As A Child I Read All Kinds

We Should Be Very Skeptical Of People Who Want To Place Limits On How We Express Ourselves.

So In Many Ways, The Bombing At The End Of This Year And The Terrorist Attack Of Last Year In Peshawar Have Bookended Both Those Years In A Very Unfortunate Way. But At A Bigger Picture Since, The Impression In Pakistan Is That Things Are Actually Improving On The Terrorism Front Quite Dramatically.

If An American Teenager Were To Come To Lahore, They'd Have Wildly Different Experiences Depending On Whom They Met. They Could Party And Get Drunk And Smoke Hashish With Some, While Others Would Say, "let's Get Some Religious Instruction."

Like Many Of My Friends In The Pakistani Diaspora - And Many Of My Friends In Pakistan Itself, For That Matter - I Have Sometimes Looked At The Country Of My Birth And Wondered Whether Its Future Will Be One Of Steady And Sad Decline.

One Ought Not To Encourage Beggars, And Yes, You Are Right, It Is Far Better To Donate To Charities That Address The Causes Of Poverty Rather Than To Him, A Creature Who Is Merely Its Symptom.