Featured Image: Waseem Iqbal This short story was long-listed for the 2019 Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Pakistani Women. . . . The cancer had metastasized. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen this coming. Nothing Nano did was purposeless. This time she was almost too overt. She was coming over to stay — maybe […]
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Featured Artwork: Hildibrand Colonial hangover is an extensively discussed subject in the subcontinent, with many of its educated elite openly denouncing it, and many calls for a replenished identity. There are overt manifestations of the British legacy — in clothing, the burden of a necessary “English-medium”, the fan-mangled accents, the “settler abroad” aspiration. All of […]
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How many mothers, how many children? How many girls, how many bodies? How many years of Barbarity Hunger Undue Thirst Tragedy Obliteration? When does the disease end, this disease that is worse than death? When do the thrones fall — when does the earth eat them? When does the sky descend? When does God’s wind […]
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I’ve written short stories for as long as I can remember. If I re-read them now they go from being painfully hormonal, hyper-emotional to more nuanced, better crafted, with less telling and more showing. For a year or so now, I feel this is somewhat close to what fiction is meant to be — the […]
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Early March 2019, I walked past security into Sindh’s magnificent Governor House. The inaugural Adab Festival – a three-day event to celebrate and discuss culture, literature, and society was happening on its premise. I had made a shortlist of the panel discussions I would attend – the foremost being one on education. Like most young […]
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you’re at a lunch party, talking lessforking a bruschetta, careful not to make a messthinking of a cheeseburger, of the galaxies and Euler’s Identitynot the colour of your lip matte but you know you’re a bit of bore, a bit of a vagrantyou’re not thinking of a Hamptons vacationin this assemblyyour reticence is your salvation […]
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Featured Artwork: Kim Salt Being in an all-female Facebook group with thousands of members is tough. The daily drill is almost nauseous. A provocative post, ruffled norms, offended egos, ad hominem thrown left, right, and center. The better ones have policies against such abusive activity — policies that are often selectively applied to the advantage […]
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This story has no agenda. It is derived from one of many true stories, only a small anecdote from the horrific trials of the long subjugated people of Kashmir. Names and places have been changed; no parties have been named. That, really, is the tragedy of Kashmir; the opacity with which its narrative is presented […]
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Do you ever notice how menstrual sanitary equipment is to be kept out of sight at all times but when you ask your brothers to clean their pubic hair off the toilet seat they tell you shut up and your mum says it’s natural, they’re boys? Do you ever want to tear your own eyes […]
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