Arriving at 2 am, the customs control is more relaxed than before, concrete blocks have replaced sandbags at security checkpoints and the big MacDonalds in the car park is in your face as you leave the terminal building. I’ve rung my friend and comrade Riaz from the baggage hall and he’s there to greet me with his warm, enigmatic smile.
Despite late night discussion, I’m up at nine. With a pile of papers, ‘Dawn’, the liberal English language newspaper. I put them in date order and read sitting in the sun in Riaz’s tiny courtyard. The news is almost all grim .
In the evening, the flat fills with comrades, an informal meeting. I talk briefly about the new student movement in Britain. We discuss selling the paper to students, very difficult here with the threat of violence from the Islamist student organizations on the public university campuses and the omnipresence of security guards on the private ones. Then we talk about the Palestinian solidarity ‘caravan’ which will start soon in India and go through Pakistan and Iran finishing in Gaza. We decide to produce this poster. Seven or eight of us sleep here overnight quite comfortably
Sunday 21 November
Mid-day we make a trip out with Sartaj, whose excellent article on ‘Imperialism, religion and class in Swat’ is in ISJ123 and two other comrades, Asim who works for PIA and Gul Passand who is now a quality checker in a textile mill. We drive to the port and take a boat trip. Beautiful weather, lots of ferry boats on the quay taking people to the small island of Manoro nearby. I spot just one woman wearing a royal blue burka. Biscuits are being handed round and she whips the burka up and we see her bright young face with lots of lipstick and makeup. Our small boat passes half a dozen navy minesweepers, a giant ship housing a 250MW power station hired at great expense to help with the of the city’s chronic power shortages – ‘load shedding’ as it is called. It’s just arrived and is being officially welcomed today. There’s just one fishing boat setting off with its crew sorting nets. In the distance there’s maybe a hundred fishing boats from India which have been seized by the navy for ‘trespassing’ in Pakistani territorial waters. India does the same to Pakistani fishermen. They are slung into prison to rot, often for years. The Fisher Folk and PILER are part of a joint India-Pakistan campaign to get them released.
Now to the National Museum, surrounded by beautiful lawns and fine trees, a rarity in Karachi. It’s a small but political collection with excellent exhibits showing the pre Muslim past including Mohenjo-daro, the 4,500 year old city, laid out on a geometric plan, and very fine sculptures of the Buddha. This history is ignored in the school curriculum. And then to, as it were, restore the role of Islam, there is a fine display of ‘Islamic culture’, great Islamic scientists and philosophers from 11th century to 14th century, well done but with little connection to Pakistan.
Monday 22 November
The pick and drop van collects me 8.30am prompt. A warm welcome in PILER and quickly a course programme is put together: one course in Lahore, two in Faisalabad, one in Multan, one in Haripur and one in Karachi. A course in Hyderabad looks unlikely as the Fisher Folk are still overwhelmed with flood relief work. And also a lecture at PILER when I get back.
The street life, which I see mainly through the windows of the pick and drop, never ceases to produce something new. This visit, I’ve brought a copy of Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ (published by Paul Hamlyn in the ‘60s) for my colleague Zeenat - who besides doing research for PILER and much else - is an urbanist. My idea is that someone might do a similar job here, talking to the huge variety of street traders, hawkers, beggars, drivers, carriers, repairers, food stall workers, who encroach the pavements of thousands of cross roads in Karachi with its 16 million population. Bringing gifts is a hazardous affair. When I get back from my teaching outside Karachi. Zeenat gives me, a huge illustrated book about Karachi, ‘Karachiwala’ . In some ways it’s a Mayhew for today, giving a picture of the huge number of different ethnic and religious groups, coming from every corner of the subcontinent that make up the city, as it has grown since independence from 250,000 in 1947 to over 16 million.
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