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a03dd4a
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I felt suddenly very young - or perhaps I felt my age.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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9cd2779
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All their doors remained simple doors, on/off switches in the flow between two adjacent places, binarily either open or closed, but each of their doors, regarded thus with a twinge of irrational possibility, became partially animate as well, an object with a subtle power to mock, to mock the desires of those who desired to go far away, whispering silently from its door frame that such dreams were the dreams of fools.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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7519e1d
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It is the first visit in many years for your son, finally a citizen of his new country and free to travel, and you try to suppress your undercurrent of resentment at his decision to absent himself from your presence in so devastatingly severe a manner. You feel a love you know you will never be able to adequately explain or express to him, a love that flows one way down the generations, not in reverse, and is understood and reciprocated onl..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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11f101d
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Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they'd die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren't big enough to love more than one person like that.
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friendship
love
bromance
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Mohsin Hamid |
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98a7dbd
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For we were not always burdened by debt, dependent on foreign aid and handouts; in the stories we tell of ourselves we were not the crazed and destitute radicals you see on your television channels but rather saints and poets and -- yes -- conquering kings. built the Royal Mosque and the Shalimar Gardens in this city, and built the Lahore Fort with its mighty walls and wide ramp for our battle-elephants. And we did these things when you..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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8f7ee65
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You are a door to an existence she does not desire, but even if the room beyond is repugnant, that door has won a portion of her affection.
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relationships
love
desire
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Mohsin Hamid |
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a31c682
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The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.
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war
forced-migration
migration
nationalism
refugees
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Mohsin Hamid |
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71d7043
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She had the bizarre feeling of time bending all around her, as though she was from the past reading about the future, or from the future reading about the past.
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time
reading
past
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Mohsin Hamid |
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a262d93
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What happens is my mind starts to go in circles, thinking and thinking, and then I can't sleep. And once a couple of days go by, if you haven't slept, you start to get sick. You can't eat. You start to cry. It just feeds on itself.
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sleep
depression
sick
mental-health
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Mohsin Hamid |
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f6e44c3
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The mountain trembled like an earthquake. Dust flew into the sky. And the rock turned dark red, like the color of blood'. 'How would you know?' Asks Sindhi cap. 'You only have a black and white television'. 'But it's a very good one. You can almost see colours.
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nuclear-weapons
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Mohsin Hamid |
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db8dec0
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There are two social classes in Pakistan," Professor Superb said to his unsuspecting audience, gripping the podium with both hands as he spoke. "The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vastly greater control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between members of these two groups is made on the b..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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9d40a14
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when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in reading that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books[...]
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Mohsin Hamid |
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933fea1
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and time is the stuff of which a self is made.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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043e425
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You have reminded me of how alien I found the concept of acquaintances splitting the bill when I first arrived in your country. I had been raised to favour mutual generosity over mathematical precision in such matters; given time both work equally well to even a score.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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3c53565
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Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you're with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can see.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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319ea5e
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We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so, we turn, among other things, to stories.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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60470d1
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with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.
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impending-ending
life-can-change-in-an-instant
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Mohsin Hamid |
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be31b2d
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For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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331d269
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The gun of the father is always the undoing of the son.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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6b48fca
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I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.
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poverty
wealth
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Mohsin Hamid |
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c360574
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It has been said that depression is a failure to imagine a plausible desirable future for oneself,
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Mohsin Hamid |
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9f6990b
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I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky. Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing..
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madness
unreal
nothingness
uncertainty
night
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Mohsin Hamid |
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c8dca5e
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I'm interested in things women do that aren't spoken about. Manto's stories let me breathe. They make me feel like less of a monster.
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literature
women
writing
life
pakistani
saadat-hasan-manto
pakistan
taboo
stories
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Mohsin Hamid |
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c63af26
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the end of a couple is like a death, and the notion of death, of temporariness, can remind us of the value of things,
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Mohsin Hamid |
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15e4049
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If differences can be hidden, perhaps they aren't differences at all.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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87ea524
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A common strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers. I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who li..
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war
politics
terrorism
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Mohsin Hamid |
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8c0b5dc
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Fat" is a small word which belies its size in the girth of its connotations. Fat implies a certain ungainliness, an inefficiency, a sense of immobility, a lack of industry, an unpleasant, unaesthetic quality; unmotivated, unloved, unnatural, unusual, uninspired, unhappy, unlikely to go places or to fit, under the ground with a heart attack at fifty-five. In short, fat somewhat paradoxically involves the lack of many attributes which, you mu..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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be254ff
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I stated to them among other things that no country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away, as America.
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war
politics
pakistan
terrorism
united-states
government
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Mohsin Hamid |
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065fee6
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Saeed and Nadia knew what the buildup to conflict felt like, and so the feeling that hung over London was not new to them, and they faced it not with bravery, exactly, and not with panic either, not mostly, but instead with a resignation shot through with moments of tension, with tension ebbing and flowing, and when the tension receded there was calm, the calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a h..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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cc84703
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But mostly there was little to report, just the day-to-day goings-on of countless people working and living and aging and falling in and out of love, as is the case everywhere, and so not deemed worthy of headline billing or thought to be of much interest to anyone but those directly involved.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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961b4fa
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You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich.
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poverty
wealth
politics
life
stealing
rights
crime
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Mohsin Hamid |
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da76797
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It seemed to me then--and to be honest, sir, seems to me still--that America was engaged only in posturing. As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority.... Such an America had to be stopped in the interests not only in the rest of humanity, but also in your own.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d3db1cb
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When my turn came, I said I hoped one day to be the dictator of an Islamic republic with nuclear capability; the others appeared shocked, and I was forced to explain that I had been joking.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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72293cf
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But surely it is the gist that matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in history, as I suspect you--an American--will agree, it is the thrust of one's narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one's details.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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a469c37
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A country should be judged by how it treats its minorities. To the extent it protect them, it stands for the ennobling values of empathy and compassion, for justice rooted, not in might, but in human equality, and for civilization instead of savagery.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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96a04f3
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When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to ackn..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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48cd8b4
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In the history of the evolution of the family, you and the millions of other migrants like you represent an ongoing proliferation of the nuclear. It is an explosive transformation, the supportive, stifling, stabilizing bonds of extended relationships weakening and giving way, leaving in their wake insecurity, anxiety, productivity, and potential.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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704104c
|
I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond -- only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.
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spywallah
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Mohsin Hamid |
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abed5ef
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In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.
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Mohsin Hamid |
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94c3979
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Glaring is something we men of Lahore take seriously...
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Mohsin Hamid |
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d8b2cb7
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not one of these worthy restaurateurs would consider placing a western dish on his menu. No, we are surrounded instead by the kebab of mutton, the tikka of chicken, the stewed foot of goat, the spiced brain of sheep! These, sir, are predatory delicacies, delicacies imbued with a hint of luxury, of wanton abandon. Not for us the vegetarian recipes one finds across the border to the east, nor the sanitized, sterilized, processed meats so comm..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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5f47589
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But while fear was part of what kept them together for those first few months in Marin, more powerful than fear was the desire that each see the other find firmer footing before they let go, and thus in the end their relationship did in some senses come to resemble that of siblings, in that friendship was its strongest element, and unlike many passions, theirs managed to cool slowly, without curdling into its reverse, anger, except intermit..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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38b5cf9
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In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make pos..
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Mohsin Hamid |
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957510e
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But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed home. And I was frustrated by people who actually thought the world was a centre and that centre was here. 'The world's a sphere, everyone,' I wanted to say. 'The centre of a sphere doesn't lie on..
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passion
writing
sphere
surfaces
superficiality
new-york-city
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Mohsin Hamid |