Eulogy for a Dying City
by Urooj Mirza
Do you know how many ways there are to die in this city?
1. The street food.
2. Mini bus drivers.
3. Exhaust fumes from rickshaws, taxis, cars, buses.
When I was a little girl, Saturdays were reserved for halwa puri breakfasts with my cousins. My uncle would cram the 12 of us in his beat up corolla and drive us to the farthest point of the city where we’d sit on greasy tables, stray cats curled up at our feet, eating oily parathas and wiping our fingers on yesterday’s news - 10 dead in Kashmir, 20 killed in a suicide bombing.
4. A stray dog.
5. The woman with outstretched palms and a persistent cough.
6. When the tide hits.
One Saturday morning – my last Saturday in Karachi – I watched as a beggar boy was pushed on to the road. The fistful of balloons that had been so carefully wrapped around his wrist rose to the sky. The boy was bleeding. I waited. He wept as he watched his everything float into vastness. One by one. The balloons vanished. I am still waiting.
7. A controlling husband.
8. The man eyeing you from across the street.
9. A stray bullet.
10. An aimed bullet.
The people of Karachi talk like they are stepping on landmines – careful, cautious, calculated thoughts and perfectly constructed half-truths. The children of Karachi dance among mountains of garbage and rubble – bare feet and cracked soles, flying kameezes, soaring (illegal) kites, they are unfaltering, gap-toothed, unapologetic.
11. The wrong neighborhood.
12. The right neighborhood.
13. Being human.
14.
15.
16.
We have grown accustomed to the melody of gunshots, the rhythm of bombs falling, learned to block out the heaving of a city taking its final breaths. Poor Karachi, they say – it’s home but I’d never dream of going back. Poor Karachi. All saltwater and crumbling buildings. All tireless smiles. A dying city, a blood stained spot on the map. How can you save a city that refuses to save itself? Poor Karachi. Soon there will be nothing left to mourn.
Urooj is a 21 year old story teller, currently pursuing an English major at LUMS. She likes writing about Karachi, nostalgia and her cat.
You can find her at instagram.com/loveletterstokhi
visual by rubaab mohammad.