From Dawn newspaper:
June 23: Twenty-four people were killed and several others wounded in targeted attacks, sniping and gunbattles between rangers, police and armed youths on Friday, raising the month’s death toll to 204.
June 24: Twenty people were killed and many others wounded as widespread violence paralysed the city on Saturday. Two policemen, two MQM workers, two truck drivers, a PPP activist, and a police informer were among those who fell victim to the shooting spree.
June 25: At least 32 people lost their lives and many others were wounded as the city witnessed one of the worst days of violence on Sunday, marked by several rocket and grenade attacks.
June 26: 23 people were killed and many others wounded in the city, which remained in the grip of armed youths.
June 27: Fourteen people were killed on Tuesday as the city tried to limp back to normality
Every night, the Ghutnas gathered, and though there were interludes of revelry, in the end every evening’s conversation was ultimately unchanging. ‘Haalaat bohot kharab hain,’ they would say, again and again, as if English could not encompass just how bad the situation was; and then the conversation varied in its unvarying way from wondering if those accused of the killing were really guilty or just being set up; and how big a part did the ubiquitous Foreign Hand have in all of this; and could the city fall apart in such fashion without some government involvement; and were drug wars part of the reason for the violence; and which businesses had decided to start working through the strikes called by the politicians; and could the ‘talks’ actually achieve anything or were they merely occasions for both sides to pretend to talk peace while really recouping their losses and getting ready for the next round of firing; and could this city — my city, this ugly, polluted, overpopulated, heartbreaking place — retain its spirit after all this battering? And finally, inevitably, someone would say: It’s like 1971. Except that the army will decimate us before they allow Karachi to break away. And it always fell to my father to say. ‘No one wants civil war. Don’t say it’s like ’71. Don’t even think it.’
Sonia’s father was more popular than ever in the wake of the dropped drug charges, thanks to the aplomb with which he had sent out poppy-shaped invitation cards to a magnificent party, just after he got back from Umra. Karachi is a city that applauds spunk, so the Ghutnas clasped the Lohawallas to their bosoms for the first time and Sonia’s mother’s dressing table collapsed under the weight of all the party invites. No one mentioned that the proposals for Sonia’s hand had dried up completely.
But Sonia had to live with the memory of all that had happened, and with the news that our friend Nadia, in London, was on the verge of getting engaged to Sonia’s almost-fiancé, Adel Rana, and I knew she would never tell me how she felt about it all, because I’d always believed her father was guilty and I hadn’t tried very hard to hide it from her.
In Newsline, the sentence ‘“What we are seeing today in Karachi is a repeat of the East Pakistan situation,” maintains a senior security official.’
‘Is that true?’ I asked Ami.
‘Ask Maheen that. She’ll tell you never to compare Muhajirs to Bengalis. Being pummelled makes it easy for us to wring our hands and forget all we’re guilty of. We left India in ’47—we left our homes, Raheen, think of what that means — saying we cannot live amid this injustice, this political marginalization, this exclusion. And then we came to our new homeland and became a willing part of a system that perpetuated marginalization and intolerance of the Bengalis. No, Karachi is not a repeat of the East Pakistan situation.’ She pressed a red rose petal between her thumb and forefinger. ‘But.’
‘But?’
‘But there are certain parallels. History is never obliging enough to replay itself in all details. Not personal history, not political history. But we can learn how to rise above the mistakes of the past, and that we haven’t done. As a country we haven’t. Not in the slightest. Your father’s letter to Maheen seems to have more than an element of prophecy in it, isn’t that so?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You were right. He looked the country in the eye. And then, he found a way still to want to stay.’ I rested my head on her shoulder. ‘That’s sort of remarkable.’
I could see his shadow outside the door; I knew he was listening when I said that.
Zia was in New York, working with an investment bank; Nadia was in London on an extended holiday, telling everyone that Adel Rana had nothing but good things to say about Sonia but of course he couldn’t be expected to marry into a family accused of drug smuggling; the twins were on the west coast of America, one working at an architect’s firm in LA, the other immersed in Web design in San Francisco; Cyrus had joined a multinational in Karachi, primarily so that he could get a foreign posting within a couple of years, and he never said a word about Nadia, whom he had loved and been loved by, but to no avail because he was Parsi and she was Muslim; Sonia’s brother, Sohail, was just a few months away from starting college in New York, and there was talk of Sonia going to New York at the same time to visit family, which meant she was to be shown around to eligible Pakistani boys on the East coast, though her father had emphasized that she was to steer clear of Zia. And Karim…
Squash courts were my refuge that summer. We played every evening, a motley group of ten or twelve of us, arriving at the courts at four and staying until eight, returning home too exhausted to think of much beyond dinner and a video and sleep. Cyrus’s sister confided in me, ‘I love the squash courts. There are so many places to hide if gunmen break in.’
Zia came home briefly. His father thought he was dying, though the doctors insisted it was chronic indigestion. His father gave him a spare key to his filing cabinets, which were overflowing with incriminating evidence and rumour and supposition about everyone we knew. ‘Burn the files,’ I told Zia, but Zia said I’d lost my chance at having a say in his life. He didn’t call Sonia at all.
At the airport, we were told our flight to Lahore was delayed, but the airline was offering us complementary breakfast in the lounge. ‘But it’s only cheese sandwiches, and I want halva puri,’ I told the airline official. ‘Sonia, call your car back and let’s go for halva puri.’
The airline official said we couldn’t go. ‘It’s not safe, wandering around town, two girls. Stay here and I’ll call my wife and tell her to send halva puri over with my son.’
‘You’re just afraid we won’t come back and the flight will be delayed because of us.’
The man shook his head and held out his car-keys: ‘If you must go, here, take my car.’
I thought, I must tell Karim about this man. I must tell Karim so much.
In Lahore, I met Uncle Chaperoo, now a government minister. ‘Are you heading south soon?’ I asked him.