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Jan 10, 2025 | 
dawn.com | Shahzad Sharjeel
PAKISTAN’S military dictator, Ziaul Haq, rejected $400 million in American aid in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan as ‘peanuts’. It was a not-so-subtle dig at then-US president Jimmy Carter. He is remembered in these parts as much as a peanut farmer as he is for the failed commando action to get the US embassy hostages freed in Iran.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Shahzad Sharjeel
ONE question that always bothers me is: who is the big brain that this part of the world has produced? As if defining the criteria were not difficult enough, the ring-fencing of the geography under consideration and the pre-post-Partition division of the eras make it even more intractable.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Abbas Nasir |Muhammad Amir Rana |Shahzad Sharjeel |Muna Khan
Mariah Burney The Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women for 2024 was awarded to Mariah Burney for her essay ‘The Night Shift.’ Mariah will receive a cash award of Rs100,000. This year the prize was awarded for non-fiction and was chosen by a judging panel that included writers Sabyn Javeri and Victoria Schofield, Dawn Magazines Editor Hasan Zaidi, British Council Pakistan’s Deputy Director Maarya Rehman and freelance editor Shan Vahidy.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Aamer Hussein |Abbas Nasir |Muhammad Amir Rana |Shahzad Sharjeel
On a fine, cold November afternoon, I am sitting at a restaurant with Naila Khan, a friend from Dhaka, who is showing me proofs on her laptop of a book of stories in translation. The book is called Lost Tales From a Bygone Era and the author was her grandmother, Rahat Ara Begum (RAB), who lived and wrote in Calcutta, wrote in Urdu though she was fluent in Bengali, published in Lahore, and died in 1949 in Chittagong.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Muneeza Shamsie |Abbas Nasir |Muhammad Amir Rana |Shahzad Sharjeel
Shattered: A MemoirBy Hanif KureishiHamish HamiltonISBN: ISBN: 978-0241667958336pp. Hanif Kureishi’s new work, Shattered: A Memoir is a collection of ‘dispatches’, essentially a diary, originally dictated by Kureishi while hospitalised in Rome and later London, following the accident which left him paralysed. Kureishi’s words, taken down by his partner, Isabella d’Amico, or his sons, Sachin, Keir and Carlo, “as events happened” were posted online as The Kureishi Chronicles.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Abbas Nasir |Muhammad Amir Rana |Shahzad Sharjeel |Mubina Rauf
Educational Conundrums of Pakistan By Dr Faisal BariAks PublicationsISBN: 978-9697312368560pp. Dr Faisal Bari’s book, Educational Conundrums of Pakistan is a collection of his articles published in Dawn from 2012-2023. It highlights the crises in education in Pakistan, trying to find solutions. Throughout the book, we notice the poetic refrain of Article 25A of the Constitution of Pakistan, which gives the right to free and compulsory education to all children.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Muneeza Shamsie |Abbas Nasir |Muhammad Amir Rana |Shahzad Sharjeel
Hanif Kureishi You have been back in your London home for several months now, after a year in different hospitals, following your collapse, broken neck and paralysis. How much movement do you have now? And how do you manage with daily life? Hanif Kureishi: My movement remains limited, but I’m gradually regaining some control. Daily life is a series of adaptations and negotiations with my new reality. I rely heavily on assistance for basic tasks, which is both humbling and frustrating.
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Nov 16, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Shahzad Sharjeel
THE Trump victory in the recent US election has brought the subject of immigration under even greater focus. Along with forced displacements caused by wars, disasters and calamities, economic migrants in search of better livelihoods are defining politics worldwide. The UK tried sending immigrants to Rwanda under an agreement with the latter, but the scheme came to naught.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Shahzad Sharjeel
MUKESH Ambani, of the unending wedding ceremonies fame, recently enlightened Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about the Sanskrit meaning of his company’s name and its significance in the logframe of progress. A little digression: we just witnessed two important conclaves where world leaders and nations aspiring to join their ranks got together to discuss ways of cooperation and agree upon the rules of competition.
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Oct 15, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Shahzad Sharjeel
THE provenance of the gesture, ‘lanat’, can be traced back to ancient Greece. That the moutza or faskeloma, a gesture of disgust and condemnation, should survive many millennia and still be used in our part of the world is unsurprising, as some of our circumstances hark back to that era. Democracy and the flourishing of philosophy and arts are certainly not among them. Muddy and unpaved streets are the resemblances that survive, along with the lanat.
