Sunset in Karachi [reduktiv/Flickr]
3 Quarks Daily is one of our favorite finds this week. Editor Abbas Raza and his team blog about literature, art, philosophy and science. Raza and frequent contributor Husain Naqvi — both native Pakistanis — write extensively about Karachi, presenting two strikingly different portraits. We talked to both Raza and Naqvi this afternoon to get a sense of why one would never leave for good and one would never move back.
I’ll tell you why I really wouldn’t move back. Karachi has become intellectually dead. There’s no good magazines, no intellectual life in which to participate or do anything….Also, while the city is wonderful in many ways, unfortunately it’s also very lawless. There’s a lack of security. It started in the early ’80s. Refugees from Afghanistan came and brought the heroin trade with them and a lot of guns. They were all armed and trained by the CIA to fight the Russians, but many stayed and became organized criminals. In Karachi in the ’80s everyone had some cousin who was hooked on heroin.
Abbas Raza, from a conversation with Open Source on 1/19/06
Karachi is a more and more culturally arid place, starved for entertainment, increasingly religious, intolerant, lawless, and intellectually bankrupt. There is a small self-congratulatory elite which prides itself on its worldly sophistication at cocktail parties where smuggled Scotch greases the endless mutual admiration of the rich, and there is ecstasy and cocaine available for the raves that the children of this elite throw behind heavily guarded walls…On a given day, it is highly unlikely that there is live music to be heard anywhere, or a poetry reading, or a theater performance, or anything else for that matter (in a city of over 14 million souls!).
Abbas Raza, 3 Quarks Daily, Back from Karachi
Naqvi still lives in Karachi four months out of the year.
I find that the immigrant’s idea if his/her hometown is static…Abbas left Karachi maybe 20 years ago, I was just there last week. Abbas is a very dear friend of mine, but his Karachi is no longer the city that he is familiar with.
Husain Naqvi, from a conversation with Open Source on 1/19/06
During winter in Karachi, the sunlight is soft and milky during the day and after dusk the air becomes cool and wafts firewood and the sea. The billboards down Shahrah-e-Faisal flash and buzz and the wedding halls in and around the wide boulevards of Nazimabad and Hyderi are lit like carnivals.
Husain Naqvi, 3 Quarks Daily, Critical Digressions: Beyond Winter in Karachi (or The Argumentative Pakistani)
Take our word for it: Karachi is wonderfully vibrant. There are dimensions of Karachi not often appreciated by outside observers (foreign reporters and disgruntled expatriates alike): Karachi’s vibrant cultural life comprises open-air pop concerts, classical dance shows, art exhibits, independent film festivals and coffee houses; there is great dining, street-side or indoors, and a throbbing nightlife. Karachi is very similar to New York; the same frenetic rhythms beat under our feet.
Husain Naqvi, 3 Quarks Daily, Critical Digressions: Dispatch from Karachi
Pakistan’s Nuclear Research Center was designed by Arkansas-born architect, Edward Durell Stone. (NY Times June 16, 1966). He could not have done it without Uncle Sam’s OK. Did Washington kick-start Pakistan’s nuclear program? Whaddaya think?
Husain is right. What he says is true of all immigrants. And following how Karachi has evolved over the last 12 years is amazing. When I moved away in ’94, there was close to no theater scene, no theme parks…now there are two theme parks in the middle class neighbourhood of Gulshan-e-Iqbal alone.
Do we get it yet. Exporting weapons and militarism is not in our best interst.
This curerent administrantion has no confidence in the democracy of free markets of which they are like drug pusher. We are so nieve about the Middle East.
PS Please excuse spelling errors, I have a hard time seeing the screen.
The State of Baristaville: http://www.baristanet.com/barista/2006/01/the_state_of_ba.html
Excerpt:
We live in a pretty damn good place. We have big trees, which only fall and kill people once in a while, and nice old interesting houses. The houses may be expensive to maintain and may be taxed beyond the pale, but at least they’re not aesthetically deadening, and many have welcoming front porches that foster a sense of community. We’re surrounded, for the most part, by smart people (though not smart enough to stay off their cell phones while driving) and, as Baristanet and the front-yard flamingo flocks prove, by people with a sense of humor. For all these things — but for the falling trees, the taxes and the distracted drivers — we are blessed. And to top it off, we have something like eight sushi places, five Thai restaurants and one Vietnamese.
And yet. We have turned childhood into an arms race of playdates, traveling soccer teams, SAT prep classes, and have turned the very act of growing up into a matter of serious competition. We’ve turned our kitchens and bathrooms into mausoleums, our parks into plastic playing fields and our graduations into orgies of fundraising and overindulgence, where money flows as freely as the alcohol it is meant to replace.