Right Now by Hibah Shabkhez

Photo by Sacha Verheij on Unsplash

You turn away from the screen. You half-shrug. Time for a cliché to cut the tension, guaranteed to make everyone grunt and shake their heads in pseudo-profound melancholy. This has happened before, you begin, it will happen again. Suddenly she’s shaking your arm, yelling at you to shut up. Who cares about before, who cares about again? She screams. It’s happening to my sister, damn you. It’s happening right now. Everyone squirms. Everyone glares at you, as though you had flown the plane, had pulled the trigger, had dropped the bomb that pulverised her sister’s neighbourhood in a land far enough away that no one really cares, even when - well, even now. All over the world, someone is shaking a sputtering stranger, screaming, it’s happening to my sister, damn you. It’s happening right now. ​

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Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Black Bough, Zin Daily, London Grip, The Madrigal, Acropolis Journal, Lucent Dreaming, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez

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