Usual Unusual By Ammara Durrani

The News, April 16, 2006
Usual unusual

Something wrong somewhere? Coordinate, avoid, go home early, watch TV to keep up with it, talk about it over dinner, think of ways to deal with it. None of this seemed possible on Wednesday in Karachi

By Ammara Durrani

Karachi, April 13: Wednesday's big story: what next after Tuesday's Nishter Park blood bath?

My home-maker mother, for one, knew what was to come. She did not let me take the family car to work, when I told her I had to go. They've called a strike today, she informed. Better to take a taxi and come back early because "you know how it always is."

I knew, of course.

Shutters down, angry-at-everything mobs, burning vehicles and property, pelting stones, and a constant threat of anything-could-happen-any-minute hanging in the air. That's usual, I thought as I hailed down a yellow cab from the road. The cabbie quoted a doubled-up fare of what I usually pay after haggling. That's typical, I muttered under my breath, as I looked around the road which seemed unusually empty and silent -- even by a strike day's standards.

As the cab drove through 'sensitive' areas to the heart of the city where my newspaper's offices are located, I began to sense it. Something was different this time. The air was silent, tense. Afraid, yes that's the word, I thought as I looked outside the cab window at a city that had changed overnight. Funny, we hadn't felt afraid on a strike day in a long time. We'd gotten used to it, hadn't we?

The famous Karachi spirit had finally started to come out from under the heavy rock of two decades of terrorism. You only had to see the city spring back to its bustle within hours of the suicide bombing on the US Consulate last month, to figure that out. This year's early bathing of its high-rises in thousands of colourful lights to celebrate the upcoming Prophet's (PBUH) birthday had rekindled memories of that long-ago City of Lights. Business was booming and markets had never been more bullish.

Sure, terrorism had become an almost everyday occurrence. News was always travelling fast through cable news and mobile phones about the usual blast here, an armed attack there, or a showdown anywhere. Strange as it may sound, though, we thought we had conquered our fear of terror even as it continued to strike at us now and then. We had finally and carefully constructed a life around it, living with it, moving on with it.

Something wrong somewhere? Coordinate, avoid, go home early, watch TV to keep up with it, talk about it over dinner, think of ways to deal with it. Hey, life goes on. There's a new trade show at the Expo Center every week. The National Academy of Performing Arts has something to offer almost every month. A new joint has opened up at Zamzama Blvd. How about checking out the new mall that opened up last week? They are still talking about that March 27 Newsweek story about the stunning economic 'Promise in Pakistan'. These are signs of a living and thriving city, you know.

But on Wednesday, I thought, Karachi had not been this quiet in a long time.

The gas station on M. A. Jinnah Road was closed and cordoned off with wedding tents. That's strange, I thought for a second. Until I remembered that a new mob trend in vogue these days is to burn up gas stations. They are learning and adapting too, I realised.

I saw very few people at work and outside. The city was dead. My colleague agreed with me as we exchanged notes in the news room. "There is unusual fear out there," he said.

Back home after dinner, I turned on the idiot box.

"What's with the sad [background] music and gloom?" my sister asked me, as we watched Mujahid Barelvi of CNBC comb the streets to capture their mood and post-tragedy occurrences.

"Well it is a national tragedy, you know," I said, as Barelvi spoke about a suicide bomber's bloody attack on Tuesday that, in the blink of an eye, had injured hundreds and put to eternal sleep 57 innocent believers who had gathered to commemorate the nth birthday of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the city's famous congregation ground, Nishter Park.

My sister gave me a what's-the-big-deal look, shrugging her shoulders; I looked back in weak earnestness. In that moment, we both struggled to say something but did not know what. Silent, we went back to watching Barelvi and his camera crew.

His best moment came when he spotted the sight of a poor old man on his haunches rummaging through the blackened debris of the bomb site in broad daylight. "What could this man be looking for in this debris?" we heard Barelvi's voice in the background. On global cable news network, the veteran Karachi journalist knew that he was mainly tugging at the hearts and minds of his fellow citizens.

