The air is terrible. 400+. I can taste it at the back of my throat, acrid burning. I’ve felt nauseous all morning. How can this go on? My nephews are forced to live inside closed rooms, with air purifiers. The older one, four, had to be let out eventually and he came over and we played on my father’s beloved Vietnam era jeep, which comes with the hooks used to airdrop it onto the battlefield. We played a game that would not be approved of these days, as he was the captain leading a sortie in a park (which seems to be the extent of his imagination of a battleground), and I was a soldier with a machine gun shooting enemy trees. Fortunately his parents weren’t there and I am nearly an elderly aunt so I can do what I like.
Afterwards we took him to a one of those funland-ish things, inside a mall to avoid the foul air. Not the best outing as he demanded to buy a toy, which neither I nor my father would accede to. I felt like harrumphing.
Bad news from Karachi, someone I know has had to be forcibly taken to rehab. Meth. Hideous. I knew this person when we were children.
In the evening I met old friends for dinner, happily a small group of people I really like rather than a larger one with whom I share a past but very little else.