1. Blue skies and fresh air 2. Good food 3. Being able to communicate with anyone properly (English is not a first language even for most of the non Chinese people I meet). 4. The beach 5. Family, the kids especially 6. Cheap prices of anything (in Shanghai everything is […]

I am walking in New York. Somewhere near the Flatiron building. I have my camera with me. I am always walking. Always bewildered. I am always cold. I am always tired. Always amazed. I am alone. I know I am alone. There are buildings around me as I cross the […]

Shanghai, 14:01 12 June 2016 The rain in a big city can teach you many things. It is rainy season here now and almost every week it rains. The city shines in this weather, the lights which are already so many, double, triple, there’s lights everywhere. In the evening the […]

One night when I was eleven, we were eating dinner. Spaghetti. The tablecloth was red. Cross-legged on the floor. Forks in hand. And it was the first time we had a strange male at dinner; he wanted to marry my sister. And we, the other three sisters, were giggling until […]

She takes his hand. Leans her forehead into the fist. She is shaking. She opens his hand with her face still against it. Let’s her face rest in it. In the palm of his hand. Her eyes are closed. They sit like this for a long time.

“ما زلت أؤمن أن الإنسان لا يموت دفعة واحدة و إننا نموت بطريقة الأجزاء؛ كلما رحل صديق مات جزء، و كلما غاردنا حبيب مات جزء، و كلما قتل حلم من أحلامنا مات جزء، فيأتى الموت الأكبر ليجد كل الأجزاء ميتة، فيحملها ويرحل “ —جبران خليل جبران “I still believe that […]

I miss abbajaan. Of his 90 years of life, we’ve spent 30 living together.

‘Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, “Emergency, emergency,” and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it […]

1. He tells me that before – for a good few years – he could not talk about her without crying. 2. She tells me that the grief she went through when they divorced, the feeling of the end of everything prepared her for when her father died years later. […]

I stand on a rooftop looking down at the street. Waiting.my heart,an ache,pulled taut, there’s a hundred roses that daysuspended from the sky.