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Society: PAKISTAN’S SEASON OF CHARITY – Newspaper
The mats go down first. Long strips of plastic or matted dastarkhwaans [dining spreads], unrolled across the vacant plot. Then come the boxes — stacked earlier in the afternoon by hands that have been at this for hours — each one packed with dates, water, and a small parcel of food.
Someone is stirring a massive pot of Rooh Afza, the deep red syrup catching the last of the daylight as it bleeds into the water. Nearby, a cloud of fragrant vapour escapes as someone lifts the cloth draped over a deg [cauldron] filled with rice and meat.
People begin to arrive before the call to prayer. A security guard still in uniform. A food-delivery rider with a helmet under his arm. A woman with three children who hang close to her sides, wide-eyed and quiet. A roadside worker, hands still carrying the dust of the day. Beggars who have learned the address. An elderly man who walks slowly and says nothing to anyone. Entire families — grandparents, parents, small children — who settle on to the mats with the ease of people who have done this before, because they have.
By the time the azaan [call to prayer] sounds, there are over 200 people seated, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the moment they may eat.
Pakistan’s charitable instinct during Ramazan is genuine and considerable. For the student collectives, the decade-long volunteers and the organisations that depend on it to survive, the generosity is real. But so is the 11-month gap that follows…
PAYING IT FORWARD
The volunteers handing out the food are from a collective called SindhuNamah.
Abier Kachelo, a third-year student at the Institute of Business Administration, started it in the wake of devastation caused by the 2022 floods, which displaced a third of the country’s population. She was fresh into university at the time and, with her friends’ support, she organised food rations to be sent to flood-affected villages in Sindh.
“In this time, we also learned about malnutrition, stunting and food insecurity, particularly in Sindh,” says Zoya Hemani, Abier’s classmate and an integral part of SindhuNamah. The situation compelled them to increase their efforts, which now include medical drives and school restoration, alongside the daily iftar dastarkhwaan that has run every Ramazan for the past three years.
“When we started, we were a team of no more than 10 students,” Abier tells Eos. “Today, we have over 100 student volunteers in our network.” For funds, they rely on friends and relatives, while they also get unsolicited donations via social media. “We have definitely formed meaningful connections with many of the donors over the years,” she adds.
Zoya points out that they keep donors apprised of how their money is being spent to avoid concerns over transparency. “And there will always be people who will accuse you of ‘chasing clout’, but that is quickly swept away by the kindness you come across,” she continues.
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
“Once, instead of the usual 250 people at our dastarkhwaan, more than 500 arrived, just minutes before iftar. We didn’t want to turn anyone away, but we simply didn’t have enough food,” narrates Zoya.
“As our team scrambled to manage the situation, a man we had never seen before suddenly stopped by and dropped off three degs of rice, no questions asked, no words exchanged. In that moment, with minutes to spare before iftar, it felt like everything fell into place exactly when it was needed,” she says. “Running this initiative, we watch our prayers manifest in real time, miracles unfold and doors open in ways we can never fully comprehend.”
SindhuNamah is one expression of an impulse that surfaces across the city every Ramazan. Sadia, 27, found her way into this world the same way many do — through a single social media post, back in 2015. She has since become the linchpin of the dastarkhwaan efforts, returning to managing it without fail every Ramazan.
“If we are privileged enough and have a network, it is our duty to become a source of help or means for the underprivileged communities” she says.
GOING YEAR-ROUND
I am also reminded of a memory from 15 years ago. From the first-floor balcony of my apartment in a middle-class neighbourhood, I would watch a college student set up a small classroom in our building’s compound every evening.
The students were the children of the maids and workers who kept the building running — children with nowhere else to go for structured learning. He brought his own chalk. No one had asked him to come.
Saqlain Shariff is in his late-thirties now. That compound classroom became Kaizen Pakistan, an organisation he co-founded with a friend that today runs a classroom providing education to children from multiple slum communities who would otherwise have none.
