Taahira Booya

In the process of learning about Karachi’s history after being questioned by my colleague Taimur Sikander, I spent a couple of days exploring the streets of Saddar with my friend and translator, Basil.

First I had to peel my eyes past the apparent layers of grime, then focus my vision to the remains of history that were preserved in old buildings, colonial architecture and traditional food. Add that to a high flame of curiosity, and I was served with three spoonfuls of history of food places in Karachi since 1947.

The ice-cream experiments

This is a story about three brothers, Bacha Khan, Faisal Rehman and Mir Zaman. Amidst the chaos of the 1947 partition, the brothers chose to occupy their minds with what adults had long forgotten and what children always remembered. Under the teachings of their Hindu neighbour, the brothers learnt the wonders of concocting milk and cream with spatulas as armour against the heat of summers.

When spring bloomed, they plucked and puréed fruits to discover their sticky and softening textures. Winters crept by but the brothers remained curious; they investigated the effects cold temperatures had on the consistency of their experiments.

The outcome of their patient inquisitiveness resulted in to be what we know today, Peshawari ice-cream.

Sadly, their neighbour-cum-teacher left for India leaving the three brothers as novices to a trade they had just picked up. Despite the odds, the intrepid three took the opportunity to set up a humble ice-cream shop in Saddar. They named their shop Peshawari Ice-cream in memory of their roots.

Business was slow in the beginning. Each passing day, they churned out about 4-5kg of ice-cream. They only served the typical Peshawari flavour – a subtle mix of cream, milk and sugar. It was sweeter and thinner than yoghurt but less decadent than pure vanilla.

The Peshawari flavour became their trademark which seeped into the palettes of Karachiites who appreciated the nuanced taste and texture ‘that stuck to the roof of their mouth’.

In the mid-60s, appreciation for the ice-cream grew as more people began coming to the shop. There was demand for a bigger and more accommodating space. Thus the next outlet opened up, adjacent to its original shop. By this point, the three brothers had grown up and had children of their own who started to take over the business operations.

Like their fathers, the children too were fearless and hard working. I had the fortune of meeting one of them, Zubir Khan, the eldest of Mir Zaman’s children. Zubir’s receding grey hairline and wrinkles were an offset to his cheeky love for ice cream. This love led him to mixing and matching flavours from Eastern and Western culture to create a new spectrum in Peshawari ice cream. He also re-created the servings of ice cream from just cups to big cups as well as boat-sized to appease different appetites.

His new range of flavours included interesting names like ‘black cookie’, ‘tutti frutti’ and ‘kulfa falooda’. I personally enjoyed the strawberry flavoured ice-cream which had chunks of fresh strawberries scattered within the ice-cream mixture that surprised me when I had swallowed the creamy ice-cream.

When asked if he got sick of having to be around ice cream the whole day, Zubir cocked his head like a child with glee. “I am a lucky man because I eat two cups of ice-cream daily,” he told us cheerfully. We also enquired about his working hours and routine; Mr. Zubir’s duties rolled off his tongue, in a blink of an eye.

“I wake up at 8am to open the shop and watch the ice-cream being made, then set up the place. Then I inspect the process, check its taste, texture and thickness. Once that is set, I tend to customers and suppliers for the rest of the day till 2am,” he said.

Little did we expect for an ice cream shop to have the lengthy working hours outside the conventional working times. But Zubir’s job of inspection was necessary to assure the quality. He ensures the continuity of his forefather’s traditions by using only fresh cream and milk in its production. I for one can vouch for the ice cream’s inartificial taste when he offered me ice-cream during my three consecutive meetings with him.

The ice cream’s originality draws people from all walks of life, as Zubir told us about the different crowds who patronise the shop.

“When I sit back at night to look at how people from all over Karachi: Nazimabad, Clifton, Defence and Cantt, come to eat my ice-cream no matter how far they live or what background they are from, it makes my earnings more valuable and my job more enjoyable,” he said.

When asked about his fondest memory, Zubir looked in the distance before revealing a story that he held close to his heart.

“About 35 years ago, a customer came to have ice-cream but didn’t have money to pay for it. Then very recently he came back and paid for the ice-cream, reminding us that he was the person who had enjoyed the ice-cream for free,” said Zubir reminiscing the precious memory.

A chaat at fame

If you ever got to meet the late actor Syed Kamal, or Umer Shareef, or President Mamnoon Hussain, you wouldn’t imagine yourself to be dressed in a grey button down shirt, with beads of perspiration trickling down your face, serving plates of chaat.

But that’s exactly how my friend and I met Nasim on a weekday evening at his shop that had been frequented by celebrities, actors and politicians. He was seated comfortably right in front of an enormous pot that held a gallon of sweet dahi (yoghurt), with balls of baray (fried dough balls) swimming in it, serving his customers and conversing with me.

When I casually asked how many people could fit into the huge pot, he said, “Let me think, maybe about ten of you folded inside,” breaking into a smile, breaking the ice between us.

Nasim, a well built man in his mid forties had a charming sense of humour that made it very easy to talk to him about his shop. “I’ll tell you why my food is good. It is the cultural snack of Pakistan, being delicious and healthy as a bite before dinner, making one energetic,” he said, crushing four freshly deep fried papris into my plate of chaat.

