I Wish You Love...

I was retracing the steps …

The knot in the pit of my stomach grew as I got closer. Even though you would not be there, my every moment would be yours. There was nowhere in the city we had not been together, nowhere that didn’t bring me back to you.

Memorials to us on the mountain.
Reminders of us at the ocean.
The times we spent in each others company.
The times when nothing else mattered.
When we were together time stopped.

Feeling complete is something we spend our lives trying to attain, so what does one do when one has tasted ‘completeness’ and then has to let it go. How do you live this life knowing how it could be? How it should be?

Every minute in this city is a firefly in the darkness of what ‘us’ has become. Where do you run from your own heart?

I wish you beauty beloved, I wish you beauty and in those difficult moments when the lump in your throat begins to rise I wish you ease.

I wish you calm beloved when the pain makes your heart race and I wish you hope beloved, the hope that comes with knowing there are pieces of heaven on earth and when it feels like despair has triumphed those pieces of heaven often find their way into the light.

But most of all beloved I wish you love for without it there is nothing.

Woman Of The Desert

(Source : Google)

For My Country

The mourners filled the living room and spilled out into the passage and out of the front door. Their praying was a low murmur as the men came in to fetch the body. The body lay on the floor covered in 6 meters of white calico, it was difficult to believe that life oozed out of every pore of his body, especially his hazel brown eyes.

She averted her gaze, the tears still streamed out of her eyes. He would walk through the door any moment now, this was all her imagination, she had replayed his return in her mind a million times. “Hey babes what’s for dinner”, he would say, smiling, his white teeth sparkling.

The murmur turned into wailing and screaming as they lifted the body into the coffin, the men would give prayers for the dead and proceed to the graveyard for the burial, the women would pray here, which was what was suppose to happen in theory, the reality was that they would strip of their head scarves and reach for their cigarettes, as there was usually no smoking while the body was still in the house.

It had been earlier this morning, she had got out of the bed for prayers at dawn, pulled on her tracksuit and went for her run. She got back and jumped into the shower, smiling about one of their honeymoon memories as she stood under the steaming water. She had thrown on something casual and skipped downstairs for breakfast, Aadil was still in bed, she was glad that at two and a half he was into a full night’s sleeping routine.

There was a knock on the door, “who could that be?”, her mother in law was only due around 10:00 to take Aadil to the zoo for the day , it was only 8:30. She opened the door, two uniformed men , stood silently .

“Good Morning ma’am, We are sorry to inform you…"

She heard nothing, her eyes had fallen onto the folded flag in his hands.

Stanza

If they snatch my ink and pen,
I should not complain,
For I have dipped my fingers
In the blood of my heart.
I should not complain
Even if they seal my tongue,
For every ring of my chain
Is a tongue ready to speak.
- Faiz Ahmad Faiz

waiting for a rainy day...

Diplomatic Endowments

A distinguished Pakistani diplomat has allegedly been denied agrément (accreditation) to serve as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (and possibly any other Arab-speaking country) because his name, Akbar Zeb, equates to "Biggest Dick" in Arabic. Ambassador Zeb is a firm, well rounded professional who has an impressive portfolio. He's quite a big shot in the diplomatic spheres where he has hard decisions to take but is well known for his oral skills - he was the head of the Pakistani embassy in South Africa and before that, at the pinnacle of his foreign affairs career, he served in Washington and New Delhi. His Excellency is currently the High Commissioner for Pakistan in Canada. In his limp response to the news, Ambassador Zeb dismissed the story as rumours but sources close to him say that it was a massive task to get to grips with and that he feels rear-ended by the situation. His legal representatives expressed his desire to penetrate the cell responsible for this defamation. The reaction from the public was slow but is quickly gaining momentum and is now said to be reaching its climax on the internet websites. Saudi officials kept a stiff upper lip on the issue, however insiders said that senior government persons were in deep thought over the debacle and would likely engage in fluid discussions with Pakistan to avoid any potential missile strike on the tightly guarded Kingdom as a result of the diplomatic incident. It would seem that both parties are eager that a solution to the dilemma comes quickly. Never in the annals of the history between the two nations has there been such an embarrassing let down. At the end of it all, the matter seems to have been a huge cockup in the foreign relations.

You've Got To Fight

If violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression had never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of the non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand – year – old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors.

-Jean-Paul Satre

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness--

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

(The quatrain above comes from Edward Fitzgerald's second edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1868. Fitzgerald's treatments of Omar Khayyam's poems brought the Persian poet to the attention of the western world more than 700 years after the poems were written.)