PHOTO
NEWS
The Last Mile is Always the Longest: notes on infrastructure and patience.
A field report from three transit corridors across Sindh, and what they teach us about the politics of finishing.
Hira Shah5,200w · 24 May
Recently published
PHOTO
OPINION
A Theory of the Half-Read: on books, attention, and the dignity of giving up.
If reading is an ethics of duration, then abandoning a book may be its most honest act.
Talha Cheema3,800w · 23 May
PHOTO
ANALYSIS
Why Cinema Got Quiet: the new whisper-films and the politics of audibility.
From the new Punjabi parallel cinema to the Karachi shorts — a meditation on volume as ideology.
Mahnoor Khan4,100w · 22 May
I.
Opinion
Arguments, dissents, columns. Edited by Aizza Tahir.
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The slow coup: how administrative capture became the new authoritarianism.
Bilal Lakhani · Islamabad
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Solar without the South: who actually owns the green transition?
Dr. Hassan Aziz
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Pop, prestige, and the long death of the middlebrow.
Zara Khurshid
II.
News
Dispatches, briefs, on-the-ground correspondence. Edited by Syed Muhammad Abubakar.
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The IMF after the IMF: a quiet revolution in conditional lending.
Hira Shah · Karachi
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A port without ships: what Gwadar is becoming.
Faraz Anwar · Gwadar
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Mapping South Asia's hard-right foundation networks.
Maryam Tanveer & Imran Daud
III.
Analysis
What just happened, what it means, and what to read against it. Edited by Hafsa Qureshi.
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The party form is dead. Long live the cadre.
Talha Cheema
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Reading Manto in the time of the algorithm.
Mehreen Ali
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Three new books on the rural — and one on the impossibility of writing them.
Sana Bukhari
IV.
In Depth
Long-form features, interviews, and the symposium. Edited by Muhammad Hur Khan.
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Eqbal Ahmad's last lecture, transcribed: on the unfinished project of reason.
Transcribed and annotated by H. Qureshi
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“Liberalism mistakes process for principle.” — A conversation with Ayesha Jalal.
Interviewed by the editors
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Eight thinkers respond: is there a left case for despair?
Symposium
V.
Verse
Poetry, in English and in translation. Edited by Hina.
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Five new poems.
On weather, departure, and the long quiet of an Islamabad winter.
Sara Sheikh
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Six poems from Dast-e Tah-e Sang.
From the Urdu of Faiz, in new English versions.
tr. Rabia Yousuf
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Three ghazals, after the manner of Ghalib.
Composed in English; the radif kept and the qafia loosened.
Hammad Sheikh
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Notes towards a theory of the courtyard.
A verse essay on architecture, weather, and the unwritten manners of looking up.
Mariam Aziz Khan