In the city where I live now, people do not like pigeons. They call them rats with wings. There are little metal spikes on the window ledges to keep them off, and a particular flick of the hand that people use to send them scattering off a café table. I understand it, I suppose. There are a great …

I left Pakistan in 2022, and I have been in Spain ever since. Distance does a strange thing to a person. It softens some opinions and sharpens others. The country I argued with constantly while I lived inside it is the country I now defend, quietly, at dinner tables in a language that is not mine, …