Welcome to the first issue of Half-Light magazine. I am happy that you’re here, and even more so that my project is seeing the light of day and the rectangular glow of your screen.

I’ve noticed that for many of us, periods of distress are often followed by a sudden burst of clarity — a bright light that shines from an unexpected direction. We welcome its uncanny ability to make old feel new again. We welcome the warm, forgiving hue that it casts.

I was no different, even as my observations started to wear thin on the patient ears around me. A sense of wonder came in waves and spanned all topics: the history of Barbie dreamhouses and their candy-pink walls (timely) to the rather guilt-tripping nature of commercial greenwashing. The wonderful, nostalgia-invoking role of food on shows like Dickinson and The Bear. The rapid decline of the term Girlboss. The more obvious the revelation, the more satisfying.

I thought about how reading used to be main inlet of information until not too long ago. Years ago, after being forced to sit mutely at our desks for several hours, watching a movie on a video tape was a visceral, even unforgettable experience. Perhaps because the experience was finite: a clear beginning with a clear end. Our eyes took a second to adjust to bright colors and unusual sounds and when it was over – silence again, and an eager anticipation for the next movie night. A beautiful, snowy house ransacked by dim-witted robbers? A fire-haired mermaid searching land and sea for love and adventure? A bookish, telekinetic girl overcoming her trauma through fantasy? Being transported to a new world for a few hours each week felt like a privilege, an almost naughty one at that.

We were flooded by images and videos in a timespan that didn’t allow for gradual adaptation. In half a decade, we saw the evolution from digital albums to recorded videos to live videos to the final nail in our attention span coffin: short-form videos. While we recovered from the lasting effects of a global pandemic, reels snuck up on us, summarizing concepts and ideas and even our own emotions in a few minutes or less. Social media’s rather sneaky ability to blur the lines between personal and performative further highlighted an unspoken agreement, a dance of sorts between voyeur and exhibitionist; secretly thrilling for both.

With that in mind, I decided to throw my energy back into words. I started reading. And reading, and reading, and reading. I read everything: my forgotten Goodreads queue, the cookbooks in my library, the (secret!) YA collection on my Kindle, dusty copies of Nat Geo, even the label of my banana-scented shampoo bottle. I reinstated my diminishing relationship with words, and in exchange, words accepted me in a characteristically un-embittered way. With a newfound intimacy, I became insular, growingly selective of how and where I spent my time. I recognized that a small, specific scope is more fulfilling to me than nebulous generalizations that give way to a strange, de-realizing hyper-objectivity. The hyper-objectivity, of course, that comes with being online all the time.

I felt both quiet and alert, having exhausted the sameness of my quippy photo captions paired with a careful selection of tongue-in-cheek emojis. The more I read, the more I wrote. As pictures dimmed, words and phrases sharpened. All of this isn’t to say I am against social media. I enjoy the joyful corners of the internet: keeping up with my favorite chefs’ shenanigans and feeling intimately involved in my friends’ lives, the more mundane a detail, the better. I love pictures, too, and find myself staring at coffee table books for a long time to scratch that specific itch for dreamy photography. But everyone has a limit to the amount of information they can consume in a day, and I find it easier to read, write, and be present when I am simply not looking at my phone. This rather elusive link between pixel and page isn’t something I’ve quite figured out yet, but something tells me I’m on my way.

One of the books I’d stare at during my break from social media was Slim Aarons – Once Upon a Time. I was particularly struck by a quote by journalist Lucius Beebe. In the picture, he stands in a grand room in San Francisco, (probably) saying at that exact moment, “I would rather be a bright leaf on the stream of a dying civilization than a fertile seed dropped in the soil of a new era.”

If you grew up in a city as new as Dubai, this theme is not easy to ignore. Age, and all that comes with it — tradition, legacy, familiarity, evolution — is incredibly romantic. It’s full and rich and comfortable to sink into. Newness, on the other hand, points to something you cannot visualize. It demands more from you. It can be terribly challenging. It can also extract something original and brilliant. You cannot see what you’re walking towards – a half-light, if you will (I couldn’t resist) — depending on only faith and imagination to take you there.

And so, I kept reading. When I wasn’t reading shampoo bottle labels, I embraced my once-threatening boredom, sat still and stared off into space. As a younger reader, I misunderstood “stared off into space” to mean space, as in, planets and stars. I thought “What kind of miracle superpower does this character have that they can dissociate from reality into the telescope of their mind?” A curious thought, and not so unfathomable — maybe you can stare off into “space” and see planets, sun, stars, oceans, rivers, shadows, bright light, half-light, whatever you want. Daydreaming has always been my preferred brand of meditation – was it yours too?

And so, Half-Light was born, rather precariously, out of two simple, inexpensive ingredients: reading and daydreaming.

I hope that you take time with each piece; this magazine was designed to be the opposite of instant gratification. Just like anything rewarding, the pleasure is slow and measured. If there is one underlying ethos of the magazine, it’s that words should feel like luxury, not labor. If you prefer listening to reading, you can listen to the recordings on our podcast channel during your evening walk, morning drive, or cigarette-and-iced-coffee break. You’ll also note that this magazine lacks an About Me section – this is by design. This space isn’t about me – it’s about you, the contributors, and all the intriguing, peculiar topics we will explore together.

Post-COVID marked a strange time in my personal history, and I know I am not alone. There were many beginnings that came in easy waves, and many endings too; some acerbic, others more palatable, even inevitable.

But here – here you’ll find the soft confines of those quiet in-betweens. The magazine didn’t start with a loud proclamation of its presence – after all, a few pieces of the first issue have been sulking in archives for years, ready to be read and picked apart. It is precisely this in-between that I’d like to explore, preferably in familiar, infinitesimal moments.

So long as there is a pen and a piece of paper, an iPhone note littered with incoherent sentences, a floating thought or idea feebly attempting its completion… then I exist – and so do you.