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You don’t know how much something means to you until it’s taken away. This is an ongoing feature of the human experience.
We get so caught up in the day to day to see the bigger picture. We push things out, move the goal posts because movement feels more comfortable than being forced to stop and take a look. I’d been guilty of this for years after jazz school. Never making the effort to put on a gig in town because the idea of living overseas and planning for that was my way of making my “big break”. And when I eventually got there, I did the same thing in reverse. “When I go back to New Zealand Imma do this”.
In this article I will talk about two moments in my sabbatical where I lost the ability to play the saxophone before a human moment got me back into it. This is how I overcame my fear of the future, and began to take every moment as it comes.
Pakistan, October 2025. I had just gone on Pakistani news with my friend Bilal after a week or two of jamming in Peshawar. One morning he invited me to stay in his home over the weekend in the village of Kabal, about 3 hours up north. I checked out of my hostel, and we made our way to the bus terminal before heading up.
We got to a sleepy village along the Swat River. Fertile land dotted with apricot trees, corn fields and rice paddies. We had some lunch at his home before heading out for a walk to the river across the farmland.
It was a rainy afternoon, and within minutes we were soaked. The “short walk” ended up being about 40 minutes of walking through wet farmland before we got to the river, but eventually we made it.
It was beautiful. The stunning mountains and the river that has been feeding the Swat region for hundreds of years. It was around this time that I got bit by a mosquito carrying the dengue virus.
I woke up to a terrible fever. Sweats, body aches and vomiting. I thought I had food poisoning. Bilal kept giving me water that came out of a stream outside his house and it was making it worse, but I couldn’t say that to the bro.
We had a trip planned up to White Palace that day with a couple of his mates from school. We piled into a car and headed out.
Along the trip I felt so sick. We had to make a couple stops for some eno packets and panadol and I pushed through.
On the way home, we were going for a jam in Swat. Like Mafkoora (cultural centre in Peshawar), the boys up there had a spot for playing music and relaxing. Unfortunately this is where I got really sick.
We had to leave early because of this sickness, and ended up sleeping in Bilal’s home doing nothing for a couple days after. Eventually it got to a point where one morning we headed to the local hospital. Immediately I got hooked up to an IV and given some medicine to fight whatever I had.
Upon returning to Peshawar that day, I felt gutted and drained. I ended up getting sick and not being able to play music, enjoy nature or travel further north into the Himalayas.
I tried overcoming this illness for a couple days before ringing up Bilal, and being taken to the hospital and finding out it was dengue fever.
This was the end of my sax playing in Pakistan. With three weeks to go and two more cities to visit, I had to make non travel days essentially rest days. With dengue it is common in patients to get this side effect called post-dengue fatigue syndrome, which causes effects like prolonged fatigue, exhaustion and brain fog for weeks and sometimes months after the virus.
After a week resting in Peshawar, my 10 days in Lahore mostly consisted of sleeping or going out to get food or water. It was miserable, and was the first time I thought about the prolonged inability to play saxophone.
It felt like a tease. I had just had an awesome experience playing with these Pashtun musicians in their homes for 2 weeks and for it to be taken away from a mosquito bite felt infuriating. I couldn’t explore the rich Punjabi music scene in Lahore at all.
By the time I had gotten better, it was the day to leave Lahore. Taking a sleeper train from Lahore to Karachi was out of necessity, but turned out to be a beautiful and truly reflective experience after a rough 3 weeks of being incapacitated. 22 hours taking in the scenery of rural Punjab and Sindh, ending up in the biggest city in Pakistan.
I was chilling on the platform for a while. I had my headphones going, and was trying to relax in the midst of the chaos that was the station. It was probably about 10 minutes before the train came when I met this young guy on the platform. He was heading back to uni in Karachi. He and his brothers asked about my sax and were egging me on to play it. I told him to wait until we got on the train.
The train arrived and me and the bro got on. He was in the booth next to me but he came in to mine to see me play.
Booth 6. We walked in and there were 3 Pakistanis there. A Punjabi businessman and a Pashtun fruit distributor smoking Pine cigarettes, and a Sindhi car upholsterer on the other side looking intently. The young bro sat next to the Sindhi guy and egged me on to play.
Bye Bye Blackbird on the Karachi Express. An introduction to who I am. They clapped and then it was the bros turn. I handed him my sax and he squeaked some notes out.
For weeks, I had been depressed not being able to play my instrument. With one cheeky curious young fella and his comments, I was back to playing.
That train ride was one to remember. We woke up to a sunrise in rural Sindh. I spent the whole day in between the carriages. Looking out at the date and banana trees as we sped past through the mud brick villages.
I got talking to the uncles in my car. We chatted about life, music and people. It was a buzzy feeling showing the Sindhi uncle Shazeb the video of me on Pakistani news, and he was super supportive and offered to show me around Karachi when we got there.
It was a time of reflection as I looked back on my last look into the countryside. One month in Pakistan changed how I see music. From seeing the resilience of my Pashtun brothers in Peshawar and their dedication to their music to being tested in the same spirit in Swat through the bite of a mosquito. My reward and final test was meeting the bro on the platform, who readily encouraged me to play music as soon as he knew.
When I got to Karachi, the Sindhi uncle Shazeb helped me get a ride to my hostel. Over my last few days, he’d pick me up and take me to his car upholstery shop Chinna Motors. I met his work brothers, and we’d eat biryani and chat as customers walked by and came into the store.
I told them all my stories in Pakistan playing music, and it was awesome to just reflect and speak on the whole journey in front of some curious Karachilites.
The whole point of this journey was the people. They taught me how to be resilient. I was tested through dengue, and came out the other side strong and straight back into music. This is a message to all saxophonists, artists and creatives. There will be times where you’re tested, but it’s up to you to keep pushing through. Through proof of proficiency, you’ll be rewarded by the people around you.
Events took place October 2025
Blog Date: 08/06/2026
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