“[T]he state of longing for a radically altered homeland - a home that may not even exist any longer - is something that is being rapidly, and tragically, globalised.

In his latest book, The Conflict Shoreline, the Israeli architect Eyal Weizman has a groundbreaking take on how these forces are intersecting.​† The main way we’ve understood the ( Read more... )

“Scott had been a nurse until his opioid addiction cost him his license; Lamar had been a crack addict when he lost his lower legs to the cold. In the most spectacular example of improvidence, 54-year-old Larraine blows an entire month’s worth of food stamps on a single meal of lobster tails, shrimp, crab and lemon meringue pie, washed down with ( Read more... )

“No journalist is the first person to know anything, if they’re reporting on what happened to another person, though you might be the first person to listen. It’s always someone else’s story first, and it never stops being their story too, no matter how well you tell it, how widely you spread it.

Even what you deem worthy to report, who you quote ( Read more... )

“One quickly learned that the newsroom was a place rife with powerful networks, which nurtured and anointed a few golden boys - and occasionally, although much less frequently back then, golden girls. These networks took shape along lines of educational pedigree, social status and religion - all categories that helped make it appear that race was ( Read more... )

“At one point, my father said that when he started life in Patna, he could buy a chicken for ten rupees and that now it would be difficult to get an egg for that amount.

I listened to what my father was saying with a rising sense of annoyance. I thought he was being pedantic when I wanted him to be sad - but why exactly? So that I could write down ( Read more... )

The hotel in Amman disposed of my contact lenses, which I had deposited in soda bottle caps this morning because I couldn’t find my damn contact lens case… As a freelance journalist/former long-term backpacker, I haven’t had my vision checked in a while and I can’t afford contact lens replacements, not to mention that Pakistan doesn’t sell the only ( Read more... )

No, idiot, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to write an article in between packing for Jordan and transiting in Doha - you super inefficient fuck!

It would be nice if government departments in Pakistan updated their websites, because the last thing I want to hear when I call a government official is his secretary confusedly asking me if I really need to talk to Mr. Mangi, as he has been dead for a while now..

Originally published at oxalic. You can comment here or there.

You know what’s shitty? The people I admired in high school - the articulate, well-poised, humanitarian-seeming folks who took artsy photos and knew how to code - are now just boring as fuck yuppies living in large metropolitan cities of the U.S. and doing yoga all the time.

Originally published at oxalic. You can comment here or there.

Mid-interview, the government official asks me in rapidfire succession: Are you from Karachi? Are you Pakistani? Are you Muslim? (All pressing questions when we’re talking about how the largest megacity in South Asia can’t supply water to more than 20 million people?)

Originally published at oxalic. You can comment here or there.