IN THIS ISSUE About Vol. 9 5 Verse The Lady of the Lake and Other Homeless Monsters 8 Asmara Malik Empty Shells 9 Noorulain Noor A Publication of Immigrant Eid 11 Shabana Mir The Gods on Holiday 14 Edward Ragg Wang Ao and the Lobster 15 desiwriterslounge.net/papercuts Edward Ragg War 17 Luu Trong Tuan Disclaimer: No part of this publication Fiction may be reproduced without permission Lipstick Bruised Cigarettes 20 from Papercuts. Individual authors retain Asmara Malik rights to all material. A Dream 21 Haseeb Asif Cover Photo: “Branched Underwaterish” By Maliha Rao Transmigration 24 Cover Artwork and Layout Design: Osman Khalid Butt Michel Di Capua Compiled By: Waqas Naeem Pax Samsara 26 Asmara Malik The Curious Incident of the Djinn Under the Shah’toot Tree 37 Moazam Rauf An Improbable Tale 46 Haseeb Asif Neuropea Part I 59 Omer Wahaj Neuropea Part II 61 Omer Wahaj 2 3 Neuropea Part III 67 Omer Wahaj ABOUT VOLUME 9 RePortage ‘How do you translate the concept behind Big A Writer’s Passion: In Conversation with Musharraf Ali Farooqi 70 Fish into a theme?’ wondered aloud our Creative ‘No Lady of the Lake rules any- Afia Aslam Lead, in an online conversation with the editors one’s fevered nightmares now of Papercuts. Genre Fiction in Urdu: The Spy Novels of Ibn-e Safi and Ishtiaq Ahmed 76 but mine.’ - from Asmara Malik’s ‘Pax Nirvana’, featured in the Fic- Faraz Malik Seconds later, we had our theme for Volume tion section of Volume Nine Unkind Tributes 83 Nine: Tall Tales. Mahwash Badar With this issue, we bid farewell Think big. Think epic, fantastic, bizarre. With Tall to our beloved Marilyn and ‘let Frankenstein has Pimples and Goes to Comic-Con 88 Tales, we let our writers’ imaginations traverse down our midnight hair’ (para- Fouad Khan from Poe to Gaiman to Isthiaq Ahmed to Verne phrased from Asmara’s The Lady and Wells and back again... the theme is all about Troubled Times, Transcendent Writing 95 of the Lake and Other Homeless questioning the values of boundaries in writing. Sana Hussain Monsters) celebrating the sto- In this issue, you’ll find everything, from accounts ries we were told as children at Kafkaesque in the Modern World 99 of mythical monsters to a critique of the Sci-Fi Fyza Parviz dusk... the (not-so?) tall tales of genre... to a poem on what the gods really get up monsters hidden under our beds to when they’re not working so hard. Demons Within Gods 104 or in our closets, of pichal-parees Afia Aslam and bogeyman and things that Stop what you’re doing. Dim the lights. Enjoy the are much, much worse. EditorS’ Pick: Poetry read, and remember: just because it’s a tall tale doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t true. The cover image of a barbie “homeicide” 108 sinking open-eyed into still wa- Faraz Mirza ters was designed by Maliha Papercuts is the bi-annual literary magazine of Rao, a Karachi-based designer Crynoical Love 109 Desi Writers Lounge (also known as DWL) - an Asnia Asim and photographer par excellence. online workshop for writers of South Asian origin Inspired from the piece quoted An Inability to Write Love-Songs 112 and writing on South Asia. above, it creates a dark ambiance Asmara Malik of what lurks in the vast deep. Both DWL and Papercuts are not-for-profit pro- Spoony 113 The only thing left for you to Asnia Asim jects, proudly run by a team of part-time writ- do.... ers purely as a labour of love. The latest issue of this online publication (as well as the submission EditorS’ Pick: Prose is swim. guidelines) can be viewed at http://www.desi- Pax Nirvana 116 writerslounge.net/papercuts/. Asmara Malik 4 5 Editor Afia Aslam Poetry Editorial Team Noorulain Noor, Osman Khalid Butt, Amita Rao and Hera Naguib Prose Editorial Team Shehla Wynne and Waqas Naeem Articles Editor Omer Wahaj Guest Editor Jalal Habib Curmally Creative Lead Osman Khalid Butt 6 THE LADY OF THE LAKE AND OTHER HOMELESS EMPTY SHELLS MONSTERS Noorulain Noor ASMARA MALIK They sit in callous circles, Tumble down these steppes, grass-stains inking immersed in embellished comparisons: chlorophyll lovesongs as scabs on your knees varieties of lawn, imported when you hurtle into my lonely lake, surface China silk, old-fashioned Victorian lace doilies. breaking into breathing bubbles, silvery-gills opening as new mouths along the side of your Like in Jane Eyre? I, too, neck. Your lips are so blue, baby, the water feign an interest in frivolity. is cold, I know. There could’ve been some song in the water streaming