I write from Doha — a city that is itself a study in tradition, modernity, ambition, and becoming. Living here, as someone who experiences multiple cultures, watching a region remake itself in real time, has sharpened my perspective. I notice the gaps between what is said and what is meant. Between what is visible and what is carefully kept from view.
How I write: slowly, and without urgency. I am less interested in conclusions than in how questions evolve — how a perspective shifts, an assumption gets unsettled, a complexity resists the resolution you were hoping for. My essays stay open because I think premature certainty is one of the more common forms of intellectual laziness.
I write once or twice a month, when there is something genuinely worth saying. If you subscribe to my newsletter, An Occasional Note, that's what you'll receive: something considered, not something scheduled.
Beyond this site, I also read widely and think through books at Books, Life & Society — where reading is a way of thinking about the world, not escaping it.
I grew up between worlds — a Pakistani born and raised in Qatar, trained as an economist, and drawn, always, to the questions that don't resolve cleanly.
This site is where I write through them.
I studied economics at LUMS in Lahore, Pakistan, and went on to complete an MSc in Economic Development at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. That training gave me a language for understanding systems, power, and the structures we inherit — but it also showed me the limits of that language. The cleanest models rarely account for the messiest truths.
Reality and the textbook are two different worlds. Theory does not necessarily replicate itself.
What I'm really interested in is how things work when the textbook isn't watching.
My writing sits at the intersection of economics, culture, society, and women — not as separate disciplines but as forces that shape one another in ways we often fail to name plainly. I write about power: who holds it, how it moves, how it disguises itself. About the stories societies tell to maintain their shape. About what gets left out of the official account.
Photography by: Alicja Kalinska Photography