Two of the sweetest New York romances I’ve read take place in Moth Smoke and Broken Verses, in which Pakistani twentysomethings meet and mate in East Village. I dig the specificity of hooking up on Avenue A at a Halloween party or canoodling in SoHo before returning to Lahore or Karachi because NYC became unfriendly after 9/11.

Moth Smoke talks about farmhouse parties and scoring opium in Lahore. A Pakistani-American friend recently went to the desh and reports back:

Having read Moth Smoke and all… after going to Pakistan so many times, it’s just refreshing to see people having fun like that. And I’d say it was pretty accurate too. I experienced something similar when I was there.

Paki girls… generally want to cut to the chase as often as they can… I’m not sure what brought about the sudden panty-dropping-ness the girls have got caught up with. End result of stifled emotions or the repressed sexuality in the Paki society? Pirated western flicks with naughty scenes are more likely, ha.

It all makes this frothing British extremist propaganda video, about how Bollywood and India supposedly want to corrupt and kill all Muslims (via SM), seem ridiculous.

Moth Smoke author Mohsin Hamid has a story in the latest Paris Review (thanks, Neale):

… whereas I was one of only two Pakistanis in my entering class–two from a population of over a hundred and fifty million souls, mind you–the Americans faced much less daunting odds in the selection process. A thousand of your compatriots were enrolled, five hundred times as many, even though your country’s population was only twice that of mine. As a result, the non-Americans among us tended on average to do better than the Americans… [Link]

‘Panty-dropping-ness’ is my new favorite word.