I just blogged to say I hate this

With apologies to Stevie Wonder.

No New Year’s Day to celebrate
No Baitullah Mehsud to scare, he’s been droned away
No end to stereotyping
No songs for Musharraf to sing
In fact here’s just another ordinary day

No one is sane
No peace looms
No weddings can run till the next day’s noon
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you

I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
I know you’ll retweet that too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

No summer’s high
No electricity in July
No NRO left on which to write
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for drones to fly in Quetta’s skies

No Younis Khan
No sanity
No giving thanks to all the rants Blackwater brings
But what it is, though old so new
That TTP scares you like no three letters could ever do

I just blogged to say I hate this
I just tweeted to say I know you do too
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

If you’d like to sing along, here’s the original, saccharine Stevie Wonder song:

life’s like an hourglass glued to the table

aWhen one is confronted with the ghosts of their past; there are two things to do – look on them fondly or wonder where time flew by. But very rarely, you look at the past, present and future with fondness, and realize that something you knew all along is materializing itself in ways you never thought possible.

Why do I have to leave now when I am finally, finally comfortable with the person I have become here, when I feel like a local and am super efficient work-wise – it doesn’t seem to make sense that in a few days (fingers crossed) I will have no use for all of this, none at all.

you said it, babe

My horoscope for today.

You are probably concerned with serious matters today, which can lure you past the lighter issues that typically interest you. Maybe you missed something or maybe you just got it wrong and now get a second chance. Reconsider what in your life is most valuable to you. Be practical, for you could be required to live with your current choices for a while.

My horoscope for today

Your dilemma is growing bigger. No way. Dilemma needs to diet, cos it ain’t looking so pretty right about now either

One voice tells you to keep your feet on the ground and stay realistic. That explains the 3 hour conversation I had with my conscience last night.

The other voice is telling you to trust your instincts, even if you don’t understand where they are taking you. That also explains why there were multiple reasonings that my conscience came up with yesterday

These two divergent courses of action are so far apart that you don’t even know where to begin. Yep, definitely something a 4 year degree and years of myriad work experiences can’t teach you.

Start from a practical perspective and work your way out to other options slowly. Practicality? Rrrrigght.

From Pearls Before Swine

The Two-Month Milestone

So today marks two months that I have been away from home.

Amman now feels more like home – I know the streets and the familiar signs, I have stopped getting lost and freaking out with the crazy driving, I have rediscovered arguileh (read: shisha) and discovered way too many things about myself.

Today is a Sunday and as the day dragged on (Monday blues just change into Sunday blues..) I started thinking about home and what I would have done on the weekend at home – slept, eaten homecooked food, slept, tried to drag Smoky off the chair, eaten more food and hung out at Espresso.

Today is a Sunday and I feel completely restless. As I chat with friends and family from all over the world online, and try and convince myself to get off the chair and go home, I wonder about the series of events that has brought me here.

I am 22 years old, and I have spent the past 2 months of my life living completely away from every association I called home, and am now living in a city very different from my own, with people completely different from my friends, and have a life that I never imagined leading.

Over the years, I always thought this would happen – the eventual moving away from all ties and connections and familiarity, and it happened gradually through the past few years, but the instantaneous change that this has been took a while to register and get used to. And while I do sometimes fall apart by the smallest of things, I put myself together again and look forward to the great beyond…

…Which is easier to do in Jordan where on any random day you can see till Israel, Palestine and Syria, see fireworks explode in the sky, watch lives change and people change, and realize that you are truly living a new chapter in your life, and not a pre-determined plan that you always thought you would follow.

wide open spaces

karachi coastline at sunset
Originally uploaded by SabaImtiaz.

Putting time and distance between myself and the world around me – priceless.

fields of gold

*fingers and toes crossed* – moving to Jordan for a year in a few months..

BlogWordOfTheDay: Wait

The wait – between what is and what will be – seems to have stretched beyond my imagination.

It alternates between being endless and painful..
..and exciting and wondrous.

It is often overrated..and often underrated.

The wait will kill me.
The wait will make me stronger.
The wait fills me with a sense of unknown;
of strange excitement at the vast expanse of the future that lies ahead.