Tag life
The first thing Aaliya Mirza did after inheriting the haveli was try to sell it. The second thing she did was lie about trying to sell it. “There is no buyer,” she told her mother over breakfast. Farah Mirza stopped buttering her toast. “There is always a buyer.” “For a three-hundred-year-old building with bats, lawsuits … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The trouble began with a blue bottle no larger than a thumb. It was found on a Tuesday morning in the locked room above Suleman Attar House, wedged behind three ledgers, a broken wall clock and a tin box containing receipts from shops that no longer existed. On its faded label, Haji Suleman had written … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
By nine-thirty on Sunday morning, three things had already gone wrong in the Siddiqui household. The milk had boiled over. Abu had misplaced his glasses. And Hamza had eaten the paratha Ammi had kept aside for Areeba. Again. Areeba entered the dining room with wet hair, one earring on, and the particular expression of someone … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
It’s important to have a part of your day that is a ritual. When you write all day it is very easy to spend your time sitting, typing, drinking coffee, researching, reading and so on. It’s great for getting the work done but not so great for your body, or for your mind, for that […]... mehr auf selmainthecity.wordpress.com
Happy last Monday in September! Several weeks after Joe’s passing, I was putting something away in the closet and saw my film camera. Seeing it gave me the idea to get back into photography, a hobby that got put on married life’s back burner. I decided to upgrade it to a DSLR camera (Cannon). During… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
Nobody in the house knew when Farzana Begum had started saying it. Perhaps that was the strange thing. Families remembered dramatic beginnings. The night Abba died. The afternoon Maham’s engagement broke. The morning Adeel announced that he was leaving his safe bank job to start his own business. The day Hira left the country with … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
A Sufi’s understanding of a woman who was simply feeling beautiful. The saree had been lying in her wardrobe for quite some time. A pale green silk with little golden leaves scattered across it, and a red border that caught the light rather beautifully. She had bought it because she liked it. There had been … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
“Thanks for the tan lines, mosquito bites and memories, summer.” – Unknown Yes, tan lines, mosquito bites, and reunions, were part of my summer as were a few other things pictured below. Since we have a lot of high winter winds, I do not expect this dead treetop to be here next summer. The massive… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
By the time Alina reached Cairo, the evening had already begun to soften. The city did not arrive all at once. It revealed itself the way old people tell stories—slowly, with pauses, with details that seemed unimportant until suddenly they were everything. First came the pale gold dust in the air. Then the traffic, restless … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
A Sufi story about the art of breathing, and the things we leave unsaid. 1. The Inheritance The first thing Alizeh Mirza inherited from her grandfather was a building in Karachi. The second was a parrot that knew three languages and used all of them to insult visitors. The third was a letter. The letter … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
“Summer is leaving silently. Much like a traveler approaching the end of an amazing journey.” – Darnell Lamont Walker Summer is slowly giving away to autumn. The warm summer wind will give way to the cooler autumn winds. The leaves on these trees at a cemetary will quit looking like broccoli and will transition into… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
A story of Hukam Rajāī — and the strange mercy of what did not happen The morning Meher was supposed to get married, her father polished his shoes twice. Nobody noticed. There were fifty-three people in the house, three caterers arguing in the courtyard, cousins carrying trays of jasmine from one room to another, a … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Well, it appears that what I thought was a burning need to write again in my last post wasn’t accurate. But, here’s a post at nine months since the last one instead of a year, or three, apart. Today, I was struck with the thought that I’d not logged into WordPress in a while and […]... mehr auf musingsoftheamusingmuse.wordpress.com
