How Red Sneakers Changed My Life

If I look through my posts, sift through the garbled mess of my half-written stories, I find a pattern emerging. I can identify the aspects of life I care most about, and the things that captivate me the most on this lonely planet...the sun setting over a chaotic Karachi road, a blazing orange disc in the sky, the buildings lit up from beneath with its yellowish warmth basking in the afterglow of yet another sunset, the solidity of the apartment buildings that enclose our rooftop, cutting off the view of the skyline altogether so that all you can see are rows upon rows of bright windows, each one permitting you a narrow view into the room beyond, each one a story separate and distinct from the next, unaware of life on the other side of the wall, the loneliness of the human existence and the futility of the world's many machinations which leads me to God, as everything always does in the end. We come full circle to God, to God, to God. The Beginning and The End.  Why do all my pos...

What does it mean to grow up?  I don't think we ever fully realize we're shedding little pieces of our childhood day by day, until the time comes when you're watching a scary movie or you get a random message from someone who you gave up on long ago and you suddenly realize you're able to sleep soundly through the night and aren't afraid of your own shadow for weeks afterward, that you are able to formulate a clear-headed response to a text message that might have evoked hormonal reactions had you received it a couple years earlier.  I am scared of it. I am scared of how easy it is for a human being to forget that they too, cried the first time they fell off a bike, that they once were just as inexperienced and warm and open to love as a child is. I am scared and ashamed of the disdainful look I bestow upon a child asking his mother silly questions on the bus, or the disgust with which I regard the kids running around in the park chasing sunlight.  That was ...

Where to begin? I haven’t written about anything that’s happened for too long. I’ve probably been MIA from my own journal for a year or so, okay, fine at least half a year. Sometime during 2012, I stopped turning my thoughts and emotions into words. I suppose this implies that I’m not an emotional wreck anymore.  At least, I’m more stable than I used to be, Alhamdulillah. My emotions aren’t much of a rollercoaster ride either, and that’s because I made a much-needed internal change. I made an effort to return to Allah SWT and THAT has made all the difference in the world. Obviously, I’m not the person I used to be. And I slowly begin to see the pieces of my life falling into place, like a clouded up picture that’s beginning to clear. I won’t say I’m in a position to see it completely, but I perceive the shape it’s likely to take on at the end, Inshaa Allah. When I started my blog, and wrote that first post talking about how it was going to be a story where red sneakers ch...