Soniah Kamal was born in 1972 in Karachi Pakistan a sickly child weighing two and a half pounds. She was dismature, despite the full term.

“She won’t live through the night,” the doctors told her parents about their first born. But obviously she did.

Soniah’s nomadic life began from age six months when she moved to Yorkshire, England. Says her father,

“The second we landed you guzzled your first full bottle of milk and cried for more.” Since then Soniah’s been guzzling away and she can often be found weeping for ways to guzzle a lot less.

In Yorkshire Soniah attended Ms. Brown’s nursery class where she never sat still, played Joseph in many Christmas pageants, and was told by her best friend that she could not attend her birthday party on account of being ‘brown’.

There followed a year in Lahore Pakistan where Soniah completed third grade at the Convent of Jesus and Mary and remembers nothing but huge assemblies in a church.

At nine years of age Soniah moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia where her father had to whisper A P P L E to her during many a school entrance exam. She began education at The Minaret Jeddah, all girls, where her fourth grade home room teacher, Ms. Carthridge, read out loud from ‘The Little Princess’ two pages a day and thus began Soniah’s love of reading through oral recitation.

Soon after Soniah enrolled in The Continental School, a co-ed British International school where she discovered that boys were, indeed, different from girls. Amidst these discoveries Soniah enjoyed the Brownies and Girl Guides and sports. She was an ace backstroke swimmer, and won a bronze medal in an all sports interschool championship; after which she promptly took up smoking.

Soniah also participated actively in many a school play chorus, as well as playing the very wicked witch in ‘The Snow Queen’. Much of her time in Jeddah, however, was spent reading every book in the Continental library, roller-skating, and devouring Indian movie magazines and movies. After watching Muqadar ka Sikandar and Umrao Jaan, (in both filmstar Rekha plays the proverbial prostitute with a heart of gold) Soniah informed her mother that she wanted to be an actress as well as a courtesan. Suffice it to say her mother was not pleased with these plans.

Soniah moved to Lahore Pakistan again at age sixteen where she joined The Lahore Grammar School in the ninth grade. Says a friend,

“On her first day Soniah walked in with red hair, purple leggings, a neon green shirt, big silver hoops, followed by seven more holes in each ear. She thought she was Madonna, we thought, at first, she was colorblind and crazy.”

Though it didn’t stop her from graduating top of her class, Soniah’s non-conformity caused much palpitation at LGS, and continued to do so when she joined The Lahore College of Arts and Sciences for her ‘A’ Levels. Here Soniah learned that her name could be deconstructed into ‘So Neah Yet So Far’, that reconstruction of the teenage ego is hard after even the teeniest of damage, and that most people did not know the phonetic difference between ‘V’ and ‘W’ e.g. everyone said ‘Wagina’ to ‘Vagina’ (read how Soniah got over her fear of this word: Short Fiction).

In 1992 Soniah left for St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. Away from home she had a grand old time making a fool of herself and others, as well as growing wiser. Soniah graduated with a BA in Philosophy, and History of Mathematics and Science, and was given the Susan Irene Roberts award for her thesis ‘On Prince Charmings, Frogs, Love Marriages, and Arranged Ones,’ based on Vikram Seth’s critically acclaimed ‘A Suitable Boy,’ a novel that enabled her to make a crucial decision in her life. Soniah sent Vikram a copy of her thesis. She was giddy upon receiving from him a handwritten letter reply on a blue aerogramme which she to date carries with her everywhere.

Soniah stayed on in the States and has lived in New Mexico, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Colorado, California, New Jersey and Georgia. So far she has one husband, son, daughter and cat.