Storytelling Anonymous

Snowflakes, soft and silver in the dark, drift past the window, casting shadows on the floor. The door creaks open as my mother peeks into the room to check on my brand new baby sister. She finds me crouched besides the tiny swaddled figure, bathed in the warm yellow light of a torch, a book open in my small lap. Two-and-a-half years old, I cannot read, but I make-up a story to go with the pictures, and whisper it through the bars of the crib…

Over time, these whispers evolved. They found their way onto the pages of countless journals, as I spent my childhood writing about the wild adventures of the characters that populated my mind. As I matured, I engaged more with the world around me. My focus began to shift away from the feisty young girl who ran away with the circus and the dashing pilot who was transported through time by the Bermuda triangle. Instead I found myself drawn towards the touching relationship between a woman and the squatters who lived in the empty patch of land next to her house, and the story of the elderly coach who worked tirelessly to train athletes from Karachi’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Rather than inventing characters and the lives they lived, I became captivated by the desire to tell stories of the...