You are the sea. A vast, wide-open ocean of confidence. You know no horizons, no end. In fact, you define the horizons. You move in slow motion, a giant, powerful force. Warm blooded and cold, light and dark. You harbor the starfish and the eels. The whales and the sea horses. You carry the hurricanes, […]
moreThe Olympic Games. A woman wanted to be a part of something grand. So she used her charm and pleaded with an acquaintance of hers. He was a very important person of some sort. He told her, “you just got lucky. The Dutch national team is out of swimmers so there’s an empty lane for […]
moreStop eating and look around, just for a minute. A whole mountain of things. Why choose if you can have everything, all of it, all the time? Eat, sleep, complain, gain. Or lose? People lose, sometimes. That too. A man makes his way to a woman. Their bodies spell out their age: seventy. They are […]
moreThe silent world we dwell in. The muted one, numbed. The one in which life has been narrowed down to only one central character: you. The rest circles around you. This tiny little world. Round and round it goes, swirl and twirl. “A water tornado,” says my son as he turns circles in a swimming […]
moreIn fact, divorce is full of first-time moments. I just waved my 5-yr-old goodbye for the first time. He will be staying with Dad for 3 nights. This is going to be our new weekly routine. I’ve often gone away to write, and Dad has often gone away for work. People say “so you’re used […]
moreThere’s a first time for everything. A first move, from one home to the next. Becomes the tenth, maybe twentieth. I have never moved back to a place before. That’s a first. To then experience nothing has changed, and so neither have you. You can’t have, if everything else is still the same. Some first […]
moreHere we go again. Tragedy strikes and once again evil has taken the form of an angry, white man. People die. Kids. The world is in shock. Again we are treated to image after image of bodies, oceans of flowers, anonymous white people sob and hold each other. Analysis after analysis of why. Neighbours are […]
moreHow does one tell a Muslim friend about a separation? I avoided her for a while which is hard because she is my neighbour. I somehow hoped she’d figure it out as I was never at home, and even if I was, I was very much engaged in carrying heavy boxes. Recently, we had gone […]
moreAnd then there’s this: I have chat with a friendly father at school. His wife is ill. He has taken a year off from work so that she can focus entirely on getting better. We have spoken a few times about her illness, he has explained how they don’t like to dwell on the situation, […]
moreJust as you’re thinking a day can’t get any worse some guy in a Jaguar with way to big tires yells at you. “This is all your fault!” he screams out of his window. Say what? Oh so it’s my fault I have two kids on my bike, one of them is crying as he […]
more