Every project eventually outgrows a single voice, and The Guestbook is the acknowledgment of that. It’s a room set aside for other people’s stories — submitted, gathered, transcribed, sometimes lightly polished but never rewritten past recognition. The name does double duty: a guestbook is what strangers sign on their way through, and also what a house keeps to remember who’s been in it. This section is quieter than the others because it isn’t the writer’s job to be the loudest voice in it — just the one holding the door.

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Two Fathers

A confession, not a story — because I have nothing left to lose.

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I have two fathers. One no longer speaks to me. The other I carry in my pocket.

The second one is a pink tablet, small as a chickpea, with two letters stamped into its face. On the street it goes by many names — guti, maal — but the most common one will make your skin crawl. Baba. Father. Yes: across this country, hundreds of thousands of boys call that pink thing Baba. It took me twenty-four years to understand why. Like a father, it holds you when you fall. It reassures you. And one day you look up and realize you are nothing without it.