Karachi’s addiction lies in all that it can actually be. And in the promises it holds; in the hope it nurtures, in its undiscerning ability to be home. Karachi is also Pakistan’s crack – it provides the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, but never a lull.
There is perhaps not another maximum city that condenses all facets of the human predicament; be it the abundance of its tragic-comedy, its irrationality or the sheer force of its promise. For these reasons, despite being pulled apart for absurd reasons of ethnicity, hate politics and petty turf wars, Karachiites are kept together by the inherent, albeit ironic, cohesive nature of their megapolis. They cannot thwart this magnetism for each other or for Karachi.
“Karachi shehr hi aisa hai. Ek dafa aajao to apne ghar me bhi dil nahin lagta” (It is that kind of a city. Once you come here, you don’t want to go back), says Israr Khan, a labourer from Peshawar. Although in these bloodstained times there is precious little to keep Khan from moving on, but he along with multitudes of others, continues to grapple with the inexplicable hold this city wields on them, forcing them to invest themselves and their lives here. To cast their lots because a special something makes it all worth it. Perhaps it is the fact that Karachi, more than their investment, lives on the accrual of hope and dreams.
Interestingly, it is their time spent here that blurs Karachi’s ‘evils and ills’ – its wounds and wounded, its tears and tormentors, the sights, the smells, the sheer desolation it is mired in. Instead, they inhabit a paradox where their unrealised dreams for this city and themselves become the only reality.
Hence, the unspoken camaraderie amongst its fraught millions is what makes its spirit increasingly resistant to both fear and mayhem. Where it once took three days to return to life, today a night of blood and murder does not make way for a dark, quiet dawn. “Sar pe kafan baandh ke nikalna hota hai. Ab koi kaisa bhi ailaan karde,” says a young daily wager from the depths of Sindh, Ishaq Mahar.
In other words, Karachi is barzakh— that no man’s land between heaven and hell. Ever the state’s maltreated, therefore prodigal child – from its dissolution as the country’s capital to this blood-splattered week -- it still throbs as the nation’s economic lifeline, and boasts of the highest literacy levels in the country. Yet for most of its existence, it has been brutally marginalised in areas of allocation of development funds and the state’s employment opportunities, to name a few.
Through the decades, barely a fraction of the share of its economic yields has been devoted to its citizenry — the result can only be political terror and a frustrated human force. Aside from sporadic tussles to prove the outreach and muscle power of various elements – ethnic, sectarian, or political — the anarchy that often holds Karachi hostage is a severe symptom of the rising disillusionment of a politicised and reasonably literate people with negligible channels for social progress or distraction.
The core question is: what will it take for powerbrokers to recognise that Karachi’s resilience has been spread thin; it is fraying to eventually self-destruct. The time is now to hold the city’s peace and spirit of survival above political tugs of war by not only confronting decades of misrule but also by making security visible. There is no element more critical to Karachi’s endurance than an urban police force. Its law enforcers must belong to it to keep it safe and bloodless. This is the only route to restore public faith and conviction.
At this point, the climate of a police station is one of hostility towards hapless denizens as most officers are either political appointees or enjoy political patronage and neither requires heeding the call of duty. They have either been imported from the rural hinterland with precious little know how of big city dynamics or are pawns in political barters. But change cannot be one-dimensional -- accountability and reward must coexist for an abysmally compensated, poorly trained and understaffed police force.
Such measures supported by political and economic appeasement and a mass de-weaponisation initiative can herald the beginning of long-lasting peace in the crippled city. Otherwise, phases of amity will be little more than strategic and each subsequent flare up will be more savage than its predecessor. The government must seize the moment to undo decades of injustice – both economic and human. Deathly nights must surrender to life and light.
Karachi has done time; it refuses to tiptoe around corpses, skip over spilt blood, dance around infernos and die more often than it lives. It can no longer harbour hell. And it cannot go down as the forbidden fruit of civilisations. It has every right to emerge as the Garden of Eden that it is at heart.
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