an itinerant observer

I ask you what animal you would be. “Elephant,” you say, without hesitation. Grounded. Intuitive. Loyal to your herd. Guided by both memory and emotion. Your answer has weight. Mine flutters. The question first comes up in a leadership workshop where the exercise asks, If you were an animal that reflects your leadership style, what would it be and why? I ask the facilitator if birds count as animals. Everyone laughs. I am not joking. Birds lead differently. Through instinct and air. When you turn the question back to me, I say hoopoe. You look it up and tell me, amused, that the bird can release a foul-smelling secretion to ward off predators. I say it reminds me of my own gastrointestinal tendencies. Maybe that is a kind of biological leadership trait too. You laugh, the kind of laugh that travels through a screen but lands human. Later, I send you When Time Changed Shape , the story that begins with Rooh ki Saheli. You ask who that is. A soulmate? “Not quite,” I say. “M...

There is a jetty on Lake Geneva that thinks it is a philosopher. Every few minutes a voice drifts over the water and asks questions no one really wants to answer. That night the recording says, “who’s delusions have you drowned?” Although the grammar is strange, the timing is perfect. I stand back from the railing and watch Adam pretend he has not heard it. He sits alone at the edge of the lake, hood up, shoulders slightly curved, phone in hand. He always tries to look like he has himself figured out. He has not. The man-child carries confusion like spare change in his pocket, rattling everywhere he goes. He calls himself a dumbfuck without blinking, a habit he has perfected far too early. Most men take years to earn that level of self-deprecation. He lifts his vape and inhales with the seriousness of someone negotiating a treaty. The blue light on the device blinks against his cheek. He holds the vapor longer than necessary. When he exhales, the cloud rises in a thin, unste...

It began with someone else’s unease. My rooh ki saheli (soul friend)  had messaged earlier that morning. She was leaving for her six-hour-away destination in interior Sindh and wrote about her travel anxiety. The restlessness before departure, the ache of transition itself. I thought about it as I packed. Why am I not anxious anymore? I, who once turned every journey into mild existential drama. That question stayed with me as we left Fujairah.  I sat in the passenger seat while my three travel companions chatted in the back. AirPods in, I drifted into my own world. HAEVN’s The Sea filled it: songs that float between melancholy and surrender. “Back in the water, I feel like myself again,” the lyrics said. A chaddi buddy , childhood friend I’d recently rediscovered, had introduced me to the playlist. It felt like a small dedication, a familiar tide returning after years apart.  The road wound along the coast, sea glinting on one side, barren hills of Sharjah on the othe...