blog

Fresh water

Just finished Binyavanga Wainaina’s memoir, and it was like a draught of fresh water for the mind, so clever and thoughtful and funny. A particular relief after the last great Kenyan novel I read. I had worried rather than I was losing the ability to concentrate and enjoy anything other than the most straightforward prose, […]

Government by WhatsApp uncle

Maybe I’ve lived outside the country too long, but Pakistan seems to be increasingly governed by WhatsApp uncle, with a distinctive mixture of victimization, prejudice and victim-blaming, conspiracy theorising, self-congratulatory realpolitik based on ignorance, naivete and imagined sophistication, and a drawing room mob mentality. The current government exemplifies this. Imran Khan’s visit to Russia on […]

Stormy weather

This morning Russia invaded Ukraine. Is this the start of something new? In the past years of growing fragility and certainties shaken, it has felt as though we are ratchetting up to catastrophic breakdown. It this it? Or is it a story and actually history just keeps going and there is no cataclysmic moment? Two […]

Spotlight in the sky

It was the full moon last night and I worked till fairly late and then the GF had a late meeting. After I finished work I finished the book I’d been reading, Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor. It’s very well regarded, but I didn’t like it particularly. I thought it far, far too long and […]

Pub and palace

Yesterday evening our cook took us on a little tour of the village – something he does for the backpacker lodge as well, so it’s a fairly well trodden route, with stops that are intended to introduce visitors to points of interest for donations, future stays, buying drinks etc. It was quite pleasant, and interesting […]

American obcenity

The day after I read the impassioned, clear and very rational testimony from David Miliband and Graeme Smith at the US Senate about the necessity of allowing Afghanistan’s economy to restart, not least by releasing its central bank funds with appropriate conditionalities, I saw the news that the White House had decided to release its […]