Scenes & Stories Around Karachi Vol. 2

I get nervous when someone knocks on my door in America. No one ever comes to my home unless I specifically invite them, we don't receive our mail here so there's no deliveries, and utilities and other things like that generally make appointments. So who could possible be knocking on my door? 

It's totally different in Karachi. Lots of people come to the door of my in-laws house in Karachi. Political parties come to make sure my father-in-law will be voting for them (and sometimes "make sure" means intimidation), the milk delivery guy comes to drop off some milk, neighbors, friends and family drop by unannounced, beggars come to ask for money,  and people come to sell things. There's a lot of knocks throughout the day. 

One day while I was visiting, there was a knock. My brother-in-law went to answer the door and soon came excitedly into the room, telling me to grab my camera and come with him. He knew I'd want pictures of this:

A guy and a monkey. I'm not even sure what you'd call this guy. Like a snake charmer, but with a monkey. I'm sure monkey-charmer is not right...

This monkey had learned all sorts of tricks. Here he was parading around as Musharraf. The monkey handler used bananas and a stick to get the monkey to do the tricks. (He didn't hit the monkey, he just tapped the stick on the ground wherever the monkey was supposed to go.)

Here, the monkey was doing some kind of combat. Later he was shot and played dead.

After the show was over, the monkey handler wanted money for the performance. He wasn't pleased with what we gave him, saying that since we'd taken pictures and videotaped the performance, we should pay him more. He'd even trained the monkey to sit in our doorway so that we couldn't close the door until we paid up.

Just a regular day in Karachi.