Haider is a Pakistani. An undergraduate. At Yale. All these things baffle him. He spends most of his time trying to cope with his bafflement at these and other things. He copes with it by talking to things and people around him and taking various colorful intoxicants. When sane, Haider enjoys South Asian History, English Literature and Film because they allow him to read a lot of books, watch a lot of movies and then act painfully pretentious about them. He, also, tries very hard not to eat cute furry animals and his dream is to obliterate their suffering. That is not his only dream though. Since having spent two years in the countryside in Wales he wants to live atop a mountain with lots of sheep and secretly wants his cottage to become a pilgrimage site after he dies. Email: hshahbaz@gmail.com
by Haider Shahbaz Rain taps on their window. Tip tap, tip tap. She says to him: “Let’s go outside on the balcony”. “Are you mad? It’s pouring.” he says. “No, of course I’m not mad. You know I like being in the rain.” “I think I’m getting a cold. I might head off to bed.…
by Haider Shahbaz (Note: The theme of one sketch was suggested by fellow 3 Quarks Daily columnist Rishidev Chaudhuri after a night of his delicious summer drinks. As always, I am grateful.) I (Thirty five dollars and seventy two cents) Once he nailed her to the floor he moved back assuredly. He briskly – yet…
by Haider Shahbaz Kashif is a novelist who is afraid of novels: they all remind him of his failure at love. Novels, with the futility of each word, with the reflection of each phrase, with the silent spaces between sounds, remind him of nothing but loss. His novels are nothing but bloody fights with the…
by Haider Shahbaz (and his dear friend, Nicolas MMP) I Under the heading Autobiography, in a notebook otherwise empty, the surrealist scribbled: To wage war with words on the fascists. My manifestos are my diaries; my diaries are my manifestos. An end to bourgeois essentialization. An end to mediocrity. Of the worlds that wine opens,…
by Haider Shahbaz Juicy tomatoes. Crispy lettuce. A succulent chicken breast. Olive oil. Black pepper. Chopped green onions and chopped smelly garlic. Mustard. Rosemary bread, perhaps? Lightly heat the oil. Brown the garlic and the onions as you hear them sizzle. Sprinkle black pepper on one side of the chicken. Sautee the chicken with the…
By Haider Shahbaz In 1917, Marcel Duchamp contributed Fountain, a urinal, to the exhibit of the Society of Independent Artists. The Society was ‘independent’ – but not that much. They rejected the urinal, insisting it was not art. Duchamp defended the piece by Mr. Mutt (his alter ego) in the following words: “Mr Mutt made…
by Haider Shahbaz “To be exiled is not to disappear but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and smaller until we reach our real height, the true height of the self.” – Roberto Bolano, Exiles. “You must remember that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in…
by Haider Shahbaz We want someone to whisper to us. But nobody does. And we get scared. There are sounds, faint sounds; they come from upstairs and downstairs, and some from the apartment next to us. And we wait for them to whisper to us. They will whisper, we know. From across the skin, across…
by Haider Shahbaz Try listening to ‘Montezuma’ by the Fleet Foxes while reading this. July, 2008. Quick reply: Yes, was at the protest. No, did not get hurt. There is a certain quality about revenge. Walking and hanging on the sides of buses for more than 15 hours and than sitting in front of Parliament,…
By Syed Haider Shahbaz “On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on.” Gabriel Garcia Marques, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. “Before we had religion and other nonsense. Now for everyone there should be someone to…
by Haider Shahbaz The first was happy to observe. The second wanted to create. The third was always mimicking. The first one, Mike, tall and thin with bushy Jewish hair was wrapped in a blanket that reminded you of your last LSD trip: colourful, torn and full of bunnies. The second, Dario, with his round…
On Sundays, Sylvia and I go to the Shire. As anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Tolkien’s world will tell you, the Shire is a happy place. It is a place of beginnings, homecomings, nostalgia and merrymaking. I loved the Shire, and I loved going there with Sylvia. There was a train station very…
I grew up with a mysterious man. He talks about depleting natural resources, the concept of class, Sweden’s welfare state, religion, Kyoto, corporate influence in politics, monarchy in Saudi Arabia and AIDS. And he kills people. Many, many people. I don’t understand him. I’ve never met him. I don’t even know if he’s alive anymore.…
ABP is a house; it is one quarter of a house, the bottom left corner of New Haven’s 111 Howe Street to be precise. ABP is short for Alif, Bay and Pay which are the first three alphabets of the Urdu language. It has been given the name ABP by the three Pakistani undergraduates from…