* For my dearest friend, Ms Karen, the most integral part of the Writers’ Collective – When I look back on my life I know I have made mistakes, everyone has. Sometimes those mistakes pertained to my perception of my life or of myself. I often carried myself with a lament sounding in my head, […]... mehr auf selmainthecity.wordpress.com
If I could turn back time to Monday, September 10, 2001, here is what I would tell myself. “Seize the day by SAVORING it – every single moment.” It might be a Monday, but savor this day. You are not a morning person, but savor this morning. Savor the good morning kiss and the goodbye… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
Labor Day was spent driving though a cemetary looking for photo contest shots. While driving around I came upon a cigar tree – at least that is what us neighborhood kids called the one iin the neighbor’s yard. The technical name is Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa). The cigars in this photo are green cylinders but… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
A Story of Baghdad, Loss, and the Strange Wealth of Gratitude It rained the night Shahmir Mirza lost his house. Not violently. Baghdad had seen enough violence in its lifetime to know that ruin did not always need thunder. Sometimes it arrived quietly. It fell upon old balconies, darkened the stone walls of the Mirza … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
At 2:17 in the morning, Mahnoor received a voice note from her mother. Her mother had been dead for forty days. The message was only eleven seconds long. “Mahnoor,” the familiar voice said, soft but faintly impatient, “stop standing outside closed doors. Some doors remain closed because there is nothing behind them.” Then came the … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
At least I did not state it was time to pirouette! Click the link to learn how if you are ambitious. A time to weep,And a time to laugh;A time to mourn,And a time to dance; Ecclesiastes 3:4 Another month is over. To celebrate click this link to watch and waltz to Yanni’s The End of… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
My neighbour, Lila, moved out last weekend. We had bonded over shared experiences, the greatest of which was a terrible split from our exes. I didn’t know she was moving until a few days before the truck came. She didn’t want to tell me, “I feel like I’m a failure,” she said. Her reason for […]... mehr auf selmainthecity.wordpress.com
Nobody knew who started it. This was important because by 11:42 a.m., everybody knew. At 9:17 that morning, the CEO had walked into the office with a man nobody recognised. At 9:19, Reception thought he was a client. At 9:26, Accounts decided he was an auditor. At 9:41, somebody from Sales had established—with absolutely no … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
There has been plenty of rain this month. The weather radio has blasted it’s siren several times most rainy days. Temperatures have also cooled down to mostly 70’s with 50’s and 60’s at night. Sleeping with the windows open and snuggled under my fleece blanket is heaven. August Rain: the best of the summer gong,… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
Mahnoor Siddiqui earned her living manufacturing emotions for other people. She was thirty-eight, lived in Lahore, and worked as the creative director of an advertising agency where twenty-four-year-olds wore black in June and used the word authentic in meetings without appearing embarrassed. Mahnoor could sell anything. She had made a ho... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Maira Siddiqui earned her living by completing other people’s sentences. “I am an innovator.” “I am a woman of substance.” “I am building the future.” From a glass-walled studio in Lahore’s Gulberg, she created public identities for people who already had private ones—and often wanted nothing to do with them. Her company was called IAM. The &#... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
It was 49 years ago today Elvis Presley moved to heaven. He will always be known as the King of Rock n’ Roll, the greatest entertainer of all time. Some people would shorten the title to The King, but he did not like that as Jesus is The King. He is correct. Jesus is The… ... mehr auf joyreturns.com
Do you ever feel like the current state of the world has cast you inescapably into a toxic relationship? If you went to see a psychologist and said “I’m in this relationship and I’m watched everywhere I go, my data can be accessed and used against me at any time, I can’t talk about the […]... mehr auf selmainthecity.wordpress.com
The first thing Mrs. Sarmad noticed about the man was that everything he wore was black. Black kurta. Black trousers. Black shawl despite the mild Lahore morning. Even the leather string around his wrist was black. The second thing she noticed was that he had parked a very expensive Italian car outside her gate. These … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