What’s that? my hair upon your face-- listen-- but A collective response. my Sirens are long dead. Breath easy, inhale There is an animal cry in the living room – my leiotrichous locks with your last breath, the husbands, playing video games, taste the unsalt sweetness, these smoke-strands eating chicken legs and flank steak of dried tears, dire and dark, the epoch smothered in butter and barbecue sauce of a twisted fairy-tale (let down your midnight with lightly oiled sourdough on the side. hair). Eat of my blackened cotton-candy They will never run on a green field mane in this blue-deep. I wrap my pale fingers with their growing paunches around your chest, listen to the thumping and thinning hairlines. wardrum of your human heart, slow, slow My daughter kicks inside my belly, slow... ashamed at her mother’s impotence - Stop. at the deep wretchedness that lurks beneath each polite remark. Cough. Up. Your. Pretty. Heart. To me. Let me. Rake back the sweet arch I am planning to spend my zakaat fund on of your neck. Lean in to me, let me the new Rahat Fateh Ali Khan concert; plant the seeds for these poison-trees it’s for a good cause, you know. in your eyes. Go back and grow a monster-forest for me, darling, sing to this ghost-less binary world, be my I hear fat sputtering and sizzling leaf-eyed prophet leading them all as the cook fries kebabs to our valley-lake of homeless while they sprinkle mortality, starvation into the conversation, freaks. 8 9 delicately, IMMIGRANT EID like coconut garnish on chocolate cupcakes Shabana Mir laid on the oak dining table in concentric rings of perfection. my house is silent, husband at work; They touch upon death, i hear more sirens than usual outside. by malaria, typhoid, hep C as if sliding a finger across this morning ivory keys of the majestic piano in its corner - i couldn’t get out of bed and go death by simply being too poor - to Eid namaz. like they could clean it with their antibacterial wipes, i really should push myself, i thought, wipe it from the faces of and go, but thought, then, go for what? dead babies - so my husband and i can part by asking the maid to use a stronger bleach spray this time. at the front door of the building to go and sit with our respective strangers inside? I close my eyes. so aunties in abayas can look at my pants, because they’re shabby and My daughter kicks me again. because they’re pants, and then look up at my face unseeing - And now – there are kebabs on the floor, I pound them to little pieces, when we’re done i come out and wait break all the fine china on the counters for him in the cold parking lot with the hot frying pan flying every which way – watching people hurry to cars and segregated parties in their and reach for the knives. tight little colour-coordinated groups- while a bearded man in a jalabiya stares at this female body jammed My eyes are still closed, outside in a twisting river of men. my daughter probably sleeping. when i got out of bed at last, i couldn’t stop crying in the shower. in Lahore, Ammi has cooked two types of sivayyan and put them out in glass bowls, with carrot halva and Kashmiri chai. my Eid outfit complete with sequins has been ironed and laid on my maiden bed. Auntie Shaista in the drawing room loudly waits to see how my outfit looks. Little Izza is knocking at my door, asking when I’ll be ready, 10 11 when I will come out to admire moonsighting.com, and wrote an email - her pink sharara and bright new shoes eid mubarak exclamation point - and cc’ed it to everyone. Abbu and Imran are just returning in white kurtas from Eid namaz. I thought of calling Ammi to say but here eid mubarak. but I was afraid in the fortunate First World my voice would catch, and she would hear where I’m supposed to be bettering my life who I am here and speaking English all the time-- where there’s no dust, there are no flies, and then I’d know for sure that she here, in the warm clean tiled shower, was there, and there are no sivayyan I can’t stop sobbing on my IKEA table, no halva on the stove, no kashmiri chai alone, with sirens screeching outside, steaming in pretty china cups I prayed two rak’ahs afterwards no smiling niece outside my door with seven takbeers and no red kurta on my bed and seven tears hit the ja’inamaz and then I read some pages of Quran and sent sawab to the Prophet, my pir, my uncles, aunts, grandparents, like my Ammi does, and then I said, I’m sorry I didn’t go to Eid namaz and I said please don’t be mad at me.