But it's different this time. The pictures I see catch me off guard. I recognize this place - the place I associate with my childhood. A childhood so sheltered and so unmarred, I look at the pictures and think, "How could it be?" It's our lab, our library. It's the place I associate with laughter, memories, best friends, goofiness. OII Science, the makayee wala, Sir Sami and his pink shirts, Shammo and her attempts at insulting the students, everyone harassing Laali, stories of Mogadishu. But it's different this time. I feel the heat in my face. Warm tears roll down. I'm too far to feel this.
I've written enough about my city's resilience. That it will come out stronger. That it will carry through. Like every other time. I like to write optimistic pieces possibly because of my love for this city. When you love a place so much you can't hope for anything else except for the fact that it'll eventually bounce back because it's too much to think of the consequences that will occur if it doesn't. But do I feel the same now that I see pictures of my school with the broken windows and the shards of glass on the floor? It was different then. We could see the ocean from our classroom and make jokes about the tsunami because we thought we were invincible. The tsunami couldn't reach us. The lala at the gate would keep the bad guys out. And that was all the security that we needed. That was how I grew up, that was the Karachi I grew up in. And thus, when I hear anything negative now, I tune it all out with memories of my safe, happy childhood.
It's not the same now, they say. I rant about my city's spirit, the people's strength. Come and see the blood in the streets, they say. There are beautiful things about this city, yes. Love for Karachi is love regardless of whatever happens. You come home to Karachi simply because it is home. I’m beginning to wonder whether this is good enough anymore. Is it enough to be blindly attached to a place as you watch it burn? Do the people whose children are being murdered and homes are being looted on an almost daily basis, feel this love? Or do they simply feel anguish and misery? Would I have felt this love for my city had I been in school that day? Or would I have been scared to go every time? And just waited to get the fuck out of there?
My emotions can only take me so far. I say this as someone who has always believed that the city will bounce back in spite of everything. No, it won’t - I reluctantly realize it now. It won’t bounce back because it has been raped and mutilated far too many times now. Most of the city has been affected by the violence. The unaffected have convinced themselves it is part and parcel of life in Karachi. People go about their businesses the day after a blast not because of their ferocious pride in their city - they go because they don't have a choice. They are proud because they feel defensive about a part of the country whose problems are too often treated like they don’t belong to the rest of Pakistan. They are aggressive because if you attack and assault someone long enough, s/he eventually fights back. Or learns to live with it.
Pablo Neruda writes this about the Spanish Civil War and it sounds too much like home:
I'M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS
(tr. Nathaniel Tarn)
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with it's dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel?
Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with it's statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings-
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black frairs spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
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| Photo credit: Nefer Sehgal/Express Tribune |
