I have been writing in starts and stops. The muse, it seems, has abandoned me for more receptive minds and creative energies. I have felt stale and stagnant these past few weeks as though I am caught feet down in quicksand and slowly and steadily with each movement, with every breath I am descending and drowning. It happens when my mind has worked overtime for days on, and then runs out of power and goes dead and I go in a daze.
The trip to Islamabad was, how do I put it plainly, a disaster? I wasn't ready to be dislocated and be moved from the comforting zone of my four walls and then to leave them and go out all exposed not only outside but on a plane to a different city seemed like an adventure taken on for years in the backwaters of Africa somewhere in the 19th century.
In times like these when my mind is playing tricks with me there are two things that I require - tons and tons of sleep and rest and quite solitude. I have come to realize that they are the two best remedies for my bruised mind and soul, after every few weeks the wounds that are there lacerate and become raw and infected, some odd word, some casual remark, something or the other may trigger it and I start to roller-coaster between moods and vacillate between calm and sheer anxiety.
The hills of Margalla, the pine trees, the straight roads, the smell of leaves, the low and heavy clouds all oppressed me, they infringed on my solitude, they blocked my horizon and dimmed my vision. Standing atop Dam-n-koh I couldn't see the vista in front of me, the view of Islamabad seemed was like a vast ditch and nothing else. I think I am a woman of plains, of flatlands and perhaps dry desert. I like the solitariness of a desert, like a sky devoid of stars, like a still pool of water, like a bird frozen in mid flight, like a thought imprinted on a mind.
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