Bismillah, alhamdulillah.

We made our way through multiple checkpoints on our way out. Cars were carefully checked and men with machine guns and pistols at the ready were in full view. In the few days that I have been here I have seen more guns than I probably have seen in my entire life and that is counting the screen variety too.

The gun culture is one of the lasting images that I leave with from Pakistan. Best exemplified by an elderly man who was sitting outside a chemist in a plastic chair. Dressed in a simple white shalwaar and khamees, his thin and wiry build allowed him to cross his right leg over his left easily. He sat with his left elbow resting on his knee while his right hand dangled down by the side of the chair. On the way in to the chemist we had passed the man and I had only noted his presence.

It was only when we came and sat back in the car and my vision was now at the same level as his right shoulder that my gaze traced his right arm down to his pistol holding hand. His forefinger was lightly resting by the side of the trigger, ready for action. I was informed that the gun was loaded and the man was a Pathan. If someone had asked me to judge his age I would have put it in the mid 60’s, it seems retirement is not an option for armed security guards.

Where the government has failed, the enterprising nature of the people of Pakistan have plugged the gap, whether in the provision of electricity with their generators, the provision of education through private colleges or the private provision of law and order there is an entrepreneurial flare that touches upon all these activities. Another example of the peoples entrepreneurial nature was a middle aged man who knocked on the car window as we were waiting for the rest of the group to finish their shopping.

Intrigued by the man’s briefcase though a bit wary of a pistol being produced from it I lowered the window and greeted the man. Reading the interest in my face he quickly opened his metal briefcase to reveal a folder with laminated copies of supplications. He quickly handed me two of the A4 posters, on had prayers that could be read when performing tawaf (the circambulation of the Ka’ba in Makkah done during the pilgrimage Umrah and Hajj). He explained that he had found the duas on the internet and had printed and laminated them and they would be very useful for Hajj or Umrah. I thanked him and apologised that I had just been in Umrah and so would not be needing the laminated posters.

Holidays for the average middle class in Pakistan does not involve trips to the United States or Europe but trips to the local shops to try and fix long overdue home improvement projects. There seems to be a constant low level struggle getting things done and wading through the corruption that infests the corridors of power from the lowest to the highest levels. Simple things such as getting an electricity line fixed will take the better part of a few days as repeated calls need to be made to the electricity board. Eventually through a combination of persistence and a hundred rupee note the required technician will turn up at your property to fix things.

This daily struggle to achieve simple things seems to sap the energy out of people leaving them less time to sit, think and innovate. In western countries where the administrative structure on the whole is well run common citizens are left with potentially a fair amount of free time. It is a pity that countries that most need innovation do the least to provide a conducive environment.

As we stand at the departure waiting zone, a well planned circular hall with glass windows allowing you to see people arriving and departing I set my daughter a quick task. To carry out a survey of the number of ladies wearing an Islamic attire arriving by plane.

At a first impression Karachi comes across as a very liberal city with respect to ladies and their attires, but first impressions can be misleading. She counted 100 ladies of which 30 odd were wearing some sort of head covering in the traditional Pakistani style. Of these 8 were wearing a full Islamic attire, with an outer garment and head cover. The statistics seemed a little skewed from our first impression on the streets of Karachi but nevertheless painted perhaps an encouraging figure that would not leap to mind if I had been asked to guess. Like all statistics there was an attached health warning, my daughter pointed out that the plane that had just arrived was from Dubai and a fair number of the arriving passengers were Arabs, who traditionally wear a more stricter female attire.

Bismillah, alhamdulillah.

The last Friday we were in Karachi we expressed the desire to visit a famous mosque called Tooba in the Defence Area in Karachi. It is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on Karachi and is supposed to have an architectural design that is worth viewing.

Our hosts conscious of our safety were quick to dissuade us, being a large mosque it was a potential target for would be bombers wishing to extract revenge or carry out a false flag operation depending on whose analysis you believe. Instead a mosque guarded by Rangers was chosen as our Friday prayer venue.

The Friday sermon in the masjid was preceded by the traditional lecture or wa’z, in it the imam was at pains to point out that the leaders of various Islamic parties in the country were at odds with each other but the problem arose with the people at lower ranks in the various parties who were much more hot headed and felt that causes of disagreement had to be resolved with war-war rather than jaw-jaw.

As we left the mosque after the Friday prayer we passed by a Salafist mosque on the main road in the hunt for a sweet shop. This reminded me of the prevalence of different types of mosques many within a stones-throw of each other. Each serving a particular type of worshipper with their own set of beliefs. Besides the Salafists, there are mosques for Tablighis, Brailwis, Jamat-e-Islamic to mention a few.