In Karachi, there are families whose wealth is announced by gates, guards and German cars. And then there are families whose wealth has grown so old that it has learned not to introduce itself. The Mirzas belonged to the second kind. Their house stood on Khayaban-e-Shujaat behind an old sandstone wall covered with bougainvillea. It … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
The first thing anyone noticed about the Sharma household was that nobody ever drank tea at the same time. That was because nobody could. There were eleven people under one roof. Dadaji believed tea should be made before sunrise because “the birds don’t wait for lazy people.” Dadiji insisted the tea leaves should boil for … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Every morning at 3:15, while the city still belonged to silence, a single light would appear in the old lane behind the gurudwara. It was not the streetlight. It was not the moon. It was the faint yellow glow from the kitchen window of House No. 17, where seventy-year-old Bhai Harjeet Singh would quietly wrap … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Some garments are stitched with thread. The rare ones are stitched with prayer. Every morning, before the city had completely awakened, Meher climbed to the old rooftop of her grandfather’s haveli. She never carried a sketchbook. Only a cup of cardamom tea. The pigeons knew her. The breeze greeted her. The rising sun painted the … ... mehr auf sumitajetley.wordpress.com
Jedes Jahr geben die Deutschen mehr als 120 Millionen Euro für Feuerwerk aus. Und für was? Für etwas, was im animistischen Glauben früher „böse Geister“ vertreiben sollte. Heutzutage ist Silvester nur noch gut zum Party machen, Alkohol trinken und Geld anzünden. Für mich persönlich ist Silvester – abgesehen vom Fernsehprogramm und den L... mehr auf chogaramirez.wordpress.com
Die Brandnoozbox bot diesmal eine sehr bunte Mischung an. Gar nicht schlecht. Leider war unsere Chipspackung kaputt. Dazu kann ich euch also leider gar nichts sagen. Sauber geplatzt war sie wohl. Sah wie frisch geöffnet aus, vermutlich einfach Druck von oben beim einpacken oder auch während des Transports. Erst das zweite Mal das bei uns […]... mehr auf lilaplaetzchen.wordpress.com
Manche Wochen verlaufen erst einmal doof, zum Beispiel wenn ich eineinhalb Tage mit Migräne im Bett liege und mich davor noch zur Arbeit geschleppt habe. Natürlich kommt auch nur an solchen Tagen der Chef viermal zu mir und sieht, wie ich Blogs lese, anstatt ordentlich zu arbeiten, wobei Letzteres einfach nicht mehr ging und Ersteres […]... mehr auf janavar.net
Damit der Mai nicht so ganz ohne zweiten Blogpost vergeht, habe ich mich durchgerungen, mal wieder ein Update zu posten. Und zwar, damit es nicht gleich zu aufregend wird, über meine Rosen. Die paar Leser, die sich noch hierher verirren, … Weiterlesen →... mehr auf chiefjudy.com
Und ich bin Live dabei auf Twitch!!! Das heißt direkt wenn die neue Episode des Verkaufsschlagers (über 1 Millionen Exemplare wurden bisher verkauft) raus kommt, werde ich sie runterladen und starten. Natürlich nur auf englisch, da die deutschen Fansubs erst Wochen später verfügbar sein werden. Wollt ihr also auch direkt am Releasetag dieses Spi... mehr auf jkl-solutions.de
Ich trinke zuviel Kaffee. Diese Diagnose kann ich mir leicht selbst stellen. Als Therapie trinke ich ab sofort nach der vierten Tasse Kaffee am Tag ein Glas Wasser, sobald bei mir die Lust nach Koffein aufkommt. Das klappt ganz prima. … Weiterlesen →... mehr auf cpunktb.wordpress.com
Kaum hat mich die Arbeit wieder, komm ich auch schon wieder zu nichts. Und ich hatte mir doch so vorgenommen, heuer wieder mal eine “Best of ” – Liste des vergangenen Jahres zu schreiben. Oh well. Vielleicht hab ich die … Weiterlesen →... mehr auf chiefjudy.com
Mein #29daysofblogging ist am Ende doch nicht ganz so gelaufen, wie ich es geplant hatte. In der letzten Februarwoche hat mich der unerwartete Stress eingeholt, weshalb ich “nur” an 24 von den 29 Tagen gebloggt habe. Dennoch fand ich das Projekt äußerst interessant und es hat mir bis zum Schluss Spaß gemacht. Auch wenn es […]... mehr auf janavar.net
Sie sind überall zu finden: Packlisten für Wandertouren, für Fahrradtouren, zum Backpacken, zum Flashbacken, für eine Fernreise, für einen Städtetrip. Aber eine Packliste zum Arbeiten im Ausland habe ich noch nie gesehen. Willkommen zu meinem nächsten Teil von Reisen und damit Geld verdienen. Was packe ich für die Arbeit im Ausland ein. Beim Backpa... mehr auf worldwhisperer.wordpress.com
heute ... ich mach die steuer 2025, ich held 
