White Gold is a pastoral constellation—handwoven cloaks from Chitral to Scotland, botanically dyed and lit with goldwork. Not costume but cosmography: garments as portable altars, carrying pasture’s scent and the shimmer of night. Step onto this bridge of wool and light.

Unknown eyes barcode me at the border: permissible? passable? I used to rearrange my face, staging light to backpay the years of being looked through. Loneliness learned my ribs like weather. Now the gaze reverses. No permissions. Let the scanners fail—I enter with a loud, untranslatable heart.

In the hinge between English and Urdu, hawa lays a hand on the neck. I came north in 2009 to study embroidery; Attabad rewrote the pattern. Fifteen years on, I read rivers like textiles—beauty as system, craft as ecology. Change the pattern before the river does.

From Chitral’s Hindu Kush valley, this essay asks who ‘آزادی’ is for. As Pakistan marks 78 years of independence, a friendship with Zakaria—born here, raised by Afghan refugee parents, denied nationality—reveals how suspicion and paperwork can erase a life. Between bread ovens, river light, and a portable family laid on a dastarkhwan, the piece traces the everyday labours of belonging and the quiet courage of being stateless. It is a call to widen the circle: to turn flags into rights, neighbours into kin, and borders into bridges.

Across the shifting sands and ancient paths of Xinjiang, nestled among soaring mountains and vast deserts, lie cities that once resonated as vibrant crossroads of the Silk Road—Kashgar, Hotan, and Yarkand.

A searing reflection on the assault against Tehran, Tehran Burning mourns the attack on Iran while evoking the soul of a city steeped in poetry, resistance, and ancestral memory

Cihangir is a place of contradictions—a quiet symphony of scent, sound, and memory. Here, the call to prayer blends with jazz, and history lingers in the salt air. A sanctuary of solitude and discovery, it teaches love, loss, and return, weaving the sacred and the ordinary into something eternal.

Home lives in taste, scent, and touch—the sweetness of mango murabba, the crunch of mishri, the dust of Sahiwal’s fields. In diaspora, vataan lingers, threading itself through prayers, memories, and meals. We carry it always, a golden shimmer of belonging, never fully here, never fully there.

A dead dog lies curled in the dust of Chitral, unnoticed, unmourned. People pass by, heads bowed in prayer, hands open in supplication—yet they do not stop. It asks: what does it mean to witness suffering and look away?

This piece is my reflection on Aboo, his solitude, resilience, and unspoken grief and the intergenerational echoes of displacement, longing, and resistance. Through poetic introspection, I explore our shared struggles, my search for azadi, and the journey to reclaim freedom from within, shedding inherited burdens while honouring his memory with love and growth.

In the shadow of a mulberry tree, a circle of men gather not just to share tea and tasks, but to weave bonds of care and vulnerability. In this Chitrali mehfil, I rediscovered a tenderness in men, a quiet poetry in their companionship that defies modern notions of masculinity and healing.

In Islamabad, I meet Fatima—a woman I’ve known for years, now unrecognisable. Her life, stripped bare by a society that devours its own, unfolds before me. Over chai, her numbness speaks louder than her words. Survival has replaced hope; faith, a fragile anchor. I weep for her—and for us all.

As a child, I dreamed of Makkah through the Kaaba’s serene images, symbols of purity and faith. Standing before it as an adult, heartbreak replaced awe. High-rises now overshadow sacred mountains, and the Prophet’s simplicity is buried under opulence. What was once holy feels suffocated—faith commodified, history erased.

In summer 2024, I returned to Chitral, a place that transformed me. Amid wild beauty and creative contradictions, I found a home in its simplicity. From chai with strangers to writing under a walnut tree, I embraced a quiet arrival into a life that feels both sacred and utterly mine.

In the blistering heat of the summer of 1996, my family and I embarked on a journey that would gently unfurl layers of memory and emotion, as persistent and pervasive as the sun itself.

The West, with its ostentatious facade and unacknowledged fault lines, remains blissfully unaware and ignorant of its role in this global theatre of injustice. Its hysteria, a mask to cover the underlying apathy and disinterest in the plight of those beyond its immediate sphere.

As I meander through the cobblestone streets of Edinburgh, where the mists of Duddingston, Brunstane, and Portobello weave into my daily backdrop, I am constantly reminded of the fluidity of my existence

The wintry air wrapped us in nostalgic embraces, and as I wandered the terraces of my grandfather’s home, I was drawn to a spare room, where memories lay ensnared in the form of VHS tapes.

In the quiet corners of childhood memories, where past and present blend and fade, I return to the disorder of spools of tactile and meditative threads.

In the dimly lit room, the art workshops were more than just about crafting masterpieces; they were a fusion of souls and stories. Adil, with his rich tapestry of experiences, melded effortlessly with women of different backgrounds, creating a non-hierarchical dance of creativity.