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)