Some of those first students are in university. He still works a regular job to keep himself afloat, while managing the organisation through financial shortfalls that recur with a regularity that would have defeated most people long ago.
“We run into trouble every few months,” he says. “Ramazan is when we breathe again.”
AN INTERTWINED HISTORY
While dastarkhwaans are a Ramazan-specific phenomenon, they do serve as the gateway to the wider world of charity and volunteerism. But charity is also very much part of Pakistan’s social fabric, as much due to the religious concepts of zakat [obligatory charity] and sadqa [voluntary charity], as it is due to Partition — the tradition of taking in strangers, of communal obligation to those with nothing, runs deep in a country born from displacement.
Even young Abier and Zoya of SindhuNamah allude to this culture. “Sindh has always celebrated the essence of communal service, through a longstanding tradition of langars [free communal kitchens], musaafir khanas [travellers’ lodges] and dastarkhwaans,” Abier tells Eos. “We couldn’t bear to see these values disintegrate as suffering rises.”
As Sindh and the rest of the country continues to experience various degrees of calamities, including regular floods, such interventions are needed more than ever. The latest global food security report estimates that 60.3 percent of Pakistanis cannot afford a healthy diet, while some 16.5 percent are undernourished.
THE GAP THAT FOLLOWS
The numbers make the case for why efforts like SindhuNamah’s matter — but they also expose the limits of what any dastarkhwaan can do. Major charities suggest that roughly 80 percent of annual donations collected by them arrive during Ramazan alone. For smaller organisations, the proportion is often higher. The generosity is real. So is the 11-month gap that follows.
This is the tension that sits beneath the warmth of every dastarkhwaan. Pakistan’s charitable instinct during Ramazan is genuine and considerable — but it is also concentrated, compressed into 30 days and then largely withdrawn. Donor fatigue sets in quickly once the month ends.
Saqlain feels it every year, the particular quiet of the post-Ramazan weeks when the messages slow and the accounts thin. SindhuNamah feels it too, Zoya acknowledges — the bulk of their operations are carried out during this month precisely because sustaining donor attention beyond it is difficult. “The need doesn’t stop,” she says. “But the giving does.”
Back on the vacant plot, the azaan has sounded. Two hundred people reach for dates at the same moment — the quiet collective exhale of a fast being broken. The Rooh Afza moves along the mats in jugs. Children who arrived silent are now animated, reaching across their parents. The elderly man who said nothing to anyone is being served by a volunteer crouching beside him, unhurried.
There is enough food tonight. There is, for now, enough of everything.
The writer is a member of staff
Published in Dawn, EOS, March 15th, 2026
The bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel has long been characterised as an enduring alliance. Yet, it remains arguably the most contentious partnership in modern geopolitical history. To many observers, this bond is viewed as a primary source of destabilisation in the Middle East, providing a perpetual spark for conflict.
In the early months of this year, this partnership has reached a volatile peak. While historically framed as a marriage of shared ‘democratic values’ and common security interests, the alliance has evolved into a radical ideological project, personified by a messianic theological synergy between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The theological dimension of the relationship has dramatically shifted from a matter of private belief to a central pillar of statecraft and military justification. This ‘sacralisation’ of foreign policy is driven by a convergence of interests between Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition and Trump’s second term administration, which relies heavily on the support of Christian-Evangelical and Zionist votes.
Historically, though, the American commitment to a Zionist state was far from absolute. According to the American political scientist Robert O. Freedman, US President Woodrow Wilson (1913–21) offered little more than symbolic gestures toward the Zionist movement.
The US-Israel partnership has evolved from a strategic Cold War alliance into a religiously infused political project that is holding the Middle East hostage
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–45) was hesitant to support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. He prioritised the security of oil interests through his growing relationship with the then newly formed Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
According to Freedman, had Roosevelt survived past 1945, the creation of Israel might never have received American backing. It was Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman (1945–53), who, against the stern counsel of his secretary of state, recognised Israel at the time of its creation in 1948.
