Searching For- Qismat In- < 2024 >

You walk to the window. Below, an ambulance arrives. No siren. Too late for sirens. Two paramedics slide a gurney out with careful, practiced hands. The person on it is covered in a sheet. Someone—a woman in a salwar kameez the color of lemons—runs behind them, her sandals slapping the asphalt. She is not crying. She is making a sound like a small animal.

But the preposition that follows— in —is the hinge upon which the whole search turns. Searching for- qismat in-

The dash is the most important punctuation mark in the search. Because the truth—the uncomfortable, beautiful, infuriating truth—is that you never find qismat in anything. You find it between things. You walk to the window

Because qismat, in the end, is not something you find. Too late for sirens

Qismating. The act of arriving at the thing you did not know you were walking toward.