On Not Writing
by Saba Imtiaz
I am a writer, I used to declare to myself. I laugh at my younger self’s sense of supreme confidence in her identity, her work, her ambition. Who knows what I am now? I am doing everything but writing. I write code. I write about knitting. I write out grocery lists to send to the bougie supermarket on WhatsApp, lists with words like Perrier and Parmesan cheese. I think about writing all the time: the novel I am yet to start, the novels I am reading and how they were written, everyone else’s writing, everyone who seems to be pitching and writing and thinking about writing. I think about one of my favorite writers, Fran Lebowitz, and how she is doing. Is Fran wearing a mask?
I write a short piece for a new digital publication. I don’t think about writing again. It takes me three days to write a new pitch. I don’t send it.
I am not not writing. I am doing the drudgery work in the anticipation of writing: making timelines, reading through a ton of archived material, even doing the dreaded work of transcription. The wait is excruciating. When will this be over? When can I write? When the time comes, will I even remember how to write?
It feels bizarre to be so stagnant when everything around me is changing, everyone is dying, and everyone, somehow, is writing.
One morning, I see a butterfly. A butterfly! On a Karachi street! Someone call National Geographic! What was it doing there? Did it get lost? Did this momentary lapse in normal hawk-eat-rat-eat-cat city behavior force this butterfly out, to enjoy this moment of wonder of the streets finally being safe, after decades, for butterflies to emerge?
There are no more butterflies. The streets fill up with people again. The death toll rises and rises. Everything that can go wrong does. A fire breaks out in the building next door. I leave the house in my pyjamas, clutching a ‘fire ball’ – a football-sized item apparently designed to douse flames that I bought on a fire safety equipment sales rep’s recommendation. My partner manages to pack all our valuable documents, every single electronic item, put our cat in the carrier, and change clothes. I write a tweet about the fire. It is the most popular bit of writing I’ve done in a while.
A plane falls from the sky and crashes into another Karachi neighborhood. There is a heatwave, then another heatwave. The death toll keeps increasing. The bougie supermarket goes up in flames. The monsoon begins: a few minutes of rain, and the power goes out.
I wake up one morning, and the terror is real. My throat is closing up. Death is here. Writing is meaningless.
It’s not death, it turns out. It’s an allergic reaction. I’m not dying, and I’m still not writing.
Saba Imtiaz is a writer who lives in Karachi, Pakistan. She is the author of the novel Karachi, You’re Killing Me! Web: sabaimtiaz.com