Worshippers will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to avoid praying in a mosque that is manned by people whose ideas they do not agree with. The result of this self selecting behaviour is that every particular group is exposed to a limited set of views. While one group may assume it is correct and should avoid another group the very behaviour of avoidance disadvantages other people in other mosques as they are not exposed to ideas beyond their own perceived area of correctness. This results in concrete thinking from the point of view of the general population who only look at various issues in black and white terms. ‘You are either with us or against us’ sort of mentality.

One possible solution that comes to mind would be to nationalise all mosques in Pakistan. Each one should be taken over and run by the government at a financial and administrative level. As for controlling the opinions that are preached from the mimbar or pulpit these do not need to be policed but should be subject to a policy of random allocation. In other words every Friday the appointed pool of preachers should be allocated to give their Friday sermons at a randomly chosen mosque. Over a period of time this would result in the general population being exposed to many competing ideas. Given such a playing field it would allow the best ideas to come to the fore.

The attractiveness of the idea from a government perspective is that it is likely to reduce sectarianism and result in a general population that is more likely to group together on a moderate course. The attraction to the various preachers and groups is that it will give them an opportunity to reach across to new people in a manner that was previously not possible. A win-win solution. Allah knows best.

Bismillah, alhamdulillah.

The PC as it is locally well known is a 5 star hotel in the heart of downtown Karachi at the end of King Faisal Road. The entrance to the car park is manned by security guards dressed in their smart blue uniforms with their black caps giving the SWAT team appearance commonly found in US police forces. The car comes to a halt in front of a barrier which rises above the ground as the the boot and engine are opened and checked for suspicious devices. A man handling a white dog takes it round the vehicle as it sniffs for explosives. Having witnessed security in various places in Saudi Arabia, even in the well protected diplomatic zone in Riyadh the security measures here were one step higher.

A parking spot was quickly found and the entrance through the metal detector was mandatory. It lead into a brightly lit foyer with spot lights arranged high overhead and the welcome draft of cool air conditioned air hit us as we entered. The corridor was immaculate and the faint sound of music was coming down the corridor. We continued walking down the corridor inquiring about our final destination, as we got half way down the corridor the annoying piano music now much louder my sight was caught by a board sitting on the floor. It was an advert for the services of an astrologer.

I had to pause and clear my eyes as I could not believe what I was seeing. The advert was clear and unambiguous. I was told by someone that the person now quite famous in Pakistan was a blue collar worker in the HBL bank once upon a time. Astrology in Islam is a clear form of polytheism and shirk, there are clear Prophetic hadith warning against it in the strictest terms. But it seems these issues are of the least concern here. Our journey down the corridor was continuing and I had to walk quickly to catch my colleagues.

The annoying piano music had now reached a crescendo and I was thankful that its blare was fading into the background as we stepped into the glass elevator which clung to the outside of the building. Up we went to the highest floor watching Karachi shrink below us as we rose into the night sky.

The elevator doors opened to reveal a corridor and our host for the night. We had been invited to have dinner and were responding to the invitation. We walked down the corridor and were soon seated at our table. A buffet meal was on display with various quite mediocre standard food available with various, meats, deserts, rices and other Pakistani foods.

The dreadful and unholy ambience of the restaurant was set by the ghazal musicians in one corner who had decided to increase the volume of their amplifier to make sure that everyone in the restaurant would take notice. The other customers served to underline the degree of moral decadence that has set into the Pakistani elite, with women dressed in dresses that would be appropriate for a liberal Western country. It was an uneasy moment as I sat to decide whether we should walk out forthwith or whether there was possibly some greater good that could come of our meeting with our host. In the end the decision was made to stay. This perhaps was the right decision as the opportunity arose to convey the message of Islam to an open minded audience.

As the night ended I was left with the after effects of nausea from eating the mediocre food and remnants of the conversation that had taken place. Pakistan had seen especially in the last 15 years an acceleration in its moral degradation, lies were common, it was nearly impossible to find anyone whom you could trust, materialism had become the be and end all of most men and women. The story of politicians with morals, lining their own beds with ever increasing property portfolios abroad and little concern for the locals was a recurrent theme.

As we drove down the now quieter but by no means empty main roads of Karachi another conversation earlier in the day began to replay in my mind. A citizen of Karachi was arguing for isolation from the world and a concentrated effort by parents to protect their children by monitoring and limiting their access to the outside world.

Sadly, it seemed as if someone was trying to close the stable doors after the horse had bolted. The world outside had already invaded the house and the separation between the big bad wide world outside and safe environs of the home had become blurred. As the night reaches its depth the colossal nature of the job that faces Islamic social reformers in Pakistan only continues to grow in my estimation. The interfering parties from outside whom the locals are convinced are behind every targeted killing and explosion in the country fail to realise that the are falling to victim to the very disease that blighted Andalucia. The root cause is decadence and disobedience of God while the poor governance, sectarian strife and interference of outside agencies were a symptom rather than a cause. But analyses such as these fall onto deaf ears.