Very healthy indeed, Pakistan’s idea of healthy, I thought to myself as I smiled at him in agreement.

Situated right along the street of Karachi Foods on Burns road, Nasim’s chaat shop is unmissable, supplemented by huge pots and a wide varied display of chaat ingredients.

“This pot is what attracts people into my shop since 1954, everyone wants to see it and see what’s inside, and so they come in,” Nasim said.

Nasim’s father, Mohammad Saleem was initially from India but migrated to Pakistan to start a business in chaat. What began as a trial and error opportunity, it built its way up to fame and recognition from politicians, actors and celebrities. Nasim credits the size and quality of his ingredients which are gloriously displayed for everyone to recognise its worth. I could see where he was coming from as I used my body parts as the measure of his food.

“Look here, your chana is as a big as my thumbnail, the baray is as big as my palm and the papri is as big as my face,” I said putting a smile on Nasim’s face as he proceeded to crush more papri into my chaat, drizzling it with extra sweet yoghurt.

To ensure that the quality of the food is maintained, Nasim admitted to not agreeing to expand his father’s business. “You see, when I have one shop, I can make sure the food is good and I can control that. I don’t want to have too many shops and bad quality,” he said.

Perhaps it is this consistent attention to detail and taste that propelled the chaat shop to its glory and fame. I wasn’t surprised to see pride gleaming in Nasim’s eyes when he told me his fondest memory.

“Maybe you can meet Fatima Bhutto because you are a journalist, but I am very happy and very lucky to meet her myself. To me, serving her was like serving a plate of my family’s legacy,” he said, with the same sweat stained smile of happiness.

A lesson in haleem

Did you know that to keep haleem tasting as good as possible, daily a little haleem is leftover to be mixed with the next day’s portions?

This could very well be how Farid, the co-owner of an old haleem shop in Saddar, Haji Ghaseeta Khan Haleem, keeps the taste of his grandfather’s haleem fresh for his customers.

So when you have a plate of haleem, you are technically having a bit of haleem from yesterday and the yesterdays of a good 50 years. I was let in on this intriguing secret while talking to Farid.

While having a good, creamy plate of haleem, I was in awe of how traditions had a way of being literally implicated into cooking. Perhaps this unique quality made this make-shift, inconspicuous shop so popular amongst the regulars of Saddar. I had reached the shop at about 11am where there were pockets of people having haleem.

At around 2pm, more people started trickling into the store. By 2:30pm, there wasn’t much space in the shop itself but people seemed comfortable sitting outside, even under the hot sun to enjoy their plate of haleem.

Farid was pretty busy at this point as he served up to six plates of chicken haleem simultaneously dressing the dishes with dried onions, spring onions and lemon slices. His haleem was slightly yellowish and had a very zesty lemon taste that tickled my tongue when it danced with the spices.

As he served his food, Farid told Basil and I about his grandfather who had started this shop. “My family and forefathers were from Delhi. But my grandfather had a good hand at cooking, so after partition he stayed in Pakistan and began this business”, he said.

Despite the steady income from the healthy flow of close to 2000 customers a day, Farid had his reasons for keeping the store small. “This haleem is for workers and Rs20 will be enough to feed their stomachs and ours,” he said unabashedly.

It was clear that Farid had taken after his grandfather, Haji Ghaseeta Khan’s humble beliefs in business at his young age of 22. Despite the temptations for money and his interest in the car business, I sensed respect and filial qualities in Farid when he spoke about his grandfather with great admiration. It appeared to me Haji Ghaseeta Khan was a man with foresight to have brought up a family following his strong love for reasonable food at a reasonable price.

After his grandfather’s death, Farid and his family had opened up another branch a couple of streets down from their first shop. It was populated with plastic tables and chairs, a make-shift shelter with banners reading menu information below a picture of Haji Ghaseeta Khan, with a gas stove taking primary positioning importance. The stall was an unpretentious representation of faith in good food and service.

It wasn’t surprising when I heard Farid’s fondest memory of working at the stall for 12 years. “Every day when I serve food for customers, the money is good and so is the feeling. But during Ramadan, it’s different. People sit in my shop from dusk to dawn, shoulder to shoulder, eating my haleem till the next day’s fast starts,” he recalls with a quiet smile of satisfaction.

As though on cue, the call to prayer echoed through the streets punctuating the moment with sounds of faith and humility.

This project opened my eyes to the culture of traditions in Pakistan. In this day and age, independence, self sufficiency and being differentiated have become of pivotal importance.

This has led some of us to lose interest and respect for the collective efforts of our ancestors who built the foundation on which we live today. We choose to live our lives differently from how our parents lived. This might be as simple as wearing different clothes, eating different food or working different jobs from how our parents did.

There is nothing wrong with this of course and there is no need to blindly submit to our parents’ footsteps. However, there is a difference between blind submission and difference. The difference is in our choice.

It certainly must have been something embedded in Pakistani culture that led these men to continue their family businesses. It shows me how they respected what their forefathers had started over their own desires. I find it remarkable how they chose to carry on legacies. It is as though they have exalted their history by making it to be their present.

Concept by: Taimur Sikander