memories of pakistan

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If you lay on your back with the hot sun beating on your face. If you clear your mind and rest your left arm over your eyes. If you play this song and let the words dance through you, you would know something about the memory this song evokes in me. When I hear it, I feel like I am nine years old, laying on my grandparent's veranda on a charpai listening to a tape worn from years of use.

In Pakistan, life is scary and sad and difficult for many people. But it is also a life where you can eat food that was recently in the land, walk in fields where there are not telephone lines in every direction and know that if look around you, someone you have known your whole life will probably be looking back at you. It is a place where, when I think of it, I can find a perfect stillness.

(Today I am grateful for a lovely email from my friend Selin who tells me that she will be moving to America in September.)