Even then, the relationship between the two countries remained cool. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61) famously forced Israel, alongside Britain and France, to withdraw their troops from Egypt during the Suez Crisis. Eisenhower threatened Israel with severe economic sanctions if it failed to comply.
The presidency of John F. Kennedy (1961–63) was also marked by a deep-seated suspicion towards Israel. The most significant point of contention was the discovery of a nuclear reactor by the US at Dimona in Israel. Kennedy issued an ultimatum that American support to Israel could be “seriously jeopardised” if it did not allow regular inspections of the Dimona site. Kennedy brokered a deal in 1962 to sell Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, marking the first major US arms sale to the country. This was Kennedy offering a carrot to ensure cooperation on the nuclear issue.
According to declassified documents from the National Security Archive in the US, Israeli officials engaged in elaborate deceptions, such as disguising parts of the Dimona site to prevent American inspectors from discovering the true nature of Israel’s weapons programme. However, the US was also becoming increasingly concerned about the growing influence of the Soviet Union in Arab countries, such as Iraq, Syria, Egypt and the erstwhile South Yemen, and within most anti-Israel Palestinian groups.
A definitive turn in the US-Israel relationship occurred following the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated the Soviet-backed forces of Egypt and Syria. This is when the US started to view Israel as a Cold War asset and ‘special ally.’
By the early 1980s, military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries had become deeply entrenched, though not without some friction. A report in The Washington Post in January 1982 highlighted that Israeli intelligence agencies had engaged in the bugging, wiretapping and bribery of American government employees to secure sensitive data. But despite such episodes, the strategic ‘blind support’ provided by the US to Israel continued to grow, often bypassing the pragmatism that governs relations between most nation states.
In 2026, the partnership has moved beyond mere realpolitik into the realm of a ‘civilisational crusade.’ This shift is most evident in the rhetoric of Trump and Netanyahu. Trump has increasingly framed military action as a struggle between ‘civilisation and barbarism’, frequently utilising biblical language to justify unilateral strikes and bypass Congressional oversight.
Netanyahu, cast by Trump as a ‘divine wartime leader’, has mirrored this sentiment. The Times of Israel recently quoted Netanyahu as describing the current war by the US and Israel against Iran as a messianic mission to “extinguish darkness and preserve the light of the West.”
This religious framing by Trump and Nethanyahu serves a dual purpose. It solidifies both leaders’ respective populist bases through Judeo-Christian identity politics while providing a moral gloss to operations that ignore international law. The apex of this collaboration is Operation Epic Fury, the massive joint military offensive launched in February this year against Iran. The operation has targeted the Iranian leadership and its infrastructure with multiple strikes, killing thousands of Iranians.
Iran’s subsequent retaliation has been swift, involving ballistic missile swarms against Israel and at US bases in Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. Despite the military ‘successes’ touted by Washington and Tel Aviv, the alliance is facing a profound crisis of legitimacy at home. For the first time in the history of modern Middle Eastern conflicts, American domestic sentiment has seen a reversal. A recent Gallup poll revealed that 41 percent of Americans now express more sympathy for Palestinians, compared to just 36 percent for Israelis.
This shift is driven largely by younger demographics, who view the conflict through the lens of human rights. The furious nature of recent Israeli military actions, combined with the heavy-handed religious rhetoric of the Trump administration, is failing to resonate with the still largely secular polity in the US.
The US-Israel relationship has transformed from a cautious partnership into a full-scale regional ‘crusade’, driven by personal and religious agendas. While the alliance currently wields unprecedented military power, its reliance on messianic fervour and unilateral force has continued to isolate it from traditional allies.
Criminal charges hovering over Trump and Netanyahu are making both men desperate to emerge as ‘heroes’ from their war against Iran. But even if the alliance ‘wins’, it will be a pyrrhic victory, because the future of the relationship may no longer depend on shared strategic necessity. Instead, it will depend on whether it can survive the internal and external fallouts of its own making.
