Wearing a Shalwar Kameez in a Western City.

I arrived in Canada in the middle of February, when snow blanketed the city and the cold seeped through layers of wool as if it were reaching for the bones. I had only seen snow once before, on a short trip to northern Pakistan, but this—this was different. The chill here was not just in the air. It clung to your skin, your clothes, even your soul, if you let it.

I was 26, alone, and 11,000 kilometers away from my home in Lahore. I came with two suitcases, a student visa, and a broken heart—having left behind aging parents, a close-knit family, and a life where I knew exactly who I was.

For the first few months, everything felt foreign. The language wasn’t the issue—I spoke fluent English—but everything else was: the way people smiled at strangers, the way they stood far apart while waiting in line, the way silence in public was not awkward but expected. I missed the loud, chaotic beauty of home: the honking rickshaws, the evening chai with neighbors, the uninvited but always welcome guests.

But what I missed most, oddly enough, was the sound of my mother’s sewing machine.

Back home, Amma stitched everything—curtains, cushion covers, clothes for Eid. Our home was always humming with that rhythmic mechanical clatter. She called sewing her meditation, and I used to watch her thread needles with ease, her hands worn but graceful. When I was little, I’d sit beside her on the floor and collect the colorful fabric scraps, pretending I was designing something important.

In the silence of my tiny basement apartment in Toronto, the absence of that sound made the loneliness louder.

One weekend, after a particularly hard week of working long shifts and dealing with a professor who seemed to dislike international students, I called Amma. I cried. She didn’t say much—she rarely does—but before hanging up, she said softly, “Why don’t you start stitching again? You’ll feel closer to home.”

I laughed at the time. Where would I find the time? Or the skill? But a few days later, while walking past a thrift store, I saw an old Singer sewing machine in the window. It was heavy, old-fashioned, and had probably stitched through decades of fabric. It reminded me of home. On impulse, I bought it for $40.

That night, I pulled out a torn scarf I’d meant to throw away and tried fixing it. My stitches were clumsy and uneven, and I had to rewatch a YouTube tutorial three times just to wind the bobbin. But as the machine hummed to life, something shifted inside me. For the first time in months, I didn’t feel like I was surviving in Canada—I felt like I was living.

I started small—hemming my pants, fixing a friend’s jacket. Slowly, I began experimenting with colorful fabrics from the local South Asian store. I stitched cushion covers with traditional patterns and a tote bag out of an old kurta. Each piece felt like a small bridge between two worlds—my past and my present.

Word spread in my small community of international students. Soon, people started asking me to mend clothes, alter dresses, even stitch curtains for their new apartments. I never charged much—just enough to cover materials—but it gave me more than extra income. It gave me purpose.

Through sewing, I built connections. One girl brought over fabric her mother had sent from Karachi, and we talked for hours about missing home-cooked biryani. An elderly neighbor asked if I could turn his late wife’s sari into a memory quilt. He cried when I handed it to him. I cried too.

Now, three years later, I still have that thrifted sewing machine. It's old and sometimes stubborn, like Amma’s, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. My apartment walls are adorned with patchwork pieces—each one stitched with love, longing, and healing.

That machine became more than a tool. It became a symbol of resilience, of building something new without letting go of where you come from. Every stitch was a thread tying me back to home, reminding me that even in a foreign land, we carry our roots with us—not just in memory, but in the things we create.

In a world that often forces immigrants to choose between adapting or holding on, I chose both. I stitched them together—one piece at a time.