Category: Thresholds – babel.

“They gave her a face carved in bone,
a hollow smile—too wide, too still.
She wore it well, as children do,
obedient to the silence,
to the chill.”

“Oh I think it will be best arranged to the left”

“Dreams where I know what happened and didn’t try to stop it – purple bruise on each knee – 3 months without a cigarett”

“As I pulled out the house key, a man suddenly sprinted past. Startled, I clutched it, certain he meant to snatch it, but he vanished down the alley. I stepped into the house. The same harsh sunlight blazed, the same furniture stood. I searched for my mother but found her nowhere. Surely she must be at Khala Maimun’s.”

“I live under the weight of my own expectations. They are borrowed truths from everyone around me, invisible laws I never chose but cannot disobey. Perfection, productivity, proof, all the silent judges that dictate my worth. I know they aren’t real. I know they are ghosts of comparison, of fear, of wanting to be enough for a world that will never tells anyone what enough is.”

“For how long should i do it more?”

“My language is the palimpsest of my ancestry – Arab, Afghan, Arain; Makkah to Ghazan to Ludhiana to Lahore”

“چھپا ہوا عجب سا فسانہ کہوں تمھے”

“I waited for my life to stop clinging to me. I preferred blank and blurred faces with no smiles to fall for. Letting go of life was convenient, by default. It was like the second layer of my skin— that close and inevitable.”

“as she holds you through it, and im left wishing it was me – but im not her, and i will never be – she’s the centrefold in the book of your life – the climax, the main plot”

“I thought I was strong – When the troops rushed in for voiture,  for you, my Mister, I died in Thanatophobia to the moon & back, it was when my heart sighed”

“For the first time in her life, she feels a sense of purpose.”

“She was born blind.
To one parent, a burden.
To another, a universe.”

“The garden grew wild now, the coconut trees still whispering over all we’d lost. I would sit outside for hours, weaving garlands, rings, and headbands from the delicate pink haar singhaar bush, which shed its flowers at dusk.”

“The mud sucked at his body, holding him still. He tried to move, but his limbs were heavy, paralyzed.”

“The journey of rediscovering herself began after that loss. It felt like rising of a Phoenix. It was the rebirth of a new Bahar who regained the strength and faith to redefine the meaning of being a woman.”

“In the moment when she hit her head, she was stuck between trying to register what just happened and deciding to go and get herself a clean band-aid.”

“Maybe it’s already broken,” Rafiq had snapped, letting it slide. Not realizing that the mirror was too big and heavy and tilted in Fahad’s direction. It fell like a heavy object – frame and all, on Fahad.

“It is the place where silence goes unsaid,
The primal knowledge of what we can take.
“