At seventy-one, Omar Saleem no longer needed answers. He wanted memory, wonder, and a doorway back to joy.
It was a Wednesday in Jackson Heights. Zayan, his grandson, was obsessed with trains and knock-knock jokes. He liked his parathas soft—no spice, just ghee and a little salt. Omar pressed the dough gently, the way his mother had taught him, then flipped it with a practiced flick of the wrist.
Omar had lost both of his siblings to COVID in 2022. One in Karachi. One in Kew Gardens. There were no proper funerals. He stopped writing poetry. Stopped going to the mosque. His back ached constantly, but doctors could never explain it in a way that helped.
He heard about mushrooms for the first time from a younger friend in his walking group.
“It’s not really about getting high,” the friend said. “It’s more about making a little space.”
Omar asked his friend to pick some up. When they arrived, he placed the capsules in a turmeric tin near the front of the cupboard, beside unopened tea. For weeks, he didn’t touch them. But that Wednesday, after Zayan left for school, he tossed one back with some chai. Then he sat on his prayer rug, just to breathe.
At first, he felt only the familiar hollow sensation he had come to know. Then, out of nowhere, he heard his brother’s laugh. Obnoxious and joyful, echoing through the narrow hallways of their childhood home.
“I didn’t cry when he died,” Omar told me. “But when I remembered his laugh, I cried for hours. I think I just needed permission.”
He began microdosing every few days. He would walk through Travers Park, listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on his headphones, watching the trees move in the breeze. It felt like the world had always been this textured, and he was only now beginning to see it.
He even started writing poetry again—couplets, always in Urdu. Whispered under his breath, they often made him chuckle, as if he had surprised himself.
The mushrooms did not fix his grief. But they gave it a shape. On the days he microdosed, he found himself speaking more gently. He noticed how his wife still hummed when she kneaded dough. He remembered what it was like to feel young.
His microdosing days became sacred. He paired them with walks, with music, with the poetry of Rumi and Ghalib. Once, he stood in the rain without an umbrella, and jumped in a few puddles.
“People think old age is for waiting,” he said. “I don’t want to wait. I just don’t have that kind of time.”
One afternoon he sat beside Zayan, who was building a subway out of shoeboxes.
“Abu,” the boy said, “why are you smiling like that?”
Omar did not have an answer. Not one that made sense to a child. But in his mind, he thought, because my hollow chest is no longer the only thing in the room.
The capsules are still tucked in the turmeric tin. He takes them intentionally. Never when he is flooded by emotion. Never when he is rushed. Only when he is ready to listen.
The other day, Zayan found one of his poems and asked what it meant. Omar smiled.
“It means I love you in a way I am still learning how to say.”
Then they made parathas. This time, with a little spice.