The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.

All human stories are migration stories because everyone is a refugee from their own childhood.

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.

The mountain trembled like an earthquake. Dust flew into the sky. And the rock turned dark red, like the color of blood'. 'How would you know?' Asks Sindhi cap. 'You only have a black and white television'. 'But it's a very good one. You can almost see colours.

think that the external situation has also changed somewhat. The reduction of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has, in a sense, reduced how inflamed the situation on the Pakistani border regions was and is.

The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can't imagine what the world would look like in the future. So I think it's important for writers and artists to try to imagine that.

My dad had this outlook: It doesn't matter what I want to read - reading was a good thing. So whatever I was curious about they'd get for me from the library. Books were a kind of a resistance to reality. I liked to imagine worlds that were different. I still do.