My first relationship started in Costa Rica. Running around the city, beach trips, endless sunny days. It was perfect…
Read More
One of the neighbours we connected with was a family from the Netherlands. Their lives mirrored our own as they too had recently relocated with a toddler in tow, exactly the same age as ours...
We were given one week’s notice to pack our bags and leave the country…
Read More
I know how older people feel, when they return to a country abandoned long ago…
In places like East Pakistan (before it became Bangladesh), Kuwait, and Sierra Leone there just weren’t that many expat families…
Read More
Imagine the chaos of the first few years: Romanian, German and English mixed together in a way that it took us sometimes minutes to realize what exactly it was that our own children were trying to tell us…
Read More
I've aimed to change my destiny through education…
Read More
This ocean is not mine, I was born in another. I moved, learned, lived, cried and loved somewhere else…
Read More
Everywhere and nowhere, home is no place...
Read More
I can’t fly on this damn plane because, at age 27, I have lost two wonderful people in my life. Two people who had come to define my experience of being free of boundaries, and my freedom to live fearlessly. I feel my mortality more than I ever did before...
Read More
As much as I vaguely wonder about what a brick-and-mortar home could have been—I am completely free...
Read More
Dinesh rubbed Mark’s arm with his thumb to help his partner feel comfortable as the crew gathered around behind the camera for the last round of shots for the day. “Is this too close?” Mark asked. Out of habit, I wondered if I would be reproached for the intimacy of the pose...
Read More
If you thought this could only happen in Pakistan, you are wrong. It happened in Singapore, and it even happened in Australia (even though there, I had to earn my spot in earnest)...
Read More
Then there was the McDonald’s birthday trend. Uncle Sam had muscled his way into the Karachi youth’s minds, and a Happy Meal and rides on colorful slides were the dream in the late 90s. I didn’t have one, but I was invited to one. It was an utter disappointment...
Read More
In my native Spain, children at age six could drink 1/4 strength wine. At 16, you went to full strength. In Hawai’i when I was flying, it was “Hey, bruddha, can you drink with us?” Likewise, on Guam, the test would be handing someone a 5 dollar bill and asking them to go buy a 6-pack of beer...
Read More
I distinctly remember feeling inspired by the idea of the young, reckless love depicted in the movie, which was swiftly followed by utter mortification at the scenes showing physical intimacy. I was a product of a Pakistani, Muslim household, and any form of physical contact with the opposite sex was severely frowned upon.
Read More
Before I was to be slowly torn down by my relationship with August, I had newly discovered my TCK identity and was sure he was the missing piece of who I was. I was living in an amazing share house with maybe 8 or 9 different nationalities rotating through it at any one time – and amongst these students, professionals and travellers alike – I was happy that I had finally found my people…
Read More
I grew up in Pakistan, where one’s life’s trajectory is comfortably pre-ordained: one must get a tertiary education at a reputable institution, during or following which one must get married and “settle down”, and then, of course, oblige one’s in-laws by producing a strategically interspersed brood of obedient children...
Read More