Trump and Netanyahu might be curating a new world, but it could be one which may not have any room for its curators.
Published in Dawn, EOS, May 15th, 2026
“I always wanted to get married. But whoever came into my life, after some time, their novelty factor wore off.”
— Faisal Rehman, actor
“If Fahad Mustafa has married for the second time, he did the right thing.”
— Shameen Khan, actor
“People think I am married, but I am happy being single.”
— Ali Rehman, actor
“Right now is not the time for marriage; I will think about it after becoming successful.”
— Ayesha Omar, actor and host
Published in Dawn, ICON, March 15th, 2026
Before the last stretch in movies like The Bluff, one almost expects someone to utter the done-to-death line about feeling death in the air. Given that one is watching an action film about pirates set in 1846, this statement seems as clichéd as it is redundant, because by then a good number of body bags have already piled up.
Here, one person chopping up the bad guys is Ercell Borden (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas), the seemingly pedestrian wife of a fishing ship’s captain (Ismael Cruz Córdova), who walks around wearing clothes more appropriate for a supermodel (no one else on her island is nearly as stylishly dressed). Irrespective of her fashion sense, and despite her preference for the mundane, she is a killer — and not just in terms of looks.
Ercell was once the notorious pirate captain Bloody Mary, the cohort, protégé and former lover of Captain Francisco Connor (Karl Urban). In what we assume was a conflicted relationship — thanks to snippets of flashbacks — Bloody Mary escapes with Connor’s gold after stabbing him for good measure.
By the time Connor finds her, she has nearly forgotten her bad old days and is content caring for her disabled teenage son (Vedanten Naidoo) and her young, titillating sister-in-law (Safia Oakley-Green). However, as the pirates invading her house quickly learn, knives, daggers, guns and bombs are barely a stretch of the hand away for Ercell.
The Bluff isn’t as half-bad as one would think, which means it’s not half-good either
I’d been hearing a lot of bad things about The Bluff, and the trailer didn’t inspire much confidence either. However, the movie isn’t half-bad — meaning it’s not half-good either.
The screenplay, by director and co-writer Frank E. Flowers and co-writer Joe Ballarini, was once a hot property that Netflix won at auction in 2021. Initially developed as a Zoe Saldaña vehicle, by 2024, it moved to Amazon MGM Studios, where Chopra-Jonas replaced Saldaña as the lead and also stepped in as a producer. The producing roster also includes Anthony Russo and Joe Russo — of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame fame — who had last produced Citadel, another high-profile Chopra-Jonas action project for Amazon.
Given the backstory and star power, one would assume the movie to be a spectacle worthy of your monthly subscription cost. Screenplay-wise, one would agree — it doesn’t let up. However, direction-wise, the movie needs to up its game. Flowers directs with an unsure hand, forcing his actors to take the lead.
Cinematographically, he often half-pursues shots that could’ve turned out good. Because of this, the editing starts feeling rough and janky at times — though it’s not as bad as most action films; just unpolished. The sound, clumped together and badly mixed, is a major let-down.
Acting-wise, Chopra-Jonas takes a while to settle into the role — her accent and delivery still leave a lot to be desired — so she lets her facial expressions do the heavy lifting. In comparison, her action training pays off in spades.
The Bluff’s main draw is Urban. Adding a touch of Irish flair to his accent, he is deliberately given solo hero shots (ie centre frame, commanding frames) as he delivers his lines with precision. The man does not disappoint, keeping The Bluff from turning into the usual bad fluff one sees on streaming platforms.
Watch it when you have nothing to do, or simply want to watch a forgettable action movie.
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, The Bluff is rated R for bloody violence (it has no nudity). But then, what does one expect from a revenge-action film?
The writer is one of Icon’s film reviewers
Published in Dawn, ICON, March 15th, 2026
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