Comb is the story of a girl “under the spell of history,” growing up in the shadow of the legendary Khyber Pass which is both a bridge between disparate civilizations and an impassable divide. Shadab Zeest Hashmi reveals the tangles of empire and language, history and myth, exile and belonging — from the lens of childhood, integrating memory with the history of one of the most significant geopolitical and cultural thresholds of the world. This is a book that honors thresholds in a time of closed doors, written with a poet’s conviction in the regency of love.

— Sable Press, 2019

“I thoroughly enjoyed Comb. Shadab Zeest Hashmi is a magnificent writer.”

— Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Ice-Candy Man

“…it is in fact a stunning book of motherhood, a story Zeest Hashmi tells to her children about our world, our ravaged, beautiful, helpless, inspiring world.”

— Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

“Comb weaves together vignette, fragment, poetry, and lyric essay to create a unique and visceral memoir of growing up in Peshawar…”

— Julia Bouwsma, author of Midden and Work by Bloodlight

“…acutely tender and immersive. Zeest Hashmi’s painterly descriptions of landscapes, cities, family members, and literary characters, limn time’s immutability and create a multistoried memoir of extraordinary depth and beauty…”

— Deema K. Shehabi, author of Nineteen Departures from the Moon