‘And So, My Brother, Hail, and Farewell!’
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. — ‘Lycidas’, Milton One April afternoon in 2020, during the sudden lull of lockdown, I placed a shoebox on my sun-flooded desk. I lifted outa photograph of myself as a toddler, bright-eyed against a dull
The Underrepresentation of British-Bangladeshi and British-Pakistani Students
When I leant to turn the radio on in Oxford, a few days after I first moved in, browsing the airwaves caught me by surprise. Here I heard no local Asian radio streaming familiar snippets of Urdu into space. The charity shops noticeably lacked kurtas, decorated shirts with pride of place in my mu
For The Record
you have grown too big. too full of images like water in fist, like sand between fingers, unreliable as ink on page. for the record, there will only ever again be vague flashes, just the cucumber slipping out the end of your sandwich pieces of gravel in your knees trampoline-burn the s
Spiking in Oxford: Testimonies
CW: Spiking Please can you start by telling me, in your own words, what happened? A couple shared a drink at the Bullingdon club sometime in Michaelmas of this year He: ‘I saw her with her hand over [her drink]…I remember seeing her do that, but then I was like, who’s going to [&
Spiking in Oxford: An Investigation
It was one of my first nights clubbing in Oxford and my friend had gone missing. Apparently she had accepted a drink from someone in the club, though she can’t remember that now: “my last memory was from the bus stop – I don’t remember any of the club at all. [I woke up and] […]
Daffodils
My mother chose clothes toned in pastel and soft wool sheared of pink and brown. Something wrong with her shalwar kameez- she could tell her identity wasn’t for the 9-5, so she hid it in a button-down. Professional, kempt, clean. Adapting to an alien rhythm- monotony isn’t so hard.
The Amman I know
the Amman I know, wakes up early in the summer stretching out her feet as the adhan sounds. streets remain silent bas the scraping of sweepers and the corner bakery rolling up its shutters. slowly, the city awakens with the honks of taxis and squeaky carts of ka’ak bread, she stirs as the national
Prison Pen Pals
Entering the WriteAPrisoner.com website, the user is greeted by a seemingly endless list of prisoners. Advertising to potential penpals with a photo and a short biography, these inmates are looking to bridge the gap to the outside world and stave off feelings of isolation. Unable to reach out themse