Oh Karachi!

Frere Hall, Karachi

There’s something unforgettable about Karachi. There’s something raw and sensuous about this city, something that unfailingly tugs at my heart and always manages to hit a nerve. It is my home town after all. The sight of a familiar restaurant or just the sun setting over the city is enough to draw out memories I thought I’d had enough of. When we’re driving down Shahrah-e-Faisal, past the surprisingly tidy roadsides and the palm trees swaying in the ever-present Karachi breeze, and we pass the PAF Museum flags fluttering in the cool air and the railway track beyond which is easy to miss (unless of course, if there is a train barreling down it) and the green shrubbery-probably the only greenery you’ll be seeing for a while-then on past the formidable Air Force Base gates flanked by armed guards and the Quranic verse inscribed on one of them ‘…prepare any strength you can muster against them’ which never ceases to impress me, I feel an overwhelming emotion rising within me and blotting out everything else. 

I can’t deny that what I feel is only fierce, pure love for this city of opposites. And a frightening desire to rise up and protect it from the darkness that’s always only temporarily at bay. For a while, as long as the car is moving and that soft sweet Karachi breeze plays on my face, the fear of sudden bomb blasts and terrorist activities is forgotten and I feel certain I could hold my ground against anyone who threatened this place, stare down the gun barrel of any enemy of the city. 

But who am I kidding? At the next signal, I suspect the two motorcyclists on my right of concealing weaponry beneath their jackets and I cower in my seat.

This is how Karachi jars my senses. This essentially defines the nature of my relationship with Karachi. I love it but I dream of flying away from it every day, when I AM away from it, I miss it terribly. I would die saving it, or would I? What I DO know is that I owe this city something. I don’t know much about the country at large, but I know Karachi has shaped me, it’s made me whoever I am today, through it I met people who ended up having a much bigger role in my life than I’d anticipated, we bought our first house here, I learnt to love my blood relations here. If I ever had my heart broken, it happened in Karachi first, if I ever experienced true happiness, it happened here first. When I’m away from this city, my senses are numbed, dulled, my thoughts and feelings are blanketed with a hazy sense of security, my raw nerves aren’t exposed the way they are in Karachi. And so it’s a relief to be away from home for a while, to rest my shattered self which clearly isn’t strong enough to contain all the passions that Karachi evokes. 

When I return, I return to my own self, and all the pain and joy and loneliness and misery I temporarily left behind. But that’s what a home is. A place where you can be yourself entirely, a place that’s had (sometimes, more than it’s fair share of) bad times and good times too, a place that doesn’t let you forget the pain, rather it lets you accept it, and learn from it. And so, I begin to somewhat make sense of the messy, abusive relationship I have with Karachi, which started as Kolachi, became City of Lights, and has ended up as City of Darkness. Karachi is my home. Whatever the future holds in store, that’s what it always was, and always will be.