen

and your roses will wilt and your roses will bloom

and she'll live all the days in between

because she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

and you can write her down so she is read again and again

because i will tell you how she wore her pain:

she wore the stars on her hand and she

wore the sky on her sleeves and she wore

the wind in her hair while the evening breeze

wound 'round her hand like a emblem of love

and she walked and she walked and she walked

she's alive, she's alive, she's alive

A Letter To No One.

 Dear You,

I thought I would start off this letter with some kind of memory that was so beautiful, it'd hurt to remember it; of clear, grey roads and the windshield coloured with melting raindrops holding blurred images of daffodil fields (and I must tell you that I feel beautiful that I have lived to see the sight and have a distinct image of it in mind), but I will tell you instead that I like this red dress and that I just laughed harder than I have done in weeks. And I am grateful, believe me I am.

And I will admit I've been trying to put together some words but all they've seemed is second-hand and half-hearted. Like the staler version of truth and a shadow of me. But moments like these make me whole, they make me feel like I belong here, I belong here in this red shirt, these black buttons, in the silence that is walking gently into this room at 12:08 AM after a day full of sounds and summer. I belong here and there is a song in my playlist that tells me I will always find my way back home. How can I not, when I walked into the kitchen to a fully occupied table, long lost sounds holding each other close for they'd come together as one after a long time. How can I not, when I can hear the love in your voice through a half-broken telephone line and grinning from ear to ear. How can I not, when you add the two extra o's to my name when you say it so that I feel loved. How can I not, when I find myself speaking so easily to you when everybody else just knows me as the quiet girl. How can I not, when you tell me I am special and your favourite. How can I not, when you pull me into a bone-crushing hug and squeal with me. How can I not, when you are as little as three years old and you say, "I want to stay here," and I hold you close and you add, "With you."

"Why are you so quiet? Why don't you speak? Kiya kuch zindagi main kuch aisa hua hay keh tum nay kaha yar ab nahi, ab kisi say nahi bolna?" Classroom floors, a game of truth and dare, my surprised face and her curious face. "I just can't." Maybe that answer did not suffice but it was the truth. I am grateful, I feel blessed. And to tell you the truth, I am the safest when I stand on my prayer mat during the last prayer of the day and it is dark and nobody can see my face or hear me and I am safe still. And I told a friend that I am a Secret. We are beautiful, golden secrets. I wish I would've answered, "I love everything from a distance." My greatest strength is love, I tell you. I can love and I am grateful.

I will tell you the truth, my life is not about pretty scenes and neat rooms and sweet dispositions and phone calls or even friends. But I know yours isn't too. Ours is something more intricate, flawed, imperfect - beautiful. My life is about the buzz that Friday creates, about lovely hands dripping with mango messes, about being out of breath in the summer heat, about walking under roofs where generations of memories have lived and about living something that is entirely mine, about living a page of my own story book in the loudness of Karachi and the haphazard happenings of summer. I wouldn't change this, I wouldn't be anywhere else because I am living something beautifully flawed and I love summer, I love summer because it comes along with so many colours and stories and sounds and clenches them firm in it's palm so that there is cacophony and the photograph reels and the voice recordings are mine, entirely mine, forever mine. There is greatness in Memory, and there is greatness in living it. For now, there are so many that I am breathing them in and I am thankful for everything, the good and the bad and my story for it is mine. All praise is for God.


Suppose you ask, "Why don't you speak to each other anymore?" Suppose you ask why I hesitated answering the call. Suppose you ask why I am different than before. Suppose you meet the version of me that grew over the past year and I meet the year-older version of you and we look and suppose we tell each other in tones of surprise that we've changed. In the end, there is a clock in your room, there is a clock in my room and it ticks and it tocks and the minutes melt into the days and the days into weeks and the weeks into months and the months into years and the clock in your room carries the weight of all this time. Of all that it brings and all that has happened. Because moments happen when moments happen and it is beautiful because it is not our doing; moments come together when stories collide each other and it is overwhelming just to think that they happen - that they happen and that they are for us and ours and things happen in minute, days, weeks. Things happen, things change, people grow, I grow, you grow, moments happen - and moments later, you are at a different stage, in a different setting and things keep happening. So words fade and my moments changed me and your moments changed you and that is alright. And in such a state, when things start fading you know that they were brittle, temporary. And the permanence of unconditional love through it all is what is beautiful, and to carry all those moments inside you under a roof you can call home is also beautiful. I have faith in the permanence of unconditional love, and in the beauty of things that were always mine.

