FICTION
POETRY
ESSAYS
INTERVIEWS
ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
ON THE COVER
Essay | Ghuttan: A Sociocultural Illness by Muhammad Khuzaima Nizami
The Rohi-wasi, across the Cholistan desert, comment on Ghuttan using examples of irrigation, heat, ACs, cars, relationships, economic prosperity...by primarily understanding that a neat separation of those elements is one of the characteristics of the past that is no longer possible in our times.
Interview | Heirlooms and the Earth: A Conversation with Iman Ahmed
by Leena Zaidi
"...my interest in objects is always in the ones which outlive us. I think about our mortality compared to the mortality of these objects. They’re fascinating because they’re functional but also really symbolic: We walk on them...we repair them when they get damaged or moth-eaten; we gift them on weddings. These same carpets see people’s funerals – they’re the places where people pray the final prayers. These carpets change contexts over a lifetime"
Interview | 'Death & Flowers': Ali Baluch on Recording the Demise of the Malir River
by Omair Danish
The expressway has changed it a lot. Before I even get to the landscape, I think about how a few years ago, when I would leave my house, I would see woodpeckers and sparrows, and lots of other different birds. Now, there are no birds left except crows. The birds have gone, the trees are gone, the farms are gone. There used to be no pollution here, and now there’s quite a bit of it. And, again, it’s from the Malir Expressway. Now when I leave my house, I can see the expressway.
Fiction | God Story
by Irta Usman
To put it simply, in his own words, Awais Bhai was a special man of God, Allah ka khaas banda. He had simply been chosen to have access to a certain type of knowledge; he was gifted in a way that most people were not. This is why he never charged for his “services.” People left what they could at his doorstep, but he never asked for anything in return. The older men in the neighborhood claimed he gave it all to charity at the end of each week.
Fiction | دھان کی فصل
by Ali Akbar Natiq
نومبر کا آغاز ہونے والا تھا۔ موسم میں سردی کی لہر داخل ہو گئی تھی۔ گائوں کے ارد گرد گنے، باجرے اور جوار کے کھیت بھی تھے لیکن زیادہ تر دھان کی فصلیں تھیں جنہیں کاٹ دینے کے بعد زمین ایک طرح سے ننگی ہو گئی تھی اور دھان کے آدھے سبز اور آدھے سوکھے پودے جگہ جگہ ڈھیر کی شکل میں نظر آتے تھے۔ ہم اِنہیں پرالی کہتے تھے۔ دھان کی جڑیں جنہیں بُچڑ کہتے، ابھی تک زمین میں پیوست تھیں۔ اِن جڑوں پر ایک مہینہ تک ہل نہیں پھیرا جانا تھا۔ بُچڑ والے کھیتوں میں چرواہوں نے بکریاں اور بھیڑیں چھوڑ رکھی تھیں اور خود لمبے بانس کی چھڑیاں لیے اُن کے آگے پیچھے پھرتے تھے۔
تو گدھ ہے
میں مور
تیری بھوک
گوشت خور
And tomorrow, there will be the hour of war, creeping like a reptile/across the fields where two countries grow rice with their backs // to each other and fly kites this time of the year to welcome spring/Turning time to flesh
A darker shade of grief red now
You were there too with your sweet tooth
Like some feral animal
Monsoon in a dying city
falters, and waits.
Essay | Five Hundred Words a Day: Creativity in the Time of Monsters
by Sakina Hassan
Sometimes, as I go about cooking and cleaning, my imagination begins constructing scenarios where I don’t have access to running water or piped gas. My mind unspools the many steps needed to navigate daily life without the comforts of modern living. The worries soon become more specific: What if I couldn’t afford these eggs in my breakfast? What if there was no roof over my head during this spring storm? What if I had no paracetamol to soothe the baby’s fever or an antibiotic to help shorten the duration of his latest illness?
From the archives
ٖPoetry | Rabbi shrah-li sadri by Fatima Shafi
Wa yassir-li amri/I cannot speak without it tracing the contours of my words – filtering/them, giving them a foreign touch.
Essay | Lahore Between Two Trains: Then and Now by Faizan Ahmad
I was new in the city, I didn’t know how to belong. The Metrobus had just launched at that time. For twenty rupees, I could go from one end of Lahore to the other without asking anyone for help. I still remember that first ride, standing in line, copying how others swiped their card, pretending I wasn’t lost.
Books | Paying Attention to the Past and the Present by Maham Farhan
The words of these poets give a sort of tassali, a comfort: that this is a generation of writers both deeply in tune with its literary inheritances and unafraid to extend them into new terrains, attentive to their world’s wounds yet willing to dream despite them.
Poetry | Two Sunsets on a Sunday by Ahmad Aamir Malik
For the first time in a month,
the canal is brimming full-
full with a childhood
I can cry out under the evening sky.
Fiction | Naag Phalli’s Miracle by Manahil Tahira
She dragged Naag Phalli under the lantern and tilted her head back. There it was – a faint shimmer of red curving inward. Ama Bakhaan did not find the sore’s head. She jerked Naag Phalli left and right. She pulled her lips down over her jaw and peered in.
Interview | Archiving the Familiar and Familial: A Conversation with Irum Rahat by Maliha Hasan
There is so much about family, women’s lives, and domesticity that it becomes important to tell all those stories too. I think for me, painting these moments is a lot like practicing quiet resistance.