Status Updates From In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

I definitely haven’t been paying enough attention to this book and now I’m nearly halfway in and I have no idea what’s going on 😀 I’m gonna leave this one for a while and maybe revisit when I have the energy

much better listening to the audiobook

That was heartbreaking

Ramadan tbr book 2, my uncle bought this for me so I'm very intrigued

I feel like I am in Pakistan when I am reading this book !!! He has such a power describing homes, landscapes, how people sit and their mannerisms I feel I am sat with them at that moment. I am liking this book, a few of the stories have shown me the power of women and others have shown me how difficult it is to “make it”. It’s deepened my love for Pakistan, for better or for worse, like my grandma would say!

Bought the hard copy!

need to buy hardcopy asap ;-;

the change in style & perspective that ‘our lady in Paris’ was refreshing after the annoying repetitiveness of the previous chapters, which made me wonder, ‘why write in short stories when the text is so similar?’ it just felt drawn out. but even this chapter reached such an unsatisfying ending because of how unpacked the author left it, not to mention how tangential the romance felt with the previous topics.

annoyingly obvious parallelism, but what can i say?: im still reading

Exhaling, she heard the night resume, spreading like spilled ink, first near her, around her head, breeze in the leaves, then sounds further away, dogs barking from distant villages, carrying over the flat landscape.
Steady, she opened her eyes and looked at the patch of ground boxed in by trees, moonlight silvering their outmost branches. What a small innocent place, a stage. That’s it? she asked.

Where to go? She walked out the gate, in the direction of Lawrence Gardens, a few blocks away. Looking up into the cradle of branches in an enormous flame-of-the-forest tree, she thought, God, I’m nothing, look at how small I am next to this tree. It must be hundreds of years old.

The cooks tempted her, lording it over the kitchen, where she liked to sit, with the smell of broth and green vegetables cooking and sauce. And she had duties in the kitchen, she made the chapattis, so thin and light that they almost floated up to the ceiling. She had that in her hands. Mr. Harouni had called her into the dining room at lunch one day and said he’d never in seventy years eaten better ones,

‘Never. I won’t forgive you. You had your life, I had mine. At every step of the road I went the right way and you the wrong. Look at you now, with bubbles of blood stuck in the corner of your mouth. Do you think this isn’t a judgment? My wife and children would have begged in the street, and you would have sold my motorbike to pay for six unlucky hands of cards and a few bottles of poison home brew. If you...

The crops that year had been good, Harouni felt expansive in front of the fire, and so, much to the disgust of the farm managers, Nawab received a brand-new motorcycle, a Honda 70.
The motorcycle increased his status, gave him weight, so that people began calling him ‘Uncle,’ and asking his opinion on world affairs, about which he knew absolutely nothing. He could now range further, doing a much wider business.

Melancholy invaded him, and also peace, borne by the whirring of cicadas nestled among the rocks that punctuated the grounds of the estate.

… into their life together — the pull of her old life, of other lives. Why did he have to speak so slowly, to explain in such detail the mechanics of the sprinklers in the greenhouses?

She had believed that her personality would be subsumed in their larger personality as a couple, living into each other, but already the strangeness of the initial engagement wore off and she went back to being — exactly — herself. A little crack opened up as if in the perimeter walls of the compound at Jalpana, through which a poisonous scent, like very strong attar, overpowering, overripe, musky, seeped…

This is life, this is real and actual. This is ours.

As Murad sat facing the river, aloof, the breeze raising goosebumps on his bare arms, the towel pulled tightly around his shoulders, she felt immense tenderness toward him.

The well inside her stirred, all the sorrows of her life, the sweet thick fluid in that darkness, which always lay at the bottom of her thoughts, from which she pulled up the cool liquid and drank.

She said, “you wear me on your back, and I wear you on my face.” Her face had softened.

for school!

”He wanted to take care of her, but often she would not allow him to.”

In the last story, I am again reminded of the stark disparity between the poor and wealthy, with mortality bridging these two worlds.

In Pakistan, like the rest of Asia, the contrast between wealth and poverty sets again the stage of so much passion and heartbreak. It is in this part of the world that the divide is so stark and poignant.

Pakistani literature appears more passionate and sensual than the writing from its other South Asian neighbour. Could it be the Persian influence?

Even though I have only read the first two stories, I am smitten with that sour beauty that is Pakistan. The lives of each protagonists could still be the reality of someone today because abject poverty still exists amid so much uncertainty. There is little hope for me to see Pakistan in this lifetime so I am pleased to be able to read about this country.

Well this book is depressing. That being said, I tend to like those kind of books so that's not necessarily a bad thing.

آمریکایی‌ها مهربون نیستن، اما مهربون بودن در جایی که نظم و ترتیب وجود داره، آسون‌تره

من قاضی دادگاه عالی لاهور هستم و این‌که با وجود شغلی که دارم، اعتقادی به عدالت ندارم و دیگر خودم را با این آرزو نابود نمی‌کنم که «شمشیر عدالت خداوند» باشم- آنطور که در دانشکده‌ی حقوق ما را صدا می‌کردند؛
وانمود هم نمی‌کنم که دست‌های پاکی دارم، بنابراین در مقامی نیستم که به سیستم قضایی با هر چیزی-به جز تحمل و مدارا نگاه کنم.