It is late, I should sleep. The good and bad thing about all days is that they end and so this one ends too. I am not happy that it ended, but I am not sad either. So I will be grateful that we made it through another day and tomorrow is a new task. I have learnt to not under-estimate the magnitude of 24 hours. So much happens. No matter what, our life is beautiful, complete with it's flaws. I believe it is and I see that it is. I am infinitely grateful, I am infinitely blessed.

Thank You for listening.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

I am not afraid to tell you that I have been afraid. It has been strange, but I only know how to bear the strangeness and wish it away through prayer. I only know how to sit up wide awake and wait for Fajar, and feel for a few tiny seconds the Medina air kissing the walls of my room awake. I only know how to feel the relief of seeing the morning winds dust off last night's fear.

I will tell you this: I do not believe in fairy-tales, I do not believe in happy endings, I do not believe in perfection and I do not believe in a perfect life, I do not believe in happiness that ache is not a part of. But I believe in loving regardless, loving despite; I believe in forgiveness, and loving again and again and again with the broken pieces dearer each time. I believe in miracles, I believe in breaking down. I believe in being beautifully flawed. I believe in forgetting the burdens of the Present upon looking at the blue of the sky and wondering about the things and people still to come and that it could never be easy, it could never be perfect, but what I feed from is the infinity of the universe, the infinity of my own being and the infinity of my prayers. Because I swear to God there is no moment more fearless than putting your hands together in prayer and how incoherent words said with a tear in secret and in fear could change the course of fate, and to say a prayer is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Dear friend, I am heard. It does not matter to you, but it matters to me. It matters to me how I stood outside the Physics laboratory in college desperate for a miracle and being handed with one. It does not matter to you, but it does to me. It matters to me that I know I am heard. And dear friend, losing hope is a terrible, terrible thing. They tell me how unfair life is, but I wonder also how unfair I am to life. When it brings me the winds and the evening skies and moments of silence, darkness, happiness and infinity - and all I see is despair. No, not this time. This time despair is not loud enough to distract me from what is rightfully mine and that is Hope. How unfair I am to life when I curse it for all the bad it brings when the rain can wash it away and I have heard somebody say, dear friend, that rain can wash it all away if you let it.

I may not be wise, but I mean to tell you that with a white bracelet on my hand, I can't help but believe in good things. They come and they go but they happen and that is enough. Good things, good people, and prayers. What is mine will always be mine, and what never was, never will be. And that's okay.

And dear friend, I have only told you it's going to be okay because everything is temporary, just like you and me. I have faith. And for faith, I am infinitely grateful,  I am infinitely blessed.

Thank You for listening.

Love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

We wait all day, all summer, all year for the perfect moment, the perfect time, the perfect day, the perfect summer  - and here it is, tapping us on the back of the shoulder but we wait and wait. For a moment today I saw it. I saw that here is the breathtaking summer I wished I would have. More on that later. And while winter is serene, calm, flicking it's fingers through the pages of fate almost effortlessly - summer is heavy-set and big. It's all around, with that stench of Eventfulness. Pungent happenings of summer that sweat with me in the sweltering heat. Oh, cacophony. And winter is the long, deep breath taken in - summer is the scream.

I grow with my story. I grow while I loiter on this particular summer day and take in the wonder. The wonder of it all. The ceiling fan buzzing with my thoughts and words, a blender grinding noisily, the only sound I heard while I fell in and out of love with silence and things. And welding dreams made out of evening breezes in the summer heat, all in my head. An exasperated sigh, an almost-scream, frustrated words, all giving into the noise of it all. Karachi letting all voices loose as summer gallops through the city.

A lot has been happening. I told you. I told you I would grow. And so much more to come. My God created summer and everything beautiful and full of stories. And I take in other people's words, trace their outlines with my fingers, taste the words in my head and I know why there are cracks, why tears and sobs and desperation are trying to speak through them. I know because I link it all back to where I know all the Solutions reside - the heavens. I believe, I do. So I take it all in and resolve to remember that I have two hands and they are powerful when they come together and pray. My friend says that hands fascinate her. She says they can do things. She is right. I am fascinated too.

