Psychiatrist, Author, occasional translator https://nitter.cf/t.co/AGQFi0WgEW https://nitter.cf/t.co/qmIuaTSelF
Here and there
Joined December 2012
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“Where are you?” he asked over the phone. “We need to talk. I’m going to quit this job.”
The “job” was heading one of the busiest surgical departments in our huge public hospital, which treated thousands of patients a year and trained hundreds of surgeons.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/dar…
🤖 Made with AI
A few years ago, on a family trip to the local mall, my older son asked her to wear a dupatta. According to my wife, my son was dressed down and reprimanded immediately and forcefully by his younger sister. How dare he tell her how to dress?
alihashmi.substack.com/p/the…
The measure of a society is not how loudly it condemns violence after the fact. It is whether the women we love can move through their lives with dignity, freedom, and safety before violence finds them
alihashmi.substack.com/p/the…
Ali Hashmi retweeted
A must read by @Ali_Madeeh :The cost of silence thenews.pk/tns/detail/144195…
We are one of the youngest countries in the world. Nearly two thirds of our population is below thirty. I call it our demographic treasure. We are squandering that treasure with both hands by refusing to give them the education and skills they need for the jobs of tomorrow. Why are we surprised at the epidemic of mental health problems among the young, up to and including suicide, especially in regions such as Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan?
#WorldMentalHealthDay2026
@zofeen28
@hamdani_usman
@gihdofficial
thenews.pk/tns/detail/144195…
As we approach yet another global Mental Health Day, we are still ignoring mental health: a health budget with no line of its own for mental health, in a country with less than 1,000 qualified psychiatrists—about 0.19 for every 100,000 people, according to the WHO; families who are still afraid of log kya kahenge (what will people say); and patients who are still told that sadness is a failure of faith.
@nhsrcofficial @KamalMQM
It sounds like wind rustling through the trees. The river flows quietly, surrounded by lush green grass, bushes and trees on both banks. The sun is setting, a cool breeze is blowing, and a lone flag flutters on top of a spire in the distance.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/the…
Ali Hashmi retweeted
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver
On one of the walls in the house was a family portrait. He was perhaps in his mid-forties, surrounded by his wife and children. He was looking straight into the camera. They all were. He had on a pair of glasses, thinning hair, and looked confident and strong. My wife had told me stories about his forceful personality and iron discipline.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/a-g…
Years ago, on a flight from Karachi to Lahore, I was seated next to a young woman. Attractive and energetic, she was curious about what I did.
She was a student at one of Lahore’s elite universities. We talked about mental health, my work, her studies. It was a nice conversation.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/the…
"Watch out!"
A fountain of bright red blood bubbled up out of the wound and shot up to the ceiling of the OR,
spattering the roof, all of us and everything around us.
"Suction!" Hassan yelled.
The quiet in the OR was suddenly pandemonium.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/a-s…
She was telling us about an examination in college. It was the most dreaded subject of all and he was known as a brute: unpredictable, unreasonable and completely incompetent. But he was a professor and the chief examiner. The stories about him were legend. Years ago, one former student had termed his department “the most effective machine for driving students to suicide in the whole college”.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/har…
A few days before my father died, I was walking back to his room through our lawn. It was March; winter had receded and the tall kachnar tree in our backyard was in full bloom, its white flowers strewn across the lawn. I stopped, struck by its beauty. I looked at the flowers, and then towards the room where my father lay, looking out at the same tree blooming.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/the…
I felt her pain. A few weeks ago, I was swimming laps in the pool. My father had been a champion swimmer. He had taught me how to swim in school. As I raised my arm for the next stroke, the feeling hit me and I almost choked on the water—a knot in the centre of my chest. I saw him in my mind and felt it all over again: love, grief, horror, anger, disbelief.
alihashmi.substack.com/p/how…
I had heard it from hundreds of patients over many years: the searing aloneness of having lost parents, siblings, close friends—everyone who had shared your past. All the witnesses to your life, as if your life itself had largely disappeared and was now invisible to the world, to everyone except yourself.
A Garden Night
substack.com/@alihashmi/note…
