On a sunny Melbourne winter morning, I visited the State Library of Victoria to catch up with a mate and stumbled upon an exhibition of heartfelt letters and souvenirs that lovers have been sharing with each throughout the ages.

What really caught my eye was a glass box in a neglected corner containing cassette tapes from the past century. It looked like a lost universe rediscovered. Besides the music of its time, these palm-size objects remind me of the tapes that carried the voices of loved ones in the pre-internet era of my childhood in Pakistan, when telephones were still a luxury.

Our entire family would gather in the evening to listen to the recordings made by family members. It was a source of great healing to hear the voices of relatives back in Afghanistan at a time when we struggled with the misery of refugee life.

The tapes were brought to us in the 1990s by travellers from across the Middle East, Afghanistan, India and Iran, where Afghan refugees had taken shelter. They contained the voices of people........

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