تَوفِیق : Finding home in Chitral
Summer 2023: I packed my life into boxes and left my house in Chitral, bound for Scotland. The decision felt final—like closing a chapter of my life—but life has a way of leaving doors ajar. I spent the next year unravelling myself in Istanbul, gazing inward, confronting truths I’d buried, and feeling the quiet ache of Chitral etched into my chest like a breath that lingers long after the exhale. That melancholy, I realised, wasn’t sadness. It was Chitral—a place that had transformed me, threaded itself into my soul.
Healing was messy, interrupted by the demands of creative projects, the tides of personal loss, and a deep hunger for clarity. By summer 2024, something whispered for me to return. I didn’t argue. I arrived in Chitral like a thirsty traveller, ready to drink in its untamed beauty. For four months, I gave myself over to the land and its rhythms. I wrote feverishly. I travelled with friends, tracing winding paths to Madaklasht and through the Yarkhun Valley, stopping in strangers’ homes for chai that tasted like warmth and belonging. The Shandur Pass carried me to Ghizer, Gupis, and Yasin Valleys—each place a quiet reminder of how the mountains hold stories, secrets, and a fierce aliveness. Somewhere along the way, Scotland began to fade. Its permanence unravelled, making room for a life that was simpler and wilder. A life I wouldn’t trade for the world.
In Chitral town, I found a house that spoke to me—a modest place with a walnut tree at its heart, whispering promises of shade, fruit, and permanence. Friends asked why not Upper Chitral or Hunza, places famed for their untouched beauty. My answer is simple: Chitral town is a place of contradictions, and I thrive in its mystery. People call it conservative, rigid, even suffocating. I see layers of creativity, love, and grit woven into its streets. It’s a place that challenges me, sharpens my edges, and feeds my curiosity.
My belongings had been sitting in storage—a quiet reminder of a life paused, not abandoned. This summer, I pieced my home together with the help of close friends, one memory and one gesture at a time. Now, my house feels like an extension of myself, rooted in possibility.
This fall, I returned briefly to Scotland to visit family, but Chitral was always on my mind. For over a decade, my life has been a pendulum, swinging between two worlds, but this time feels different. This time, I am not a visitor. I am claiming Chitral—not just as a muse or a retreat but as home.
Home is knowing where to find the best chai, the vendor whose smile warms the cool mornings, the stationer who saves your favourite pens, the tailor who gets the cut just right. It’s where mango lassis and the stack of winter nuts are walking distance because you don’t drive, and the pace of life feels familiar, dreamy, sacred.
For the first time, I have given myself permission to love Chitral without apology. To let it love me back, in all its roughness and beauty. This is not an ending or a beginning. It’s a quiet arrival, a belonging I didn’t know I’d been searching for all along.