Stories From Lahore

Shrines Under Attack As I write this article, ISIS claims responsibility for the terrorist attack on Lal Shahbaz Qaladar’ Sufi shrine. The attack claimed 83 lives. This was not the first attack on a Sufi shrine. Last year, an attack on Shah Noorani shrine resulted in 54 casualties. Many Pakistanis see a foreign ‘invisible’ hand orchestrating such attacks. The reality is more insidious:  Sufi shrines all over Pakistan have been under attack –physically and ideologically—for well over three decades. The narrative against Sufi shrine culture reverberates from all nooks and corners of modern urban Pakistan. The case for puritanical Islam keeps getting deafening. Many well-educated people find it hard to justify terrorist attacks on shrines but they don’t mind verbal assaults on folk-Islam practices. In fact, I personally know several people who have waged a war against Sufism. Organizations like the Tableeghi Jamaat and Jamaat UD Dawa work incessantly to weed-out the remnan...

1st Sleep is the warmest thing That hovers over the crumbling roof of my room The loneliest corner has books on mathematics and science Most of them suggest there is no God. I wonder if scientists and mathematicians live in houses Where sleep isn’t the warmest thing. I’ve got books on religion too; They are neatly arranged inside my refrigerator. They all speak of an afterlife. The word “Afterlife” was invented in Antarctica By some priest who sold ice-creams. It leaves me feeling too cold! Tonight I yearn to swallow the warmth of sleep That crumbles the roof of my room. 17th A poet looks at the world Like a man looks at a woman— Craving for words. lusting for curves. I’m an earthen man made up of fragile words And you are a subject of Neruda’s poetry. A flute’s song under a dying moon You can tear open the monsoon clouds And steal the words for the parched earth Where the bones of earthen poets rest. Prison for Mad Men I laugh for hours. It makes me sad ...