A crib that stands outside the Edhi Center in Islamabad for women who want to give up their baby. I am hoping to shoot a documentary series here this winter.

A woman with a camera never fails to amuse. "Is this for a newspaper?"

A barber working his magic at Rana Market, f-7.

She squints her left eye and presses her face against the camera, twisting the front of the lens until the blur becomes a shape and the shape morphs into a face. Suddenly she is confronted with his eyes, black, penetrating except for a dash of light that gives them some life. She can see him but he cannot see her as he lights his cigarette. He sits on the edge of his bed with the diffused sun pouring in from the open door and a yellow light glows in the squalid bathroom. The world slows down, the shutter clicks and she feels a weight in her hands. She tries to handle her lens with the sensibility of an ethnographer, documenting how people live, the choices they make and how these end up defining their circumstances. She thinks of the warmth of home and the coldness of the real world. She feels the bubble around her evaporate. Billy is blind, he lives in a filthy cottage on Highway 17. There is a TV in his room but he listens to the radio. He believes in Jesus and makes her read the bible to him. "How does one pray for a Muslim?" he asks.

So I haven't really kept up with this blog as much as I had hoped to. I am on break from school, back in Islamabad, lots of empty hours to fill with thoughts and such. I suppose I'll start with my travels.
When I was flying home, in the last, most painful stretch from Abu Dhabi to Islamabad, as I waited to board, a little boy rolled his suitcase past me and on his way turned his head right at me to ask, "Pakistani?" with the most curious of expressions. He had been eying me all the while and had waited for this exact moment to wrap up his investigation. I didn't know whether to laugh at the absurdity of his question despite the implicit response because he had asked me in Urdu or to be ashamed that he even had to ask.

I cannot decide if i love airports or despise them. Transit makes me question the idea of home a lot. When I am here, Savannah feels like a dream. When I am there, I romanticize here. I don't know where I belong anywhere or what life is mine to have. Airports and planes make me feel like I can be anywhere, be anyone, do anything. I love watching people rush past, like ants, to their gates. They look so small in the space where such great things happen, where man can fly.

I was flying home with many thoughts, blue eyes, blue blankets. My cousin, the sister I never had, had just given birth to a beautiful boy three days before. I couldn't wait to hold him and I was right, it was the single most sublime experience of my life as I felt the weight and warmth of his being in my arms. Childhood is so wonderful. You can be yourself without the pretense that comes from self-consciousness or from the awareness of consequences. Disillusionment comes much later, it creeps up on you while you are busy dreaming. Suddenly the weight of being begins to pull your feet on the ground and nothing is ever as easy or as beautifully simple again.

I could keep going but perhaps I should stop here for now. some photos follow.

Loadshedding has inconvenienced the lives of Pakistani citizens with atleast four hours a day spent without electricity.The recently announced Budget for the next year has yet again undermined the poor, increasing military spending and the salaries of government officials but providing no relief to the ordinary citizen. Many in the country feel that with this current internal war against said "Taliban Insurgency", the real problems such as poverty, electricity and education are being ignored. One wonders though, how long it takes a muted nation to take to the streets and demand what is rightfully theirs?

This is the first image from a series of portraits that deal with the implicit horizon that the Non-Muslim world views Muslim women with - the veil has often been interpreted as a sign of repression and a loss of identity but Muslim women are strong, sensual, intelligent and successful despite this prejudice. Perhaps now is the time to question this image that has traveled to the Western World. After all, Don't Christian Nuns wear a version of the veil too and choose to bargain their sexuality in service of religion?