The last few days in Pakistan felt strange. I had spent years working towards this moment, dreaming about a new life, a new country, a new version of myself. I was excited, more than ready, and still somehow heavy with the thought of leaving. Packing your life into a few suitcases makes you realise how much of yourself is tied to a place. There was excitement for everything that was waiting ahead, and sadness for everything I was about to leave behind.

My first Eid away from home. I celebrated in Vienna with friends from Pakistan, sharing food, stories, laughter, and all those little traditions that suddenly feel much more important when you are far away from them. Eid hits differently when home is a flight away. For a day, we recreated a little piece of what we had left behind, surrounded by people who understood exactly what it meant to miss it. It wasn't home, but somehow, it felt a little closer.

A purple haze, a moonlight hush. Tonight, the sky reminds me of all this city gave me.
familiar streets that knew my silence,
moments I didn't know were memories in the making,
tears I hid behind sunsets,
kindness from strangers I'll never forget,
laughter that were louder than the pain,
walks that led me back to myself,
songs that now belong to this city,
the courage I found when I had none,
goodbyes that never felt finished,
a softness I learnt to protect,
the peace I didn't know I was searching for
and a version of me I never want to forget. 💜

For years, the Santiago Bernabéu existed somewhere between television screens, match days, and childhood imagination. Then suddenly, I was there. The lights, the stands, the sound of the anthem, thousands of voices singing together. I had imagined that moment so many times as a kid, but nothing really prepares you for standing inside a place you once thought belonged only to your dreams. A very old dream, finally checked off the list. ❤️

I have spent more of my life in your streets than anywhere else. More time wandering, getting lost, finding my way, growing up. I know your chaos, your colours, your smells, your old buildings and your restless evenings. I miss rooftop dinners and long evenings at Haveli, plates of Lahori nashtay arriving one after another, hot puris, channay, halwa, pathooray and jalebis. I miss the noise, the food, the heat, the people, the feeling that there was always somewhere to go and someone to meet. Somewhere along the way, Lahore stopped being just a city I lived in. It became part of me.

Tickets, conference badges, books, papers, stamps, little notes and things picked up along the way. Some are souvenirs from places I travelled to, others are reminders of work, people I met, events I attended, or ideas that stayed with me. I like keeping these small, physical traces of where life has taken me. They may look like scraps of paper, but together they tell a surprisingly good story.

Some days arrive quietly and feel heavier than they should. Losing someone you love, missing home, waking up far from the people and places that make you feel safe. There are days when you simply do not have the energy to be productive, positive, or particularly brave. I am learning that this is part of life too. Not every season needs to be turned into a lesson. Sometimes you can have a difficult day, miss someone terribly, let yourself feel it, and still wake up the next morning and carry on.

Salzburg Global's annual Fest im Park has quietly become a little tradition. For the second year in a row, Schloss Leopoldskron opens its doors to the wider community for an afternoon of music, conversations, shared ideas, children running around, and people from all kinds of backgrounds coming together. Perhaps that is what keeps drawing me back. Not just the beauty of the place, but the way it is experienced and shared. For someone living away from home, moments like these create something surprisingly rare: a sense of belonging. As urban planners and designers, we often focus on the physical qualities of places. But experiences like Fest im Park are a reminder that how we open up, activate, and share those places matters just as much. A beautiful place already exists. What changes is how people experience it. Maybe that is also how a city slowly starts to feel like home. <3

A little cafe in Sialkot, a book, something warm to drink, and an afternoon with nowhere else to be. I have always loved places that let you disappear for a while. Places where you can sit alone without feeling lonely, read a few pages, underline something you like, look out the window, and lose track of time. This photograph takes me back to a much simpler kind of happiness. My hometown Sialkot, I love you.

2010. Somewhere around then, I started watching football. And somewhere along the way, Kaká became one of the reasons I fell completely in love with the game. I grew up watching him on a screen, never imagining that one day I would be standing just a few metres away from him. Fifteen years later, there he was, right in front of me. There are childhood heroes you admire, and then there are the ones who quietly become part of your story. He was one of mine.

Maybe freedom is not having everything figured out. Maybe it is having the courage to choose your own direction, even when you don't know exactly where it will lead. To make mistakes, change your mind, begin again, leave when you need to, stay when you want to, and build a life that feels like your own. For me, freedom has always been somewhere in between certainty and possibility. It is having enough room to wonder, to change, and to become someone I haven't met yet.

There is a part of me that needs to make things. Not everything needs to become a project, a publication, a portfolio piece, or something useful. Sometimes I just want to draw, paint, cut, frame, stitch, experiment, make a mess and see what comes out of it.

Art gives me a space where there are no indicators to measure, no outcomes to justify, and no right answer waiting at the end. Just colour, texture, mistakes, instinct, and the quiet satisfaction of seeing something that existed only in my head become real.

Maybe that is why I keep coming back to it.