🚶🏻‍♂️Leaving Peshawar: Wandering Saddar with Zubin

If I have to describe the absolute best times of my life, Peshawar stands right at the very top. It was a time that felt completely peaceful, happy, and worry-free, filled with the kinds of beautiful friendships you only make when you are young.

One of those defining friendships was with Zubin Framjee. For about ten years, we shared pure companionship, laughing and navigating life together for six hours a day, five days a week. For the first stretch of those years, he was just a classmate, but over time, we became best friends. We were among the very few kids in our Peshawar circle who actually visited each other’s houses—though, truth be told, I ended up visiting his home far more than he visited mine.

At the end of my tenth-grade year, Abbu and Ammi decided it was time for us to move back to Lahore. To be completely honest, I never truly settled into any school after that move.

On our very last day before the move, Zubin and I spent our remaining hours together roaming around the streets of Peshawar Saddar. Those were the good old days; the city felt safe, uncrowded, and we were able to just wander without a single worry. We didn’t have a car or a motorcycle, but we had our God-given legs, and we used them to walk the streets for hours without a second thought, simply basking in each other’s company.

I don’t recall a single thing we ate that day, but I remember with absolute clarity going to the Sub Rung Paan shop to have a soda. It might seem like a small detail to hold onto, but it is more than enough to keep this memory clinging tightly to my mind, as precious and clear today as it was decades ago.