Lakeer
FICTION
POETRY
by Sara Shagufta, translated by Aiman Tahir Khan
by Zehra Nigah, translated by Iqra Shagufta Cheema
by Sara Shagufta, translated by Aiman Tahir Khan
by Ali Akbar Natiq, translated by Zahra Sabri
by Zehra Nigah, translated by Iqra Shagufta Cheema
by Sara Shagufta, translated by Aiman Tahir Khan
ESSAYS
INTERVIEWS
BOOKS
ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
ON THE COVER
Interview | Power, Ambition & Diasporic Nostalgia: A Conversation Daniyal Mueenuddin on Writing Pakistan
"Previously, it was the case that you attach yourself to somebody in power, and then you serve them with the expectation of certain kinds of reciprocity, which is never stated. Now, it is different and the change has been accelerated so much by these smartphones, for example."
Essay | Childhood, Schools, and the White Man’s Last Burden
Here’s a brief list of a few things they didn’t learn in preschool: that much of their milk came from buffaloes, that there are no sweet pink piglets going oink in the farms that raise their food, that the wheels of a riotously decorated bus in Lahore can also go round and round.
Interview | زندگی، ہنر، افسانہ: رفاقت حیات کے ساتھ ایک گفتگو
by Hammad Rind
ادب پڑھنے کا آغاز شاعری سے ہوا کیوں کہ مجھے پندرہ سال کی عمر میں عشق ہوگیا تھا۔ وہ کہتے ہیں نا کہ چھوٹی عمر کا عشق زوردار ہوتا ہے تو اس کے زیرِ اثر میری توجہ فوراًشاعری کی طرف ہوگئی۔
Fiction | Solitudes
by Raja'a Khalid
So how fitting this malady of the voice. The doctor had said Zara wasn’t to speak for at least four days after the surgery, perhaps even a little longer, using only a pen on paper for any communication. Sanya smiled covertly, thinking that after all these years Zara Apa had finally gotten her wish. She would talk to no one and no one would bother her with silly questions.
Books | Looking at the Unseen
by Azra Emilia Ali
This thrall that devotion can have over a person is also explored in ‘Dead Lovers On Each Blade, Hung’. The story’s format is immediately gripping: an unnamed Heroinchi narrator recounts events to a police inspector, grounding the story in a setting where the supernatural is rarely expected.
My daughter’s nightlights through the doorway ache — she is/Awake a palavering wind, asleep a lucent magpie, oh Shahid.//I beg — and call it prayer — for the Muslims’ eternal sleep to pass,/
But winter is never swift, though the believer’s cradle burns by and by, oh Shahid.
Eyes forged from our tears,
we tugged the tides of our sorrow.
Each of us grieved
in his own way.
I am no feller of empires.
I am no avenger of the fallen.
I am no protector of legacy.
mama and i readying the translucent tarp early morning pushing the furniture
to the wall the dining table right under the tv where papa squeezes lemon onto the liver
In conversation | New Rules for Living: A Conversation Between Mahreen Sohail and Raaza Jamshed
I was very conscious of wanting to write a mixed-race couple in which both partners were people of color. I’ve so often seen, in Anglophone literature, the South Asian woman positioned opposite a white partner, and the tension mapped onto a simple racial and linguistic binary.
From the archives
ٖPoetry | ملول اب یہ سبو جام by Pirzada Asjal Alvi
ملول اب یہ سبو جام کیا ہونگے
دیوانے بےنام اب عام کیا ہونگے
تم روٹھو میں مناؤں، میں روٹھوں تم نہ آو
نحیف اس شمع کے اجالے انتقام کیا ہونگے
Essay | Notes on Clifton, Block 2 by Eman Farhan
I take good care of my cat, I don’t think he’s depressed, no. I do everything. Tonight, I watch him twitch in his sleep, unable to imagine his dreams. Do his dreams take place in this flat? Is he chasing his toy, or a fly, or me?
Interview | Opposing Forces: Lariab Ahmad on What Drives Her As An Artist by A Arain
My minithesis and thesis set the foundations, blurring the line between what is above and under the waters – the ripples in one dimension generate waves, disturbing the waters in the other. It is so human to attempt to organise ambiguity.
Poetry | Dawat-e-December by Misha Anwar
If you had a little more time, things would be different/But as before, the cruel cold month reveals that it is all in vain./You could break every clock in the world and still be left wanting
Essay | Lebanon by Farah-Silvana Kanaan
Photos from the journalist Farah-Silvana Kanaan’s series ‘ghosts from the past’, ‘dahiye – between ruins & rebuilding’, and others.
Fiction | Punne by Rashid Jahan, translated by Tehseen Baweja
I started walking towards the station since whenever my older brother comes to town, he arrives by the morning train, and if I am not there to receive him, he gets upset. Whenever he is due to arrive, it’s hard for Amma to fall asleep, fearful of me oversleeping and causing my brother frustration.