hawoooooooo karachi

Happy afghan new years. Am writing from a net café in Pakistan where the air is loud with the sounds of Doom, the video game. The volume is on max so I hear every cocked gun, every rushed footstep, and, whenever the character gets shot, a computer voice saying: “The terrorist has won.” This seems strangely funny to me at the moment and I chuckle quietly to myself while waiting for an achingly slow internet connection in my little private booth. Private booths: the big thing now in net cafes here. Is it like that everywhere? Is it so we can view porn with greater privacy? My booth has a frosted plastic window and a seat covered in fake fur. Mrao.

So, a bit of a recap; I arrived in Karachi 10 days ago on assignment for Marketplace. Much like in Kabul, one divides one’s time in opposite worlds; the days I spent in the industrial quarter with the poorest of laborers, the stench of chemicals and butcheries and poverty and decay; my nights out at some restaurant or party, including a soiree at the island yacht club hobnobbing with consulates and former ministers of health and a air-force-pilot-crooner named Johnny who recounted New York stories from his second book. (One of them was rather funny involving three Irishmen, a raincoat, an off-duty mugger, and a pub on St Paddy’s Day.)



But it was nice to leave Karachi for a smaller town on the outskirts, where I’m now living in a house we rented for $50 a month. We have electricity half the time and a gas lamp for the rest of it. The kitchen is a room with a bench. The house has no furniture. The living room has two mattresses, one in each corner, with pillows and blankets and a rug beneath. That’s it, oh and a bound copy of the Koran on a shelf just above our heads. We remove our shoes when we walk in. When we leave, small children peek out of their doors, which are corrugated aluminum cut from the side of shipping containers.

The town is small and people feel safe to walk after dark. The streets are narrow and winding; the houses nuzzle up close to the road like curious but blind animals. It feels like a shtetl – with many little grocery stores, and a few beauty salons, many tailors with their window display of vests (called here ‘waistcoat’, perhaps some piece of European fashion imported centuries earlier). There are sheep in the road splashed with pink paint and a young boy selling bags of yoghurt mixed with green spices. At dusk the vegetable stands are lit by gaslight, while the man with a pushcart and a pot of chicken soup is just wiping down, but willing to serve us two last cupfuls; for 25 cents you get the cup, the soup, and as much pepper as you can take. (“With egg or without?” he’ll ask, and with your consent, he’ll sprinkle chunks of hard boiled egg on top of the soup.) During the day the soup cart functions socially as a barbershop; a clearinghouse for rumor and information. You see two or three men at a time standing at the cart sipping soup.

Today the rumor is me.




NOTE: Tune in Friday in NYC for Radiolab, featuring my accordion and the triumphant return of the Afghan Elvis... Ahmed Zahir. Also in the story is Najib, who you've read about in these pages. Here's a little video teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5nvg0_FfjU