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(05/01/21 4:00pm)
As a writer, I started off wanting to explore the cool things, the unusual things, the macabre things — murders and betrayals, lies and promises, abuses of power, grossly violent crimes and what leads people to such dramatic actions. In my freshman year, the first story I wrote was about a man who got caught in a grocery store shooting.
(04/17/21 4:00pm)
I looked at my phone and realized it was April 11, which meant it would soon be April 12. That meant the most important month of the year was just around the corner for me: Ramadan (or Ramzan, the debate is kind of annoying at this point), and I was not prepared. Once a year, millions of Muslims (and some non-Muslims too) fast from sunrise to sunset, and yes, the fast means not even water.
(03/06/21 5:00pm)
I am a collector of stories, and Karachi was always the greatest love story of my life. I constructed a narrative in my head, a running script. I was a girl so entangled in the streets of my city that every time I left, it was as if the film reel was paused. It would only play when I came back to my city streets again. For the longest time Karachi felt real; everything else was just an imitation.
(02/20/21 5:00pm)
How do I stop present cruelty from marring the untouchable beauty of the past?
(10/17/20 4:00pm)
In pop culture, we see a physicist surrounded by boards, with a handful of integrals scattered everywhere and math operations we have never seen in our entire life. Perhaps this is true of some physicists but certainly not all. I think a major reason why physics seems like an unapproachable subject, studied only by a few presumed to be smart(er?), is precisely because of this pop culture approach to physics. Physics is not a subject that only a few should enjoy. Physics is certainly not a subject that only a few should understand. Instead, physics should be for everyone.
(10/03/20 4:00pm)
It is hard to sit still enough to write. It is hard to be still. There is some nervous energy that runs through my body, making my heart beat faster than it should, my mind race faster than it should, and making me unable to write in a manner that would be of any value.
(09/12/20 4:00pm)
As the plane landed in Baltimore, the sun set. A brilliant fiery globe, fiercely yellow against the red sky. My first thought was ‘Wow, this means something.’ A new start maybe. The sun setting on my old life and a new dawn breaking. My second thought was to dismiss this — I have often chided myself for my romantic notions, my silly thought process, my living life as if it is a novel or a movie. Yes, my romanticization of things has gotten me into trouble a lot of times, and yes, my life does have more drama than most. And yes, I do not think I would have wanted it any other way.
(08/06/20 4:00pm)
I really think I have lost the ability to write. I write a few lines, then erase them. I repeat the process until the page is finally blank and I have no more starters, no more words. I really think somehow I have lost the ability to create. I do not know if this is a normal feeling to have or if this is some sort of side effect of the pandemic, but I know I have it. So I have decided that, instead of worrying about the exact order of words or which ones would make my writing “prettier,” I will just write.
(05/01/20 4:00pm)
In my college essay, I had proudly proclaimed that I was not afraid of uncertainty, that I was not scared of complexity, that shades of gray only inspired me. I have to confess that it does not hold true today after three years of college. Perhaps it was never true. But I had never quite experienced this particular shade of gray that now makes me so queasy about the world we live in. I’m not queasy because I think that shade of gray is wrong, but I’m queasy because it is so universal and so complicated that there is no way to characterize it.
(03/26/20 3:00pm)
It is time to stop pretending that finances do not matter. That America is a land of equal opportunity. That anywhere in the world is a land of equal opportunity. We have heard that “with great power comes great responsibility,” but never that with money comes the greatest responsibility of all.
(03/05/20 5:00pm)
Evening meant clutching Amma’s hand and crossing Kachi Gali to reach the neighbors’ houses. After visiting Mehwish, it was Akbar ki amma’s (Akbar’s mom), as she was referred to, turn. We would stop by her house and the dusty living room, filled with placards she had embroidered herself. (“Welcome,” and, “Have a good day!” they proclaimed.) Akbar ki amma was old, and I never knew her name; she was always just Akbar ki amma, and her house seemed very lonely and empty. Amma reminded me that is why we must always visit her.
(02/20/20 5:00pm)
The sun has not been out in days, the rain seems to never stop and the dull ache in your heart is a constant, ceaseless pounding. Letting go is one of the hardest things a human being has to experience, but letting go is probably also the most universally human experience. It is not possible to navigate life without loss or grief — so one day or another we all have to let go of something or someone.
(12/05/19 5:00pm)
Sometimes the things I say sound like the babbling of a romantic idealist. My motivations for physics are too far removed from reality, my reasons for loving the subject too “soft,” and so I don’t know if I have ever really fit into the straight-back mold of an algorithmic physicist.
(11/07/19 5:00pm)
This article was going to be many things, but what it was not going to be was this nostalgic throwback to my freshman-year-fresh-out-of-high-school-self. But a Snapchat memory, some hasty scrolling back to 2017 and some three hours later, here I was thinking about how much has changed and how much has stayed the same.
(10/17/19 4:00pm)
How would I describe anxiety? Like thoughts but on steroids, on overdrive. Each one hits you like a knife slicing through your brain. Like this blackness that you swim in. You want to come up for air but you can't. It’s like your chest is made of a thousand stones and a rib cage that seems to be rigidly attached to your heart. Like something is itching inside of you. But instead of itching, it’s like someone is ravaging your insides and you can't stop it.
(10/03/19 4:00pm)
Today I am disillusioned. Today I am heartbroken. Today I look back at history and I know why we allowed atrocious crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing to take place.
(09/19/19 4:00pm)
I cannot understand Urdu literature. I cannot read Urdu poems. And I feel like a part of me has been taken from me. Urdu is the language of love, the language of the sufis, the language of the poets and now the language that has been snatched from me because of my colonized history.
(09/05/19 4:00pm)
(05/02/19 4:00pm)
A Pakistani male artist Ali Zafar was recently accused of harassing another Pakistani female artist Meesha Shafi. Shafi claimed that the harassment had occurred on several occasions, and she had chosen to stay quiet about it because she had blocked it out.
(04/11/19 4:00pm)
Pakistan was long warm nights. Pakistan was roadside cafes. Pakistan was pebbled streets and pavements merging into one another. Pakistan was friends and family and colored, dirty cloth on a table. Pakistan was chai made right. Pakistan was greasy nutella paratha and greasier fries. Pakistan was eating food that you knew would give you an upset stomach.