The Night Diary

It feels scary to talk, because once the words are out, you can’t put them back in. But if you write words and they don’t come out the way you want them to, you can erase them and start over.

When you divide people, they take sides.

You can't split us. You can't split love.

Sometimes the world as you know it just decides to become something else.

He misses the time he had with you. I miss the time I didn’t have.

I needed all the feelings to stop boiling like a pot of dal and be cool enough for me to taste them.

I had never wondered about being safe before. I just thought I was.

It's just that some people are better at being than others

Sometimes the sadness about you being gone comes and finds me after not being there for a while. Something makes me think about you and then I get sad for a long time.

Everybody thinks they are protecting and defending their people. But we are all people, right?" -Papa

Secretly, I want the box more than the jewelry. I want it to be all mine and never have to give it back. I could find any old thing—a pebble, a leaf, a pistachio shell—and put it in the box. Like magic, these things would get to be special at least for a day.

Do we have to take a side?” I asked. “I think it’s safer. That way you know who your enemy is,” Amil said, and crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “But if we don’t take a side, then we don’t have any enemies.” “I don’t think it works that way,” Amil said.

I used to think of people by their names and what they looked like, or what they did. Sahil sells pakoras on the corner. Now I look at him and think Sikh. My teacher, Sir Habib, is now my Muslim teacher. My friend Sabeen is happy and talks a lot. Now she’s my Muslim friend. Papa’s friend, Dr. Ahmed, is now a Muslim doctor. I think of everyone I know and try to remember if they are Hindu or Muslim or Sikh and who has to go and who can stay.

Amil is only being all he knows how to be. But I guess Papa is, too. I guess we all are. It’s just that some people are better at being than others.

It feels like we’re really in a story now. I’ve heard about stories like these, about people who flee their homes in a war with nothing but the clothes and food on their backs. Now that’s who we are, even though there’s not a war here, but it’s like a war. It seems almost like a made-up war.

It’s one thing to understand facts and another thing to understand why those facts are facts.

All that suffering, all that death, for nothing. I will never understand, as long as I live, how a country could change overnight from a line drawn.

I'm losing a part of you all over again...

I've always been afraid that if I screamed, I might break into million of pieces.

I could tell he was trying to shake off his feelings. He didn't like to be angry. I loved that about him, that he really wanted to be happy.

...if you were here, would you have sat next to me and held me? Would you have loved me more than all of them?

Were we just at the mercy of leaders who couldn't agree?

If someone comes into the hospital, I treat them no matter who they are or what religion they are. When I open a body up, I see the blood, the muscles, the bones, all the same in every person, like Gandhiji says" -Papa

After I finish, it’s like the part of me that can’t fall asleep, the part that’s staring at the cracks on the ceiling, wondering and worrying, is emptied in the diary for the night. During the day I fill back up and the pages wait. I like to think you’re holding my thoughts for me until I can tend to them again.

I didn’t feel like talking at all today. Watching the boys made me want to be quiet, so I could think about them. I was afraid each word I might utter would somehow fade the memory.

I don’t ask many questions, so it would be fairer if he answered the few I ask. He should be more appreciative. I could be like Amil and ask a question every five seconds, but he doesn’t answer many of those either.

It took a lot of energy to ask that question. I wished he had answered it. I don’t know when I’ll be able to ask it again.

Kazi tells me stories about you once in a while. I hardly ask him to tell me about you, though, because I’m afraid that the stories might run out. I want to save them, like a treat.

Cakes and bows must be nice, but is anything better than a perfect tomato?