If theres one thing Karachi-ites hate, its a curfew. Oh no, theres no midnight deadline for the hip and happening people of Korangi No 2 or Pehalwan Goth. The Afghani Tikka-wala at Al-Asif stays open until Fajr prayers, and the sole claim to fame of the Bakra Hotel in Kharadar is that it never closes. Never, mind you. But that was before the killings began.
I lived in Karachi for well over two-and-a-half-years and found that one shouldnt believe everything one hears about this city. I mean, if the newspapers and TV channels are to be believed, Karachi can boast far more martyrs (from excessive loadshedding, no doubt) than operations Rah-e-Rast and Rah-e-Nijat combined. But that is not entirely accurate.
Also, contrary to public opinion, there is more to Karachi than just Shahrah-e-Faisal, Clifton, Defence, I I Chundrigar Road, Mai Kolachi and the beach, Lyari, Saddar, Gulshan-e-Ravi and Gulistan-e-Jauhar, North and ordinary Nazimabad, Buffer Zone, Malir and the Korangi, Orangi and Surjani towns. Theres a real sense of a bustling metropolis, a plurality much more plural than what one would find in Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta or Peshawar. The city formerly known as the city of lights is literally a melting pot for all sorts of different ethnicities.
The city that is currently under siege and burning in places was not always like this. But there are many who will tell you that it has always been this way, and theyre not lying either. The best possible metaphor for the Karachi predicament can be found in the various chai walay Quetta Hotels that litter the sprawling city. There, you will always find the Baloch chai wala simmering a giant pot of mix tea. As long as the pot is simmering, there will be a steady flow of customers, no matter what size, colour, creed or ethnic group they belong to. But as soon as the pot empties, the shooting starts again.
The chai in this case is any sort of distraction. For the few months, the PPP has been trying to mend fences with the prodigal MQM. But in the Centre, MQM and PPP share the treasury benches with another unruly lot, the ANP. The ANP and MQM love each other so much, they would grind each others bones to make their bread, that is, if they could afford a giant-slaying mercenary called Jack and a Beanstalk taller than the MCB Tower. Whenever these two are left to their own devices, mayhem ensues. That is when el Presidente has to move camp office to Bilawal House. Coincidentally, Boat Basin stinks the most on days when the head of our tattered state is in Clifton.
But I digress. When el magnifico moves down South, trusty sidekicks in tow, you know things are getting out of hand. Given his susceptibility to foot-in-mouth disease, the government only lets Rehman Baba out of his cage when confronted by an ailment unknown to Western medicine. One of the first tell-tale signs that herald the arrival of the Minister of Inside Jobs in Karachi is the imposition of curfew. A curfew is one of Rehman Babas few cures for everything, even genital viral warts! But when the fighting claims one of your own, you tend to take notice.
Wali Babar was just out of university when I met him in 2007. I worked as a copy editor for Geo English at the time, and Wali was one of the reporters that I had the pleasure of working with. He was heavily opinionated, almost vindictive in his beliefs. He was young, wet behind the ears and believed he could change the way the world thought if he tried hard enough. Drunk on the power I enjoyed there, I took it upon myself to teach him and a couple of other reporters proper English copy. Although the whole project was shelved before I got a chance to finish what Id started, I saw in Wali all the makings of a competent career journalist.
Wali really came into his own once he was assimilated into Geo News, where he reinvented himself as a force to be reckoned with. Pretty soon, he was one of the most visible faces on daytime TV, reporting on everything from bombings to social intolerance. He had the street smarts and was on his way to a bright future. That was, until he was shot dead, in plain sight of a police station. I was in my newsroom in Lahore when I got the call, minutes before it was all over the news. I listened to Kamran Khans broadcast in shock, trying to picture Wali in that newsroom where I first met him. All that came to mind was a freckled young man grinning and saying Mighty bhai, yeh Karachi hai, yahan kuch bhi ho sakta hai!
The writer is a broadcast journalist.
