AARZOO

"Aarzoo" is an Urdu word meaning desire and longing. This series explores a collision of desires, discontent, and buoyancy. In Pakistan, as elsewhere, men, women, children and animals suffer and struggle. The instability challenges the surface of things

"Aarzoo" is an Urdu word meaning wish, desire and longing. This series explores a collision of desires, discontent, and buoyancy. Pakistan reveals itself as a microcosm of global uncertainty. Its fractured political, social, and environmental systems mirror the fragility of our age, the slow accumulation of countless, often imperceptible fragments of chaos, whose sum is ultimately explosive.

These images document the hardships and the sparks of resilience, which cut through the shadows like a distant yet vivid sun filtering through tightly closed shutters—the magical room of souls that wear down and resist.

This work, raw and tender, is an invitation to dwell within the turbulence of a shifting world. In Pakistan, as elsewhere, men, women, children and animals suffer and struggle. The instability challenges the surface of things but also opens cracks through which beauty and meaning emerge. These diptychs are my attempt to navigate that fragile space, tracing the rhythms of a reality that is as unsettling as it is profoundly human.