24 Mar, 2015

i think i’ve given up on the idea of one place being home for me…

Sehba Sarwar
24 Mar, 2015

photo by Salma Qazi Spending spring break at our family friend Shaista’s home in California’s Bay Area is a welcome break from our hectic Houston schedule. One afternoon, as we recover from our long drives along the coastline, I chat with Shaista about my “home” project. Given her movement...

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13 Mar, 2015

students share stories…

Sehba Sarwar
13 Mar, 2015

Photo by Michelle Garcia Baker Ripley Community Center bustles this Thursday morning since many activities are being organized around campus for a national reporter site-visit. I drop off VBB’s Associate Director Ana Laurel, who’s helping me, to the front of the building so she can set up the sound...

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09 Mar, 2015

celebrating international women’s day…

Sehba Sarwar
09 Mar, 2015

Today, International Women’s Day, is cold and rainy day. As I adjust to the spring time change, I reflect on the women’s workshops I’ve been offering in Houston’s Gulfton neighborhood. I’ve worked in this community before, but more with youth at a nearby high school. This time, as part...

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06 Mar, 2015

my challenge is how to move and yet make sure the children get their time with their grandmothers…

Sehba Sarwar
06 Mar, 2015

After I close out a meeting with Ana Mac Naught, Community Developer at Baker Ripley Neighborhood Center — where I’ve been running a women’s workshop and am now planning a public conversation next week — I ask her to participate in an interview for my blog. We chat in...

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i need to be here right now to get my daughters through their education…

Sehba Sarwar

Sometimes, I get my hair touched up at Ruby’s salon on Harwin Drive, around the corner from Hillcroft. I go to the same place for threading and waxing, and on Eid, friends and I take our daughters there for mehndi/henna designs on their hands. Though the salon is owned...

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“at home” is where you know people, where you have friends…

Sehba Sarwar

photo by Maha Shahid Based in Boston where my sister Beena Sarwar has been for the last four years, she’s happy to spend a week in Houston and get a break from piles of snow. Inevitably, our conversation turns to issues of “home”, particularly since her editorial work with...

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08 Feb, 2015

freedom on the streets…

Sehba Sarwar
08 Feb, 2015

photo by Minal Saldivar As we drive up the freeway ramp, I notice that the freeway shack that Minal and I documented a few months ago has been “torn down”. The only vestige of the temporary home aka juggi is cardboard strewn on grass. Minal documents the change today,...

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04 Feb, 2015

essay about my short trip to delhi…

04 Feb, 2015

snacks outside a Delhi train station My essay, No Borders: Delhi Twenty-Five Years Later about my travels to Delhi appeared in Aman Ki Asha, a print and online newspaper that’s a peace initiative between the Jang Group and Times of India. In the dim light before dawn, as the...

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equating muslims to dogs…

Sehba Sarwar

view from the 16th floor of a Harris County courthouse The first round of questions is posed by the lawyer representing the father: Please raise your number if you believe that a mother always has first rights to the child. I, along with five other potential jurors, raise my...

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home is a space where you don’t have to watch out for proper behavior or ways to be…

Sehba Sarwar

As I’ve worked on my What Is Home? project, I’ve recorded many conversations with my mother Zakia Sarwar about her multiple migrations – from North India to Lahore, Pakistan at age 14, to Karachi a few years later, and now from Pakistan to USA. On the morning before she...

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12 Jan, 2015

i’d feel more at “home” here if there were more people involved in the arts…

Sehba Sarwar
12 Jan, 2015

In a conversation with one of my oldest and dearest friends, “Justin” (name changed for personal reasons), I’m not surprised to hear his words: My deepest feelings of “home” are attached to two places I felt supported and secure – and had a sense of freedom: the ghost ranch...

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02 Jan, 2015

home is a space that I create for myself and not one that’s defined for me …

Sehba Sarwar
02 Jan, 2015

Filmmaker Yunuen Perez Vertti drops by my Houston house to eat a meal prepared by my mother. A native of Mexico City, Yunuen lived for a decade in Houston before relocating a few years ago to Vancouver, Canada. She talks about what “home” means to her: Nowadays feeling at...

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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.