Last December, during the Cop 17 United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Durban, I found myself alongside a Nigerian, Senegalese and Kenyan woman in the International Convention Centre’s prayer room. They were speaking in hushed tones when I entered but I soon gathered that the topic of discussion was how […]
Source: http://bit.ly/11jTAiE I can’t cook in a kitchen smelling of blood.
Ramadaan is the anticipation of a restless month. Ramadaan is the empty feeling beneath my ribcage as I sit at my desk at work. Ramadaan is the creak in my knees as they hit the ground for a hundredth time as I supplicate myself to God. Ramadaan is the unbearable […]
There are no great signals when love enters your life. There are no claps of thunder or slow motion shots or eyes meeting across the room. Love creeps quietly into your shadow; it walks delicately on its toes alongside you and nimbly dodges your sideways glances. It soaks into the […]
There is something unsettled in me, if I give it a moment, They say, it will settle, If I let it breathe and grow and Be They say it will fix, (like a cut healed with a scar no one sees) There is something undone, They tell me to give […]
I never thought I was going to be a writer. And it was mainly because of one reason: my hair. You see I’ve inherited my mother’s fine hair and I’ve always believed good writers, particularly good Asian female writers must have a head full of healthy hair to be taken […]
(Originally published in April 2012 at www.kabobfest.com)
When I was young and easily influenced by the likes of Chicken Soup for the Soul and Dr Phil, I scratched a line in my Life Goal book: Publish a novel by 25. And while I even surprised myself when I did it, I think it proves that all my life I […]
In the sudden stillness of midnight when the sky is silent you return. Quietly you open the door and slip in to lie beside me breathing hard from where ever it is you’ve been walking. And I don’t know where you’ve been and I don’t want to know what you’ve […]
Through the windows, the landscape passes, like wind through my hair, the train passes through dawn, A crisp light in the air, passengers fumble for blankets, toothbrushes, a hand to grasp Curtains drawn a yawn a supplication to God Voices, foreign the land stops, the cold morning air And me, […]
