Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Abbas has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering & computer science from Johns Hopkins University, and a graduate degree in philosophy from Columbia University. He lives with his wife, Margit Oberrauch, and their feline friend, Frederica Krueger, in the small, very beautiful city of Brixen in the Italian Alps. Email: s.abbas.raza.1 [at] gmail.com
I was walking in Vahrn a couple of days ago when I passed some strawberry fields covered in plastic sheets that looked like a plastic ocean with waves as it was a very windy day. I stopped for a minute to make this crappy video. (The real thing looked and sounded much more impressive than…
by S. Abbas Raza Like many if not most of you, I'm sure, I spent much of the weekend reading various articles about gun control and signing various petitions about it. By Sunday night I just became depressed: while it is clear to me that the existence and easy availability of hundreds of millions of…
The legendary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz was in Beirut in 1980 as Israeli helicopter gunships rained fire down upon Palestinian camps there. He wrote this lullaby as a response. I have translated it by listening to it one line at a time using the video given at the end, below, but then I also…
by S. Abbas Raza Once again, I present my own translation of two lovely couplets by Faiz Ahmed Faiz side by side with a translation of the same by the late Agha Shahid Ali. I do this not to criticize Shahid's translation in any way but actually to pay tribute to him as well as…
by S. Abbas Raza This post is dedicated to my wife, Margit Oberrauch. A couple of weeks ago I came upon a Ghalib couplet in Urdu which evoked pangs of recognition in me. Ghalib captures so simply and so well a discomfort that I like to imagine nearly everyone has experienced: that of having to…
by S. Abbas Raza and Morgan Meis Abbas: Some months ago when Morgan told me he was going to come and visit me in Südtirol from Sri Lanka in the first week of June, I stupidly agreed to go on an extended trek through the alps with him for several days. The idea was that…
by S. Abbas Raza David is one of the rare rock stars who continues to innovate and surprise in several artistic fields decades after his rise to fame as lead singer of the Talking Heads in the 1970s. Today, even as he enters his seventh decade he shows no signs of slowing down. Last week…
by S. Abbas Raza This is my English version of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz's Urdu rendition of a Turkish poem written by Nâzım Hikmet for his Russian wife Vera. To Vera She said comeShe said staySmile, said sheDie, said she I cameI stayedSmiledAnd died also.
by S. Abbas Raza This post is for 3QD friend and supporter Robert Pinsky. At one pole of the axis representing how literal poetry translations should be are figures like Vladimir Nabokov who believed that poetry must be translated as literally as possible without any interpretive liberties taken or attempts to preserve rhythm or the…
[Satellite photo of Manhattan on 9/11. The red circle is my own location at the time.] by S. Abbas Raza I hated Osama Bin Laden, and I suppose I probably had more personal reasons to hate him than most. When I was just beginning grad school in the philosophy department at Columbia University, I met…
by S. Abbas Raza The Egetmann pageant and parade took place in the South Tyrolean wine-making town of Tramin this past Tuesday, on the day before Ash Wednesday, as it has every odd-numbered year since 1591. I was there and can report that it completely lived up to its reputation for spectacular Alpine zaniness. The…
3 Quarks Daily asked a number of scholars, academics, journalists, writers and others to give us brief reactions to the recent events in Egypt. Their responses are given below in the order in which they were received: Akeel Bilgrami Mohsin Hamid Mark Blyth Frans de Waal Pablo Policzer Ejaz Haider Mona El-Ghobashy Gerald Dworkin Ram…
The first of these spontaneously popped into my mind as I regained consciousness after some recent shoulder surgery. As the effects of anaesthesia wore off and before the pain became a roar which drowned out every other thought, I made up the rest in the ultimately futile attempt at distracting myself: Send not to know…
Learning by Heart He recited a short poem to meWhich he had learned by heartNot to impress or intimidateMe, or anyone else, But just in case one yearSpring might be late in comingAnd he need cheer his friendsSaddened by the dearth of birdsong. Or perhaps for that moment in loveWhen he would be struck speechless,When…
Greetings from sweltering Karachi, As some of you know, I am spending the summer in Karachi. It's my first trip to the city of my birth in almost six years, and I've already been here a little over three weeks now. Here are a few things, picked rather arbitrarily, which I find to be very…
by Norman Costa (Note: I do not use the real names of people, nor do I identify the specific Ashram. I changed a few details. The purpose is to protect the privacy of the individuals. Readers who are familiar with this Ashram will probably recognize it.) What the Heck is an Ashram? Ashram is a…
My father died four years ago today. At the time, my sister Azra published a shorter version of this obituary in Karachi's leading English newspaper, Dawn: –S. Abbas Raza MEMBER OF PAKISTAN CIVIL SERVICE, RESPECTED AUTHOR AND INTELLECTUAL, SYED ALI RAZA DIES AT 91 by Azra Raza Syed Ali Raza, Retired Director, Ministry of Foreign…
So here we are, celebrating our 5th Newton's Day at 3QD. Along with Richard Dawkins, we independently and simultaneously came upon the idea of celebrating Newton's Day on December 25th in 2004, and each year since then I have written a little something about Sir Isaac. Here are my posts from 2004, 2005, 2006, and…
by Evert Cilliers There are two political figures in America who are masters of self-invention. One is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The other is Barack Obama. Arnold invented himself as a body builder, movie star, and Governor. Barack Obama invented himself as a black man, Christian, and President. (A quick aside about self-invention. It's not starting over,…
by Jason S. Bardi The holiday season is upon us, and spending the weekend at the relatively unconnected house of a close relative makes me long for all those modern conveniences I take for granted: cell phones, PDAs, digital cable, and high-speed wireless. Lack of wireless is going to force me to find an internet…