Hello, Salam, Bonjour

This website is hard to describe. It began as a quiet effort to preserve some of my old journalism, but has grown into something more personal: a kind of storytelling that doesn’t always fit neatly into press releases or client briefs.

From 2007 to 2011, I had the unique privilege of being Qatar's first-ever, local-born, English-language, print-media journalist. Working as a staff reporter at Qatar's newspaper of record, the Gulf Times, I covered:

The Central Fruits & Vegetables Market in Al Mamoura

Why journalism?

Growing up, our home was always filled with newspapers; my father was a foreign correspondent for a Pakistani national, and even on a tight budget, he made sure we had a variety of dailies fly to Qatar (the next day). So, joining a newsroom myself felt less like ambition and more like coming home.

I was lucky to cover stories that occasionally made a difference. One led to an Emiri Decree about new summer working-hour regulations, another helped spotlight planning challenges in Msheireb, the neighbourhood where I spent most of my childhood. There were moments of friction, too, as there often are in journalism, but I’ve always believed that respectful scrutiny is part of public service.

Covering Eid Al Adha preparations near Al Aziziya

The archive

After I left the paper, many of those articles seem to have been lost, likely during website upgrades or server migrations, as often happens with digital archives.

I’ve managed to recover around 332 pieces, which I’ve kept here exactly as published. It’s an incomplete record, but I hope it’s useful to anyone curious about Qatar’s recent past.

Covering the annual air show in Al Khor

After the newsroom

When the news cycle began to feel predictable, I moved into public relations, a field that let me stay close to media while working across the Middle East and Europe. A five-year stint in Malta followed, where I worked with local journalists and learned how deeply small communities value honest storytelling.

Back in Qatar, I later served as Head of International Affairs and Public Relations at the country’s only intergovernmental organisation, building relationships with newsrooms worldwide, from The Economist to South China Morning Post. Since early 2024, I’ve run my own independent communications practice, Metric BLVD, registered at the Qatar Financial Centre.

Msheireb undergoing regeneration, circa 2009

Enter kalse

But this corner of the internet isn’t about clients or campaigns. It’s a place where I - the PR man - don’t have to operate behind-the-scenes and can own my voice.

You’ll find here reflections on life as a third-culture kid: growing up in Qatar (1982), studying in the U.S. (2001–04), brief but formative years in Egypt (2005) and Pakistan (2005-2007), and half a decade in Malta (2014-2019).

Over time, this site will also host companion pieces to my Kalse Media YouTube series – PIE (Pakistan in English), and eventually DiE and MiE – which fundamentally explore the themes of identity, belonging, and what it means to navigate a non-Pakistani world as a Pakistani.

Hop on the rickshaw!

The logo - a golden rickshaw with brown tyres - carries symbolism: the gold-hued body represents the intellectual and cultural zenith of Islamic civilisation in South Asia, whilst the brown tyres pay homage to, well… the subcontinental people.

The logo is thus more than an aesthetic choice, and a sort of a compass guiding my dream of one day going on a long road-trip from #KabultoKerala, meeting and connecting with fellow South Asian Muslims freely.