1) Where are you from? Why?
I was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and lived there until the age of 9. My family moved to Toronto, Canada after that, and I have lived here since. These are the places where I have been for extended periods of time, but really I am from in between the two covers that hold together books because that is where I did (and am still doing) most of my growing up.
2) Generate a relevant formula.
Formulas and I have never been friends. My Physics notebook will tell you that I only ever wrote sentences in it about people that I made up. So perhaps it would be appropriate to say:
formulas + me = repulsion
3) In your bio for your recent piece in the Emprise Review, it says that you’ll be graduating high school this spring. What’s one memory that you’ll always have of high school?
Most of my memories from the past four years of my life have nothing to do with high school at all. I can only think of one memory that I’ll always have of high school that even took place in the same vicinity as the building where I was completing my secondary education. It is not very remarkable, but I will never forget it.
In my freshman year, there was a day in June where I woke up and sat at the coffee table in the living room for the entire morning not being able to go to school. At this point, I can’t remember if I was ill or upset, but I remember not going. I remember not going and not being able to write a paper on Rachmaninoff the night before (whom I liked very much, so it should have been easy to do). Writing usually comes easiest to me, so not being able to write had seemed like a disaster. Eventually, at some odd hour of the afternoon, I decided I could not just waste my day and took the bus to school. When I arrived there and stood completely dejected before crossing the street, I saw a very dear friend of mine making her way up the sidewalk on the other side. She immediately ran over to me and showered me with her concern and said lovely things like she had been worried about me and that she wondered where I had been. I just remember thinking how serendipitous it was that she cared and was right there at a time where it would have been odd for any students to be outside. And then, after seeing her, whatever was wrong was clearly fixed because I can’t remember what went wrong at all.
4) You write on your blog, “My existence as an extension of you (invisibly, at the edges).” Where do we end and where do other people begin?
After birth, and before death, people do not begin or end anywhere. We all exist as parallel lines that are infinite for as long as we are here, and then when we are gone, these lines disappear. In our lives, we sometimes gravitate towards any of the other existing parallel lines and meet at points, and then depart again. Rarely are we so strongly pulled towards another line that we are consumed by it and that it is consumed by us, forming one new line that may or may not diverge, but this does happen too.
5) Use this space to free associate with the following word: “Adult.”
Never
Ever
Ever
Ever
Never.
If being an adult means that I am to be a ‘fully developed individual’, I would never like to be an adult. I want to continue to grow for as long as I possibly can.
6) What is there, and what should we do about it?
There is here. There is just here, and it is full of experiences waiting like sleeping children we have yet to wake. We should have as many experiences as we can contain in our limited lives. We should feel everything as much as we can bear to feel it.
7) What’s a question you’ve always wanted to be asked?
Where do the ducks in Central Park go in the winter?
Madeeha blogs here.
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[...] Backer of Fiction Daily runs some fun questions by Madeeha [...]