The search for taqwa (the fear of God), morality and purity have on the whole been sacrificed at the altar of material wealth. The false promises of material wealth is a Holywood narrative that is well told and sold. Most people seemed to have ignored the fiction label.

Bismillah alhamdulillah.

Safety culture

The  concept   of road safety still does not seem to be widely practiced, with pavilion passengers on motorbikes, ladies perched precariously though seemingly well adept at this balancing act behind motorcyclists.

Safety in the developing world are not a priority and seldom maintained  by the responsible authorities with individual efforts to provide a degree of protection. I came across these wires which looked as if they were live. On inquiring I found out that they were actually live, they were approximately two metres away from a balcony with a flimsy insulation placed over them by some individual doing his good Samaritan’s duty. 

Electricity cuts

Electricity cuts are a frequent occurrence during the day. It is known as ‘load shedding’, electricity is cut off for around an hour at a time in different zones and this is rotated around the city as the day passes. The first sign that a load shedding moment has arrived is the silence. The ever whirring ceiling fans and their deafening din to which all locals seem oblivious to lessens and finally stops. To myself it comes as a relief and sometimes I feel I would rather trade the oppressive heat for the relative silence of an electricity free moment.

  But the silence is soon punctured a few minutes later as the electrical Honda petrol generators which are widely distributed throughout villas are switched on and emergency lights, fridges and ceiling fans restart their incessant whirring. The generators are also adapted by some to run off natural gas which flows in copious amounts and at cheap rates throughout Pakistan which its origins in Quetta. An adapting device can be purchased for around 1500 RS.  The gas is piped and constant in supply. On inquiring about the relative cost per unit between gas and electricity from the mains I was surprised to be told that gas generated electricity is 1 RS / unit while electricity supplied by the main electricity board is 10 RS / unit. It seems that the main electricity companies are still generating electricity by burning diesel and vested interests have not resulted in a change in the method of generating electricity.

Generator power is measured in KVAs,  a 2.5 KVAs generator is enough to run  3 ceiling fans, lighting for three rooms and 1 freezer. The cost of a 2.5KVAs generator is around 40,000 RS. A 5 KV generator (priced at 129,500 RS)  is enough to support Air Conditioning equipment and you can even buy 10-20 KVAs generators which are about the size of a small freezer unit.

Posters reveal the love-hate relationship that the Pakistani population seem  to have with the United States. While posters and popular feeling is anti-American the desire for the American creature comforts, way of life and education is insatiable. A day ago I met a family who will be relocating to the USA as all their children bar one have migrated. They feel isolated in their home country and are looking forward to a new future in the ‘promised land’.

It’s early morning as I mull over my first impressions when  I am greeted by the braying of a donkey, it sounds as if it is in quite a lot of distress, but then again I am not familiar with donkey customs and habits. I search for the source of the noise and find a prosaic picture of a donkey standing under a tree with cart attached to its back. Forms of transport are multiple, from hand pushed carts to diesel, natural gas and animal powered means of transport.

Bismillah alhamdulillah.

As the plane made its final descent to Karachi airport the sight that caught my eye was the desert like patches of ground inter spaced by the odd patch of green. It looked like a city on the edge of a desert and didn’t fit the impression I had in my mind of verdant green fields stretching to the horizon.

Airport immigration

The airport terminal was bare and had the feel of something built in the subcontinent with its harsh paintwork and lack of comforting plastic finishings. The immigration counter was uncomplicated and manned by a lady officer, she was wearing a well pressed medium grey suit, the type favoured by Russian officers. Her head scarf was not color matched and sat precariously perched on her head as she operated the US supplied Logitech remote camera that was being used to photograph everyone as they entered the country. She deftly moved the camera with her remote control and entered the details into her immigration computer. There are no objectors to the pervasive intrusion of the state here.

We leave the immigration counter and find a man selling tickets to hire a trolley, at 200 PKR (Pakistani Rupees) per trolley, this includes a porter. Having tried to avoid porter services in the past I have decided for this trip to engage their services and avoid the hassle of struggling to find well hidden trolleys. I have also been informed that the porters are able to find the most appropriate route past the customs officials who stand by waiting for the next victim.

Karachi airport baggage check

Unusually we found an officer checking the baggage tags and matching them to our tags, the one we were given when checking in our luggage. usually I seem to loose this in one of my pockets and fortunately managed to find them and prove ownership of our luggage. The checking was rather superficial but a good show was put on of efficiency.