Rafiq kathwari biography of barack

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

At an Australian cricket club in Manhattan so dimly lit that I lift the nearest tea light so I can see the menu, I feel oddly at home; it is likely the haze of cultural nostalgia in these surroundings.

As a Pakistani I grew up with cricket though I’m not much of a cricket fan and have had little direct exposure to it apart from a single visit to Lord’s Cricket Ground in London where I chose to talk to the gardener about the oldest trees on the premises instead of taking the famous cricket tour with my family, but here in New York, in the company of the Kashmiri-American poet Rafiq Kathwari, in the midst of cricket paraphernalia, framed action shots and lived-in colonial furniture, I’m on an unexpected bridge to a familiar time and place.

I’m struck by the complexity of this nostalgia as I talk about life in our other countries, countries of birth, countries awaiting a rebirth, with the author of “In Another Country:” a collection