Pakistan Hasn't Been Cast In The Role

I Think That Right Now, The Global Political Crisis That We See All Over The Place Has To Do With Virulent Nostalgia. Everywhere, People Are Talking About Taking Us Back To The Good Old Days. Whether That's The "caliphate," Or Britain Before The Eu, Or "make America Great Again." But, We Can't Go Back And Many People Wouldn't Want To Go Back Even If We Could.

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.

I Push Against The Tree And Run Away, Stumbling, The Unreal Night Playing With Me, Gravity Pulling From Below, Behind, Above, Making Me Fall. And I Run Through A World That Is Rotating, Conscious Of The Earth's Spin, Of Our Planet Twirling As It Careens Through Nothingness, Of The Stars Spiraling Above, Of The Uncertainty Of Everything, Even Ground, Even Sky. Mumtaz Never Calls Out, Although A Thousand And One Voices Scream In My Mind, Sing, Whisper, Taunt Me With Madness.

The Notion Of Love As A Potentially Destructive And Potentially Redemptive Human Force Is Something That Comes Across In All My Books.

When People, Particularly Young People And Especially Young Men, Can't Imagine Themselves As Heroes In Narratives That They Construct For Themselves, They Look To Be Heroes In Some Other Way. So Young Men In America Of, Let's Say, Muslim Background, Only A Tiny, Tiny Minority - So Small As To Be Almost Zero - Are Likely To Ever Commit Terrorist Acts.