Even with bated breaths, words kept flowing

This book was compiled and written, all in the year of 2020. Some may know it as the year of sickness, some may know it as the year of misery. However, for the author, it was the year of many emotions. Sateah was able to weave together her thoughts and how she felt in her darkest times, and bring out such beauty that it is a delight to read.

The greatest joy ever known to her is that she can write prose in such a delicate manner. The greatest sorrow that she has known is perhaps not being able to share it all at once.

About the Author

Born to a family of exceptionally talented writers, it’s no surprise that Sateah Afreedi became an author in her own right. From an early age, she was easily mesmerized and wanted to delve deeper into the meaning of a writer’s words and the foreshadowing they did. Her life has been a cascade of events that have led her to this exact moment.

She has dipped her toes in a variety of professions but they all had one thing in common; writing. As long as she is writing, as long as she is inspired, as long as she’s liberating herself of her thoughts and pouring them onto the pages, she is content.

Her words are from her own life experiences. She takes the philosophical realities of our world and turns them into works of art that can be consumed and understood by anyone and everyone.

About the Illustrator

Fakeha Sajid is a prominent member of the artistic society in Karachi. She is an emerging illustrator and her work clearly shows the beauty of her glorious artistic skills. She has proven herself to be capable of creating stunning, breathtaking artworks time and time again. 

Her passion is to not just create art but also teach it. There is little that she can’t achieve through the wills of her imagination.

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About the Editor

MAKA is a professional wordsmith. He has contributed to various brands and campaigns in his career over the years. He is also an emerging Rotarian.
Travelling the world has allowed him to broaden his horizons. He now wishes to help and give back to the community from which he has come. 
MAKA’s passion is not just with writing but also to teach the next generation of writers, editors, and orators.

Reviews

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Mehtab Akbar Rashdi

Multilingual author and activist

The poet is a young girl, unassuming; as I never thought that [Sateah] would be writing poetry which is having an unlimited vision and deep feelings which touch your heart and impact your mind so smoothly that you little realize that is has taken your heart and mind in its grip. This emerging poet’s has a unique a name, “Sateah Afreedi.”

While explaining what Poetry is, Emerson says, “It is like putting eyes and tongue into every dumb and inanimate object,”… [He] further explains that a “Poet turns the world to glass and shows us all the things in there right series and process. Poetry should break the wall of silence around crystal, wood and stone.”

When you read Sateah Afreedi’s poetry, you would experience many such scenarios, in which [Sateah] is trying to make people see which they otherwise refuse to see and trying to break the walls of silence around them.

One such effort on her past is seen her beautiful poem, “Do you Remember the Cages?”

Sateah’s sensitivity and sensibility is to nature. [Sateah] has experienced the restrictions on freedom of expressions in our society, [Sateah] is familiar with which people with open mind and liberal ideas have to go through in our society. But [Sateah] believes in struggle to come out of these shackles and break them.

Poets drive the energy from various sources, some from religion, some from nature and some from the people and the environment around them. [Sateah] seems to be influenced by nature. Coherent vision of man and the universe, which allows to conceive and write the poetry.

I can understand the limitations of space… I would like to conclude, that [Sateah] has the skill and of writing the descriptive poetry [Sateah] seems to be more close to nature. [Sateah] is very much aware about the rapidly changing world. [Sateah] also realizes the challenges faced by her generation. [Sateah’s] poem “Generation Y” is the perfect example of the experiences of our upcoming generation and expresses well.

I can see a shining star emerging rising on our literary when has the potential to draw the attention of many I would like to end with one verse, which represents my feelings in [Sateah’s] words.

“Fly my darling,” The hauntings encouraged,

She jumped from the tallest place she knew of.

And the world fell silent.

The clouds carried her like she was a child of the sky,

The ghosts of her past didn’t win this time.

Javed Jabbar

Former Senator and Scholar

They are sensitive and expressive. They capture and evoke pain and hurt, memories and dreams in a compelling way. They explore inner realms with courage and candor.

Mohsin Hussain

Warwick PhD

Overall, I found this collection of prose poetry bold, aching with sadness, and caught in a maelstrom of existential crises. My personal favourite is ‘Sometimes She Visits Twice’, as it stands in sharp contrast to Emily Dickenson’s ‘I could not stop for Death’. Unlike Dickenson’s Death, Sateah’s personification of that phenomenon is more human; she empathises with your suffering but warns you of your mortality all the same. Dickenson treats death as the next big adventure – this is in sharp contrast to Sateah’s Death, who states that ‘she is not kind’ when it’s time.

Other poems that stand out are ‘Mermaids to Sirens’ and ‘Moondust and Madness’, which are full of references from Greek mythology that are questioned and reinterpreted in line with the writer’s mood. Sateah’s prose is relentless; the thoughts are violent yet bold, the doubt is prevalent and crippling; and the feelings of love and loss appear beyond mortal understanding. Even when Sateah deals with the metaphysical, we as readers can see her reality. Some poems could easily be sung as anthems (in particular ‘Fire and Spite’ and ‘Generation Y’) whereas others are meant to be consumed in silence.

Sateah’s poetry is so transcendental that the line between sinners and saints – almost – ceases to exist.

Muneeza Hashmi

Chairperson
Alhamra Arts Council

The poems penned here are vivid images from the eyes and heart of the young poet. She has written about the inner most depths of her emotions and feelings. There is a desire to be free, to fly away, and to escape, to live in freedom and with abandon.

 

There are images of a young girl bound by perhaps tradition and love of her family but she longs to be free, to live her life as she wants without restraints and not by rules of others.

 

The expressions I find in these poems is of longing, pain, breaking of “chains” and “cages.”

 

These are expressions of a free soul who wants to explore the universe on her own terms…

Pranjali Singh

Warwick PhD

Your poems represent authenticity and intense human paradoxes whether it’s about the matter of life and death or love and hate. Your writings appeal to my inner conflicts and remind me of the voice in my head that wants to speak aloud questioning the very inevitability of suffering in the form of existence. You cover a wide range of issues right from existential crisis to the beauty we miss in the expressions of the physical serenity: rains, droughts, oceans, skies, stars to mention a few; from governmental and societal manipulation to the complexity of freedom in Generation Y…

However, what I would really like to emphasis on is that we often mistakenly concur poetry as something that is to do with hopelessness and cynicism but your writings hold the potential of a very optimistic reception whereby I was deeply impressed with a sense of fighting back and a call for seeing the light in the darkest of the darkest moments in life…

It’s rare to come across people who enjoy penning down their experiences and feelings like you do in this millennial world of memes…

Sultan Arshad Khan

Film Historian and Author

I found the poetry partly seeped into the philosophy of life and partly in the experiences and occurrences that took place in her life… [Sateah will] One day make a name, a shining one, for herself in the world of literature.