QUOTE : I'd been missing this, the ease of being with someone without speaking, without suppressing speech. I'd grown up with it in Karachi, where groups of men will congregate in the smallest spaces -- the grass between houses, a roundabout -- spaces made more generous through companionable silence. It existed between women too, this bond. My sister and her friends could spend hours reclining together on a bed, or a carpet. If secrets were murmured, it happened in a style so intuited it was pre-verbal. I hadn't experienced this very much in the West, where it seemed people had a reason for everything, including intimacy.