Page 4 - Cafe Volume 1 - e-magzine
P. 4
4
by and we’ve spun stories and poems in our imagined Karachi, which in
and accumulated our work, given reality doesn’t lend itself to walking or
the hours meaning. This is our work sidewalks or bicycling and especially
under lockdown, as strangers, together for women. The house music is always
helping each other through. In a socially perfect and just exactly what we want
distanced time we’ve grown close to to listen to in the moment—anything
total strangers. Literature. from jazz, to rap, to qawwali to blues
There are four decades and and soul.
thousands of miles of distance between There are of course lots of books
us —but we bridge the gap with our there—and so much more. Oh, so
magic carpet, zoom. And in every case much more! It’s our cafe and it can
and in any case literature bridges gaps be whatever we want it to be. We bend
and sometimes erases them. geography through our imaginations
Every week, twice a week, we’ve and through zoom to meet in this
fired up our literary imaginations and imagined space and to feel relief in its
cooked up stories to tell each other. cool environment. We spend at least
We’ve kept ourselves optimistic through half an hour deciding who’s eating what.
writing creative pieces and reading We really feel like we are there. We’ve
them to our circle. We’ve escaped our even managed to jump with fright once
lockdowns in this way and meeting up when suddenly one of us jumped and
in our cafe. shrieked mid-sentence while discussing
We’ve imagined a cafe—three Kafka — because the cafe cat rubbed
stories high—where we meet. We’ve against her ankle and she thought it was
imagined what each floor looks like—It a rat. We all jumped and then laughed—
can be anything we want it to be. And it and that we guess was the point. We’re
is beautiful. It is brimming with hope trying to take care of each other not to
and humanism. There’s a vegetable pass time but to make it matter. To tell
and herb garden out back and on the the virus, you can’t succeed. The mind
roof top a bakery on the ground floor and the imagination can never be in a
where there is a cafe up front. There are lockdown.
bookshelves overflowing on the second We hope you’ll enjoy our first
floor. Parrots fly in and out of the open offering—that came about because of an
windows with the cool fresh sea breeze. event—that led to events twice a week
And there is a house cat. and actions that bring us joy. There
We ask each other how we got was no café before the virus introduced
there to the cafe. Did we walk over or itself, maybe it wouldn’t have existed
ride a bike to it? We can do all this were it not for the pandemic. Here it