Lend a ear and listen. To the wind and to the people because they were all created wondrous. A stray word, the possibility of comfort out of nowhere (but we all know it's God that makes us listen). I bundled up everything that happened yesterday with some words and snippets of a conversation I overheard by the sofa. My ears registered some things: The Battle of Badar, things happening before that - bad things, constant struggle, never losing hope, glory. Mayooosi. Disappointment. Chase it away. Good things happen. Have faith.

For goodness and for wonder, I am infinitely grateful - I am infinitely blessed. It's a wonderful life. Colour. Noise. Summer.

Look around.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Me. 

A Letter To No One.

Dear You,

I've been meaning to write to you for a long time. I will make no excuses, and tell you that I only just built up the courage. Today has been good, it brought me laughter. Wonderful, warm laughter, the colour of love and of hope. And I took it all in, in large bites and breathed in the air while it was still ringing with joy and the winds were kind today because summer has taken to suffocate with me with words that I do not want to belong to me. And they take up the most space in my head and I dive head-first into the madness of my own being and I shed myself away until only I can hear me. I've always been quiet, serene to watching eyes and I will always will be. The chaos is inside and it will forever live there.

And I'm still trying to catch up with fate, while it brings me new stories and new people and other such universes. But I am thankful, I am, and I find infinity everywhere. I find it while resting my head against the window in a moving car and the infinite stories and secrets bundled in a corner of the roads, the houses, the very air that I take in. Then how could I be ordinary? How could you be ordinary? When we carry words at the tip of our tongues, and stories within our souls and gold carvings of love on our hearts - no, we could not be ordinary. Oh, these eyes have so much more to see and this soul has so much more to say and there is beauty in life, extra ordinary beauty, tragic beauty, and it is all for you and me. And don't you see the beauty in even our End being infinite? Oh, our ends, these words, our stories - praise be to God. This beauty can only belong to Him and it does and I am glad because I know He will keep it safe. And we will be alright. There is hope still, there is time still - it'll be okay.

Oh, I'll grow and grow and the heavens won't send down to me too great a burden to bear. What comes my way was always mine. Lingering piano notes in my ear and they let me hear what I want to, just like the wind. I'll be alright tonight, I have enough happiness to feed on. And I thank the heavens that I do and that there are beautiful people still. My prayers won't die down, no, they only grow stronger with time and with life. God will take me as I am, complete with my incoherence - I know He will. And I will grow and grow, and these hands will hold different things and touch different skins until they grow old and frail, but they'll still be mine and I will smile because I know that we made it through all of this madness and I was me all along. And I know now, that I will know then that I have strength and you have strength and it is great in magnitude and before you know it you'll be nearing the End, still breathing, still alive. You will smile and I will too, because we made it through all of this and we were always meant to get out alive until death greeted us with open arms. Oh, there is a greater plan - for you and for me.

Right now I do not care, for once I do not care if I sound beautiful but all I know is that I feel and I feel greatly and you've felt what I've felt, and I've felt what you've felt - and you're not alone because I know, I know that what it is, whatever it is, it is temporary and people can damage your knees and your elbows and even extend their reach to your heart. But they can never damage your soul and our souls and our sounds and our thoughts and our actions - that is what infinity is and God's infinity shall return to Him and Him alone. So it is alright. It's alright. There are mornings and there are sunrises and sunsets and plenty of words. And rain too, the smell of rain.

I am exhausted but my mind does not feel like it's going to erupt anymore and I have you to thank for that. For words, for prayer mats, for faith and for laughter, I am infinitely grateful. I am infinitely blessed.

Thank you for listening.

Love,
Me.

oh how it reeks of memory -
a gulp of air
                   that i swallow in
                   the croaking of an old, stained swing
                                                       and how it sways defyingly
                                                  no, i will not have mercy because not this time -
                                                   not this time have i swayed and swung
                                                   not this time have the winds sung
                                                 with me
                 but -
 here i lend a ear
to hear
that the breeze does carry my song still -
and the subtle sound of broken faith
and the hint of a prayer from Fate
                                                 so i turn my back
                                                 - and  i walk away