Water/Sail-e-aab

“Last year, in order to remember how to breathe again, I began to swim. I learnt how to submerge myself into lurid rippled aqua, crooked tiles underfoot, fluorescent lights glinting. Do you remember what it was like to float for the first time? Lie back as if it is a bed. Lie back- you won’t fall, you won’t drown, I promise. You have to trust the water…” This text is a response to the devastating flooding in Pakistan in October of 2022. Using auto-ethnography in the form of memory and bodily experience, the text is fluid in its exploration of the spatial, temporal, entangled and embodied. It invites the reader to surrender slowly, to allow for questions and curiosity to emerge.