I didn’t make it to Lahore this December.

“It’s just as well,” X quoted his colleague. “You wouldn’t have been able to breathe in Lahore.”

This is not metaphorical. I’m told that the pollution and smog in Lahore is now so bad that the city shuts down at noon because there’s too much smog to see the person in front of you.

“It looks like night in midday,” Y quoted my aunt. “It is so depressing.”

People who go outside wear masks to protect themselves against the manmade air.

I have an image of Lahore smeared in black cloud. I think of how massive and thick it must be to kill the red midday sun.

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This entry is from November 15th, 2024.

*NOTE: Why am I posting my journal entries? See my inaugural post: Beyond journalism

Flashbacks and what to do with them; flash-forwards and what to do with them. October 7, encampments, and whatever it is I’m feeling now.

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The five entries here are from 2024 and ordered as follows: Oct. 7th; Oct. 30th; Oct. 5th; Sept. 5th/ Sept. 3rd/ Oct. 26 (amalgamated); and Oct. 30th.

*NOTE: Why am I posting my journal entries? See my inaugural post: Beyond journalism

I walk to my claustrophobic building. I wrote to X, to Y, to Z, to W, to Q, to R. I wrote stupid things: are you okay, I hope you’re okay, that your family is okay, that your friends are okay, if there’s anything I can do, anything, something I can write, tell me. It took me an hour and a half to try to eat half a breakfast. My coat around my shoulders, my heels and blue blistered feet. I want to run away into the woods. I can’t breathe in this building, this building of my dreams. I want badly to cry. I walk to the bathroom stall, this grey place where I pretend the walls are made of marble, and stand with my forehead against the cold door until I’m lulled into dullness. In the lab, everyone is typing rapidly.

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This entry is from September 20th, 2024.

*NOTE: Why am I posting my journal entries? See my inaugural post: Beyond journalism

So it’s all over. None of them are happy. Every single one is alone and burdened for eternity. I carried them in my heart for thirty episodes; I thought often of their volatility, I learned from them. Now, I sit back and think “I’m so sorry things ended like this.”

Mein is not a romance in the Western sense. Mein is self-destruction, vengeance, power, its origins, how love is tested, ravaged, sacrificed, born by it.

The number of scenes where Zaid stares at his ceiling, jarred and plotting; Aira stares out the window, pale and tearful; Mubashira stares at the trembling arch of her fused hands against her forehead. It is not in their nature to cower. It is not in mine.

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This entry is from August 17th, 2024.

*NOTE: Why am I posting my journal entries? See my inaugural post: Beyond journalism

I slept four hours. Instagram is flooded with posts like “the final stage of the genocide has started.”

My head is pounding. I came home, snagged another four hours of sleep. I dreamt of code and ceasefire. I have eaten nothing for nearly twelve hours. I made my breakfast - the toasted bread, the bell pepper hummus, the runny yolk and sprinkled cheese. This house is quiet. Outside, there is sunshine and chirping birds.

Y, in Rafah, posts: Is the time to leave again? To find a place again? To find water again? To run looking for the fake safety again?

What do I write to her? Do I text her something as trivial and loaded as a large red heart?

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The six entries here are ordered as follows: November 23rd, 2024; December 18th, 2023; March 24th, 2024; May 10th, 2024; February 4th, 2024; June 18th, 2024.

*NOTE: Why am I posting my journal entries? See my inaugural post: Beyond journalism

I miss Pakistan.

X said on the phone “Pakistan is a memory; I don’t yearn for it”.

I do yearn for it.

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The three entries here are ordered as follows: March 19th, 2024; August 29th, 2022; and June 11th, 2021.

*NOTE: Why am I posting my journal entries? See my inaugural post: Beyond journalism

I am finding it increasingly necessary to publish work that would not be accepted as “traditional journalism”. I want to publish some of my journal entries. I want people to have access to my voice, my non-journalistic voice, the voice that is known by very few, and within those few, only selected accounts of that voice. I want to do this because, as a journalist, I think people must know who I am. They must know who they are entrusting with their truth, their narrative, their person. They must know who will carry their reality into written record - historical record - for the world to know.

(*artwork by Incé Husain)