When we finally got through the door that night, exhausted from having taken his cousins all over Manhattan in the 97F+ weather all day, we were met with a sore sight. Well, I was met with a sore sight as I walked down the stairs into the basement.
Our entire overhead kitchen cabintery was half hanging onto the floor, barely supported by the kitchen sink and the dish rack. Fortunately, the cabinet with all my plates, glasses, spoons and expensive ceramic serving dishes I had bought from Cancun was intact, having caught onto the dish rack which prevented it from toppling and shattering everything onto the floor.
Eventually me and syed heaved it up and settled it onto the floor, and had to put everything back later the next day.
What I will not forget is how he came to me later that night, apologizing for the dismal state of affairs, for the accidents every couple of days in the basement, the no dryer, the allergies, the no a.c, the floodings, and told me I deserved better.

I don't know what I deserve, but I do know that my living condition is barely on the list. There are so many more important things I do deserve, like love. respect. security.

I may have lost hope.....but I'm not done here yet. Up and on you go eedz.

novel fodder

she stood in the New York winter cold, looking at the dewy haziness shining off the metallic towers and thought instantly of Mordor, but also(and now chuckling to herself), of Karachi. Those early winter mornings bundled in blue cardigan over coffee colored uniform, walking across the long fields hazy with dew settling on the grass in her convent school. It reminded her also of Dubai, but the haze was golden bristling sand in the sun, masquerading around twisted metal and steel sculptures.

One of the other side-effects of diaspora she thought. Not only did it never really leave your genes, but also, you found a little bit of one place in ever other place you ever went. Or maybe, you were so busy trying to make one place less foreign and more like everything else you had ever known, that its own uniqueness was completely lost to you. Unless that is, you moved again, and then the nostalgia would re-shape every dusty mote into a gleaming gold memory you would now long for.

.............

Nomads never really stop longing, do they?

....................

Razia bano spread her gharara over the divan, tucking her legs gently under her and conscious as she did so that Bai peeped at her from behind the wooden jalli, sniffing her dis-approval. Maybe it was all in her head, Razia thought. It was winter after all, the season for the common cold and Bai Ama was old. Bai had been around for generations, almost as long as the neem tree in the verandah of their house, which ... had told her, had watched over the five Khan-nawab generations and the Single Heirs.

Razia wondered if Bai had ever known about the story of the lost son, and resolved to ask her when Bai wasn't sniffing at her, cold or disapproval.

'Raz, my jaan' ..... sauntered over and seated himself on the Divan, creasing her perfectly fanned out gharara. 'There is much hubub on the street today. You should thank my lucky palmlines I made it back alive'

'And which of your lines should I thank for forgetting my paan, again?' she asked, absent-mindedly taking his hair off his eyes.

The many years at Oxford had done nothing to dull ....'s casual elegance that came so easy to the Nawabs. He sat cross-legged at ease in his kurta and still looked suave despite his goofy smile.

'What do you say Raz? Could you ever leave this? (motioning towards the open verandah in front of them) for an unknown in another land?'

'Depends. We are so comfortable here and the violence seems so far away. But then there's this'


to be continued.