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Karachi Taught Me That Violence Does Not Always Announce Itself
After losing one home to political upheaval, I learned how quickly another city could change around me.
There was a question Karachi families learned to ask before leaving home.
Raste khulay hain?
Are the roads open?
It sounds like an ordinary traffic question. In Karachi, it could mean something else entirely.
Was there trouble somewhere? Had buses stopped running? Was a protest spreading? Would the road that was open when you left still be open when you returned?
I spent much of my adult life in this city. I worked in banking, raised my children here and learned the routines of a place that could be exhausting but was unmistakably home.
I had already lost one version of home.
I was born in East Pakistan. After the violence and upheaval of 1971, my family eventually came west. Karachi became the city where I built the life that followed.
Years later, political violence entered Karachi’s daily life too.
It did not feel like 1971. I want to make that distinction clearly. Bangladesh’s war of independence and Karachi’s political conflicts belonged to different histories. I do not compare their scale or causes.
