Towards the end of a calendar year, we are often surrounded by numbers. The events of the year are often cast in quantitative terms. The percentages of growth, the frequencies and the recurrences, and the losses we suffer are packaged in neat numbers, compared to years before. There are graphs, trends, numbers in a bold font, hoping to capture attention, aiming to etch the figure in the mind. I, too, have read some of these numbers that have been reported recently. For example, within the last twelve months, how many may have left the country (e.g. over 700,000 left the country for education and work and over 10,000 Pakistanis were arrested in Iran trying to go on the long journey to enter Europe). But numbers can be cold, disconnected and sterile. For example, imagine if the number of those who left was not seven hundred thousand, but 750,000. From a........

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