she accosts me in the street. namaste, she says.
i look at her blankly. my only language is english.

We “can’t afford to be generous”. You are entitled to nothing.

One day out of the blue he didn’t come home from work. Behind my back, he asked his mother to come from New Zealand to break up with me.

It’s as if the house was incomplete without that tiny little piece of furniture.

In the trenches of depression, I built a fortress and I was a Queen lining up my bouts of therapy like soldiers off to war.

I jumped out of bed: this was the day I would have double eyelids.

Maybe they’ll be poets, academics,
teachers like their father,
one solid Ummah.

I’m a 28-year-old Hindu female. Not married and not what is considered “highly educated” in today’s world. So what exactly have I achieved?

It was a very important rule. To always match the shoes to the bag.

Before the clearly defined rights and responsibilities, women in jahiliyyah [pre-Islamic Arabia] were the property of men, were killed by men and buried alive, were sold by men and were exploited by men.