Essays

Long before Abbottabad makes itself known to the world as the final hideout of a wanted terrorist, before its name lands in anglophone mouths and breaking news segments, it is the sleepy little town of my childhood. Its striking landscape becomes my first images of the world—mountains dotted with slender pines cradle thinly-populated valleys, roaring streams coil, dip, surface and swell, breaking their busy journeys only when winter descends like a soft, white blanket. This i