Scenes & Stories Around Karachi

I take a lot of pictures. On my first trip to Pakistan, I took an average of 100 pictures a day. 

Most of the pictures I've posted on here are ones I've found digging through my photo archives looking for specific things. Like pictures of shalwar kameez, or my trip to the Wagah Border, ortailors, or paan stains in the streets. I recently went back through almost all the pictures from both of our trips to Pakistan for a friend who wanted to see some, and I happened across a few of my favorite scenes of Karachi. 

I took this picture during our first trip in 2004, on one of our first outings. We went to Tariq Road to buy me some clothes. (We didn't buy anything though, because everything was more expensive than we'd expected.) Down one of the adjacent streets, all these food carts were lined up. This guy's selling juices and smoothies, and I had never known an orange could be peeled like that before. I remember when I was very young, I had a teacher who could peel an apple all in one go with a long, curly snake of the peel as a result, but who know you could do it with an orange, too?

This picture is from when we visited my youngest brother-in-law's soon-to-be-fiance's house to inquire about them getting engaged. She lived in a pretty nice apartment building, but because it was Qurbani season, lots of people had animals and they had made a space to keep them in the parking garage. I loved that one of the goats was wearing a jacket!

I really like to ask shopkeepers if I can take their picture. I love to see people swell with pride about their business and all of their hard work. This was one of my favorites - a samosa shop in North Nazimabad. We were on our way to one of M's uncle's house and we'd called him to ask where the best place to get samosas around there was. He'd directed us to this place and when we told the guy at the shop, he was really happy about that. When I asked if I could take his picture, he called over some of the other staff and arranged his pile of pakoras a little to make for a nicer picture. Even the guys in the back rolling out the samosa dough were happy to let me take their picture.

This was when we went shopping - I think back near Cooperative Market where M buys all of his electronics components. This was by far the busiest shopping day I had ever seen in Karachi, with the streets filled with people and the roads clogged with every kind of vehicle from bus to donkey cart. 

This was the first day we went out after Bhutto's assassination and the subsequent days of rioting. Our first trip was to our airline's office on Shararah-e-Faisal Road. While we were in the office finding out that the earliest flight with seats available was for 15 days after we were scheduled to leave (No thanks then, we'll keep our original tickets...) a construction worker and his chotta, (helper) had pushed their cart in front of our car and we were blocked in. M started to move the cart, and the cart owner came running over quickly. I asked (/mimed) to ask the boy if I could take his picture. His pose was fantastic, and after I'd shown him the picture from the camera's screen on the back he called out to his father and/or boss to come look at how much style he had! Then I asked M to pose for a picture to to remember how he'd had to help them move their cart. 

M usually leaves his crown at home when we're out & about in Karachi.