A Letter To No One.

Dear friend,

I learnt in Chemistry class that when you feed the shriveled pride of a raisin, it blows up to become a grape. And that our skin colours are different because of proteins in our bodies called Keratins and Melanins. And in history class that the apartheid was a system of racial segregation that governed relations between people with white skin and those who didn't have white skin. And something I learnt on my own was that people will find reasons to fight and one of them is Proteins.

Your Keratins and Melanins gave you desert skin. Rugged and young and beautiful. And someone else gave you a perpetual smile behind your mustache. You fix the drips on your grandfather's deathbed and shrug off any concerns with a wave of the hand and a "kuch naheen hay". It's nothing. Somebody said doctors lie very well.

My father bent over the kitchen counter this morning re-arranging tablets and they could have been a picture taken from a google search somewhere. And I looked at them and I wondered about how we find ways to stay alive even though we say we can almost taste the metal of the gun inside our mouths.

Orange eyes, tired smile, skin the colour of dusk, feet that hurt from wearing heels, sentences that curse the food that doesn't go down a loved one's throat, a math sum that you just can't figure out - everybody marches on.

A single tear ran down my teacher's cheek and she kissed a student on her head. The girl with the hole in her heart is twenty and everybody is sad about how she is beautiful but how she cannot live long. And how she could have. She hears everything sowed in the whispers and she keeps her head down low and offers to massage the old man's head. Her voice breaks when the old man says he doesn't have much time. She tells him to stop talking like that and there are tears well spent. Somebody shakes their head because she is beautiful and because she is going to die.

Aren't we all? Like McGonagall's chess pieces. One wrong move and you are in the right place and shot down one by one until the game is over. I don't know what the game is or who is playing it or why it is there but it is. I don't know why we have memories and fragile hearts and I can't tell you why because I do not know. I can only tell you what you already know. That while you continue to breathe, you live. You touch and you scar and you are touched and you are scarred and the ink that you spent all your school life staining your arms and hands with didn't seep into your blood and kill you.

You are alive and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The fire was in the other part of the city and not yours. You only heard the ambulances and you weren't inside one. You can wonder about why nothing happens to you and why everything happens to you but you look outside and it's daylight and the day is alive for everybody. When there is no insomnia, everything falls asleep with you and you wake up and you are alive once again.

I don't want to leave you confused or sad so I will tell you that I don't know what the colour of your skin is and I don't know what you find to stay alive and who eggs you on. You are my friend because my heart breaks the same way your heart breaks. Into two. And I want you to know that I was searching for something to end this with and something came along. The six year old boy in my house came excitedly upto us to show us a kite he had pulled from a tree and it had a broken string. Everything was in his eyes and he knew he couldn't fly it but he'd found the kite. So there's that to believe that everything will come our way and happiness can be broken sometimes but we've felt it to know that is there. And there's a text message I'd send you if I had your number and it would have three words: hang in there.

Thank you for listening. 

Lots of love,
Me.

A Letter To No One.

Dear friend,

I'm still trying to understand the day. I am still trying to understand life. I feel alright. But I think we don't remember that we've felt alright when we don't feel alright. We don't remember the day we felt invincible singing a Bryan Adams song. We don't remember these things. But I want you to know that these things exist. And I hope you find them.

I want to tell these people how important they are to me. How important it is to me when a friend fiddles around with her glasses and another friend wakes up and looks at the mirror and pulls an ugly face and says, “Today I woke up being beautiful.” I want to tell these people that it is important to me that they laugh and their smiles spread across all their skin and I laugh with them. I want to tell these people that it is important to me when I see them around college and that they help me see things. I don’t know why it is important. It just is. It’s the little parts of my day that string it together and then everything comes to life and I feel alive. 

It’s like what my teacher was saying. I think even though she loves to tell stories about herself, being alive has brought an unusual kind of wisdom to her. The raw kind. The one that’s just there. Dark-skinned wisdom. She said that when people are around, you don’t really feel it. And it’s a simple thing but then you forget you love them when they leave the door open or when they tell on you or get on your nerves. And when they leave, it doesn’t matter. You just want them there. You know? It’s a simple thing but it was so true that I didn’t want to hear it.

So many things keep happening. I love so many things and people in a secret way. Like my friend said. In a secret way that I might forget them later. But it’s just a good time. It’s a good time when someone tells me that legend has it, the Quail loves mangoes and comes back every season to sing for it. Things end but the world doesn't. A judge in an oratory competition last year looked up from his laptop screen after announcing the quarter final results and said, “Guys, this isn’t the end of the road.” Maybe it really wasn’t. 

It was strange that while we drove home, two intersecting flock of birds made a canopy over the car for a moment. They just took flight. Just like that. A prompt from the wind, a sign from the heavens. Moments like these, I just feel drunk on sunshine. There were empty plots, too, where workers were hard at work and cementing bricks or just napping for a while. I don’t know, I just like to think that this is all going somewhere. That these people are all going somewhere. Some place forward. Because a flock of birds soared high and a different flock of bird soared low. But there was still flight. And I hope we’re moving forward. I hope we don’t stay where we are no matter how alright we feel about it. Heaven is a place, after all. I like to believe that. 

And that's life today. 

Love,

Me. 

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.

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.