or what it is like
(Notes on Time, Loss, Art, and Carrying On) The One About How It Looks Age alters the surface of us long before it touches the core. The body bends, lines deepen, and the mirror insists on change, yet inside we remain strangely untouched. Like Dorian Gray, we carry a quiet constancy through the years, carrying […]
There was a moment this past year when, nestled in a car winding in the shadows of the Rif Mountains, I felt as if I had stepped into the pages of a Kerouac novel. Life, I mused, seemed like a “step across chronological time into timeless shadows” as we move on, year after year, “in […]
Prologue The stadium, bathed in the abundance of the African sun, sets the stage for the showdown. As the Dark Knight, I stand at the crease, the weight of the bat in my gloved hands a familiar comfort. The opposing team huddles, unaware that beneath the cowl lies a formidable batsman. The bowler, an old […]
“Get your sweets from the candy man/ get your truth from the shelf/don’t buy into the fairytale/ just be good to yourself” No Small Thing/ TEARS FOR FEARS (2022) Maali Almeida. Photographer. Gambler. Slut. Perhaps also the most interesting, confusing, and bemusing literary character I have encountered since, as a 16-year-old, I first discovered Mohun Biswas […]
Like the proverbial Man of humankind, Chinua Achebe’s Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart was a man of many personal achievements but one always challenged by his arrogance. As a young man, he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat and worked hard to earn his place as a clansman, warrior, farmer and family […]
In a year when everything about everything seemed to be incendiary, all news confusing, all social media angrily polarised, it was certainly more comforting to recluse in the parallel universe of fiction and cinema and reflect on the complexities of human relationships. The world has become a George Orwell novel. Fascism, xenophobia and hate pass […]
Ageing is a wondrous, eclectic, beautiful thing, to wit, a balding, greying man starting the day with Daft Punk, then singing along to Lorde in between morning meetings, before turning to the 30-something wisdomesques of The National as the sun sets over Nairobi, before going home to the swinging voice of Michael Bublé. Youth limits your choices, age expands your frequency […]
NOORMOHAMED 