I’m sitting in a rickshaw, driving through Empress Market on a mid-afternoon summer day in Karachi. The whole world feels like a storm of noise and fumes. Harsh sunlight. Cramped roads. Scooters slide into whatever inches they can find. A rickshaw’s pointed beak nosing between cars that aren’t even pretending to move in straight lines. Everyone is trying to get ahead by finding the smallest crack in the chaos.
We halt beside a bus, and suddenly a thick burst of diesel smoke blows straight onto my mouth. I turn my face away and pull my dupatta over my nose, trying to breathe through cloth that now tastes like fumes settling on it. Engines growl, horns scream, and the city moves like one giant, impatient organism.
And yet—even here, even in this suffocating moment—something small shifts.
I notice how the scooters pause before sliding forward again.
I notice how the rickshaw driver leans slightly to one side, waiting for a gap.
I notice how the traffic, loud as it is, holds a tiny breath every few seconds—a moment where nothing moves, just for an instant.
That’s when I realize: in the middle of overwhelming life, we survive by finding the smallest spaces to pause and breathe.
Life really does feel like diesel blasting in our faces sometimes—relentless, choking, unexpected. Grief, burnout, trauma, immigration stress, financial fear… they hit us in the mouth before we’ve had a chance to brace ourselves. And we don’t always get to escape the noise.
But we can find those small pockets of air.
A pause between horns.
A moment when our shoulders finally drop.
A deep breath before the next step.
A tiny space that says, “Just stay. Just breathe. You’re still here.”
We don’t need perfect silence to keep going.
We just need a gap wide enough for one breath.
And sometimes, that’s enough to move forward again—the way the rickshaw pushes into the next opening, trusting another space will appear just when we need it.
When I was in high school, confronting those sticky traffic jams at Empress Market was a daily ritual. It felt impossible in those moments, but somehow, the jam always cleared. I learned that sometimes we go through these gridlocks—in traffic or in life—to understand how to find our next steps within the chaos.
A clear road often reveals itself because of moments of deep stuckness.
And in those moments, it helps to remind ourselves of the times when, despite everything, movement returned. Breath returned. Love and hope found their way back.
Eventually, you find your way home.
Sometimes hope is as simple and miraculous as covering your face with a cloth while moving through the toxicity of life circumstances—systemic prejudice, relationship abuse, immigration hurdles, financial fear—and trusting that the one breath you manage to take in that diesel-inflicted moment will carry you toward a calmer destiny.
Affirmations for your Diesel-Inflicted Days
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… breathe.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… look for air.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… find a small space to breathe.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… hold on to the next breath.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… wait for the road to open.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… keep moving through the smallest gaps.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… trust that movement will return.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… remember you won’t be stuck forever.
When life puffs diesel fumes in your face, all you can do is… hold on until the light turns green.
Shumaila Hemani, Ph.D. (University of Alberta), is a Calgary-based author, singer-storyteller, and artist. Her memoir, Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma, and Music—recommended by award-winning author Barb Howard as her favorite book of 2025 in WestWord—explores mental health and creative resilience through autoethnography. Her work appears in WellBeing Magazine, OC87 Recovery Diaries and podcast, Mental Health Today, and Wise Brain Bulletin. Her song “Anticipating” was featured in a cross-Canada tour for suicide prevention awareness and hope.