I.

I'm not sure when I realised we'd met before. At first, you were just the elderly man seen  pottering around our communal rooftop.

I watched you lovingly curate your little kingdom, from the hydroponic vegetables you grew organically, to the blossoms nourished by the caresses and conversations you lavished on them.

You rarely spoke to anyone else in the building. The guard said you were a good soul, shaking his head sadly at your grief over your wife's recent passing.

"His children live abroad - they didn't even visit properly before she died. He looked after her all by himself!"

I couldn't imagine your loneliness, living in my rambunctious household with a husband and three delightful teenage demons.

Perhaps I too would someday be reduced to relying on roses for company. I shuddered at the thought.

I launched my campaign with some sad-looking potted plants that cried out for help. You resisted my overtures at first, averse to being pitied. But you realised soon enough that my plants were the ones deserving of my (and everyone else's) pity!

Why did I do it? Because one good turn deserves another.

And I remembered a heartbroken young girl on a river cruise and her encounter with a kind middle-aged man.

"It's rarely as bad as it feels, Ma - even this shall pass. If it makes you feel any better, it's sometimes easier to share problems with a stranger. It's not as if we'll ever meet again."

And three decades passed before we did...

by Farah Ghuznavi

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‘Switch’: Sehri Tales selections, Day 12

II.

One year, I turned right on a ramp and skidded off the road.

In those panicked moments, headlights muted by the falling snow, I thought I was close to death. The cold, the early morning gloom, the unfamiliarity of the road. This cannot be happening to me, I told myself. And yet, it was.

I made it to work that day. It was some forgettable weekday, sometime between November and February, in that first winter upstate. It was not the day Anthony Smith made me cry. That, I remember, had been in the spring, when the snow had melted and the days were long and bright. It was not the day I was told that I was being let go. That day had been in May, a day I spent crying on Emily's couch while she played me her favorite songs from the Book of Mormon soundtrack. I missed my turn while driving through the intersection and barely missed T-boning an oncoming car.

by Shehtaz Huq

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‘Changes’: Sehri Tales selections, Day 11

III.

Incense-cedar shavings are gently brushed aside, perhaps they came from a tree older than your mother. There is a hint of chartreuse in the scalloped edges. Graphite dust settles as you scrawl. You pause to inhale its humic allure, wrinkling your nose at the ungainly script - irrefutably patrimonial. The rasp of a turned page inspires a frisson. You wonder anew.Incense-cedar shavings are gently brushed aside, perhaps they came from a tree older than your mother. There is a hint of chartreuse in the scalloped edges. Graphite dust settles as you scrawl. You pause to inhale its humic allure, wrinkling your nose at the ungainly script - irrefutably patrimonial. The rasp of a turned page inspires a frisson. You wonder anew.

by Azfarul Islam