And Karachiittes knew the answer to his question. The old man was one of thousands living in this jungle city of both riches and rags, surviving on anything of value scavenged from any heap, while life goes on -- or comes crashing down -- around them.

***

On Thursday (today), I could take the car and come back before sunset, my mother said. "That's when they are burying the dead," she told me. She expected me to know what it meant: more trouble will follow in the day.

Karachiittes know that the story does not end with an incident and the counting of its dead. They know that their city's long, bloody history of terror has given birth to a particular post-incident culture that plays itself out in the following days -- depending on how big the toll is -- before the dust settles and life gets back to normal.

I got out on the road, recalling last night's strangely silent exchange with my sister. She is not insensitive, I reminded myself. Quite to the contrary. But while thinking, philosophising and writing about terrorism and all that's bad with the world is practically my job, she's among the millions of this city who are tired of even airing their opinions on its deteriorating state of affairs, busying themselves instead with earning their livelihoods. Her shrug of last night, therefore, was not born of callousness: what's new; shouldn't we be getting used to this by now, was actually her thought. But it remained unspoken, perhaps because deep inside Karachiittes can't still bring themselves to get used to it after all these years.

In the city, most shutters were still down, few only partly open. They seemed to be saying, we know something's terrible happened but please, please, please let us do business. I made a brief stop at a courier service office. Service was slow for a long customer line which belied the reality of 'life has to go on, you know!'

A courier boy was worried. He had run out of gas and all the gas stations were closed, he said. His colleagues didn't know what to do. "Go to the airport," said one. "How? On foot?" exclaimed the boy, as his manager chuckled. Thank God for the can-do, must-do, will-do-somehow humour of this city, I thought as I took the wheel again.

Yes, all the gas stations were closed along the smaller roads. On Shahrah-e-Faisal, the city's main artery, I spotted the first station with cars queued up for gas. Then another one. They felt relatively safe to do business under the watchful eye of hundreds of security personnel who stood under the trees and atop the bridges that dotted the road.

It seemed we had a fuel crisis in the making, thanks to the stations shut-down in anticipation of trouble. This could be Thursday's big story, I thought as I drove on.

Countless armed and armoured paramilitary and police vehicles sped along the road, their inhabitants hanging out from windows and back cabins, automatic rifles in their hands, wind blowing through their hair and ballooning their unbuttoned shirts. How macho! (Of late, our security boys have started showing off a decidedly Hollywood/SWAT style as they go joyriding around town in their growing number of vehicles. Whether it's VVIP movement or a terror act, these guys have to have their gun-totting, camera-operating, 4x4 riding cool dude acts. So now we know where all that US aid to Musharraf for fighting terror is going. One of these days, our Style pages could do a feature on our new cool dudes, their cool gadgets and street attitude.)

Attendance at work was a little better today, and there was some pedestrian and traffic movement in the city. Everyone made sure to keep up with the news, bracing for whatever the sunset burial would bring in its wake. They had called in the army and its tanks, my sister called me up from her office. Better to go home soon, we both agreed.

I left the newspaper building at 2pm, thinking I'll drive around town to get its feel before heading back home. The traffic had increased and so had the bustle. It was as if everyone wanted to make the most of this brief gasp of air in the otherwise stifled atmosphere, before going back to the safety of their homes.

A hawker at the traffic light flashed across the late afternoon paper. I noticed with a wry smile that the fuel crisis of the day had made it as the lead story. Down the road, I spotted camera crews busy broadcasting reports from at least two gas stations that had not shut down. Yes, post-Nishter Park fuel crisis was the big story until Thursday afternoon.

I returned home at 3pm, in time to turn on the networks and tune into coverage of the trouble expected after 4pm.

"Everything is shut down tomorrow," my mother said as I ate a late lunch. "Best to stay home."

It will take a few more days this time, I thought, before we get back to 'normal'. Nishter Park had become the latest reality check for the ever-brave Karachi. The lights, the bullish markets, the booming consumer culture will come to a grinding halt the minute another bomber decides to blow the fuse. Life goes on, but at the back of everyone's head ticks the terror clock.