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Late Night Thoughts #?: Crowded Koi and Curtains

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 “Khuda ke liye chor do ap ye parda” - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan I was standing in a beachside resort just off the coast of the Bay of Bengal overcome with grief at what I was witnessing: scores of lovely Koi fish packed tightly in a decorative fountain.  The overcrowding of fish in any aquatic space breaks my heart, but this particular fountain was not only stuffed but also incredibly shallow.  The Koi fish however (as Koi do) did not seem distressed. Instead they paced gracefully from one end of the enclosure to the other, not aware that even half an inch less of water would seal their fates forever. In Islam we believe there are seventy-thousand veils between us and God, but there is only one between us and death. I’ve often thought about how easily the veil of death can slip and cause us to tumble forward into our enternal realities. The veil looms over us but we cannot physically see it, and, like the koi we swim unaware of the half inch that separates is from this life and the next. 
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Thyroid Cancer: A Cancer Too “Good” to Be True

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I often quip to those closest to me that I don't remember life before my diagnosis. The cancer caused so much stress on my brain that memories of the past feel increasingly distant by the day.  It is often hard to believe that I was once healthier than this. Every day I wake up in a haze only to find that my reflection confirms that I am indeed the same sick girl I was three months ago, although with less cancer than before. As I sit here and write this, I have no infinite wisdom to dispose of. I only wish to discuss what I am going through, hoping that another twenty-two-year-old who might be going through the same thing feels less lost than I was. "The Good Cancer" If you are diagnosed with thyroid cancer, your doctor and friends, all meaning well, will probably pat you on the back and tell you not to worry, assuring you that you have "the good cancer."  I was positively puzzled when I first heard this statement because nothing about the past few years had bee
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Ambiguous Rooftop

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There is a rooftop somewhere. I believe it's in India, but I am never quite sure. It comes to me every time I'm alone. I imagine that this is life after death. A perpetual rooftop, where I am lying on a straw bed and can feel the strain of it underneath my weight as my body causes it to curve inward. My left arm has fallen off the side of the frame and begins to feel heavy from the blood rushing to my fingers. The heat is like a blanket, and I am afraid to move out of fear of disrupting the harmony of silence. But the calm is soon shattered by the squeals of boys in white hats as they burst out of the Madrasa next door, with cricket bats in their hands and their off-white kurtas flowing behind them. There is a rooftop somewhere. I believe it's in America, but I am never quite sure. It comes to me every time I'm alone. I can hear the hum of the neighbour's tractor in the distance. I imagine him bouncing on its back in hopes of cutting his grass to near perfection.
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