11 Jun, 2015

billboards…

11 Jun, 2015

photo by Minal The month of ramzaan (the way the month of fasting is referred to in South Asia) started today. In response, this billboard asking “Gave more this Ramadan?” popped up on Houston’s interstate highway I-45 just a few days ago.

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afterwards…

audience members at the Baker Ripley Community Center; photo by Paul Hester A month has floated away, and I’m still processing my What Is Home? production, one that took months to prepare and perform. People ask me: Were you happy with how the show turned out? I nod, unable...

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08 May, 2015

one more day…

08 May, 2015

laying out final excerpts from my memoir before documents are sent to Oskar to layout The last few weeks have been filled with meals as I spend time with friends to help me plan for my What Is Home? production, One night, Minal and I visited Christa Forster’s home,...

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07 May, 2015

essay in gray matters…

07 May, 2015

photograph of my 2009 “Listening from Within” installation dedicated to my father, Dr. Mohammad Sarwar; photo by Eric Hester An excerpt from my longer essay “That Long Monday Afternoon” was reprinted in the Houston Chronicle’s Gray Matters under a new title: “Skyping My Father Goodbye.”

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30 Apr, 2015

people don’t talk about the necessity of crossing…

Sehba Sarwar
30 Apr, 2015

Karen Martinez, a filmmaker and a recent college graduate, talks about “home” and crossing borders: Houston is my home. I was born in Tula, Hidalgo – Mexico – and my family moved here when I was ten. I haven’t been able to go back. It’s my parents’ home, but...

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26 Apr, 2015

an earthquake and student voices…

Sehba Sarwar
26 Apr, 2015

Sagar’s apartment ceiling After a sleepless night, I wake up to read a text message by Hemangi, a Westbury High School student who participated in my storytelling workshop: Did you hear about the earthquake in Nepal? In just a few hours, I need to be at the apartment belonging...

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25 Apr, 2015

another assassination…

25 Apr, 2015

July 2007: L: Sabeen Mahmud at T2F; R: I offer my first reading at T2F My mobile phone ringer goes off while I’m at a lunch meeting. I glance at the phone and see that Beena is on the other side. Rather than have a clipped conversation, I tell...

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a lesson i learned about being desi and american is that boundaries are made up…

Sehba Sarwar

Zarana Sanghani, who recently returned to Houston after graduate school and working New York, talks about the issue of “home” – a subject that’s close to her heart: Feeling at home is where I can turn off and don’t have to think of presenting; home is when you don’t...

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14 Apr, 2015

you have to find home within yourself…

Sehba Sarwar
14 Apr, 2015

My friend Gordon talks about his sense of home as we drink tea and sip smoothies just a few blocks from his house in Freedmen’s Town, where he and his wife Christine hosted my 2012 VBB production: Feeling at home for me is to not have feelings of anxiety...

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07 Apr, 2015

i think of windows when i think of home…

Sehba Sarwar
07 Apr, 2015

I meet up with my friends Sally, Beverly and Yolanda, who I know through many Houston-based spaces and organizations including Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and the University of Houston’s Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, to view Sally’s new apartment on Kirby Drive, which she and her husband have procured...

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03 Apr, 2015

for me, everything is here: friends, family, health, doctors…

Sehba Sarwar
03 Apr, 2015

Most of the interviews I’ve undertaken for my project have been with friends and family who were born in spaces other than Houston. For the next month until my 9 May installation/performance, I’ll post conversations with friends who were born and/or raised in Houston. During one such visit, my...

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02 Apr, 2015

shukria / thank you…

Sehba Sarwar
02 Apr, 2015

Today is a special day. One of the storytelling workshop participants, Sunita, has opened out her Crescent Oaks apartment for a final gathering. This past spring, during the workshop I held in the Baker Ripley Neighborhood Center, I became familiar with southwest Houston’s Crescent Oaks apartment complex, but I...

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I was inspired to begin my blog when I visited the library at my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College, and saw a framed photograph of my friends and me calling for divestment of funds from South Africa.

In 2007,  I began a blog when I visited my alma mater and saw a framed photograph of my friends and me calling for divestment of funds from South Africa. I use the blog to document my movement between spaces, Houston, Karachi, Delhi, Dhaka, Los Angeles and elsewhere, recording observations, images and conversations. Here, I document the multiple realities that I inhabit – writer, artist, mother, activist, educator, and transnational. Interviews from my blog were exhibited at Houston’s Baker Ripley Community Center (2014) and at Houston Public Library in downtown (2015). My papers are archived at the University of Houston’s library.