Karachi I'm Yours

The new school year begins on April 1st (1988) and I am freed of my duties to the other school section - the massive Matriculation institute next door. This is much to the displeasure of my Head there, Ms Nazeem. I will miss her and her lively staff - most teachers in the school are women, all very dedicated and hardworking. I am able, however, to concentrate on my duties to the Cambridge students.

Niggle is charming the students of Class VIII with Julius Caesar. I hear choruses of "Caesar! Caesar!" from his classroom next door. It spills out to the play area and during the break. It is made all the more poignant by the Roman pillars that greet you as you enter the school ground from the road outside.

I continue to teach Omer at his home and he takes me to his father's office at Kashif Centre on the main Sharea Faisal that connects the main city (the CBD) to the airport. He's up on the twentieth floor and the inside is plush with a meeting room more like a banquet hall. I usually walk to Omer's home through Hill Park in the afternoon after school.

Hill Park

Saturdays I go to the British Council Library by rickshaw, Passing places that soon become familiar: Frere Hall, FTC, Metropole Hotel, Cantt Station.

 Frere Hall

 Sharea Faisal

Cantt Station

I meet Mr Chand outside his furniture shop in the evening. He takes me inside to look at the handmade chairs and tables. It is a vast array of imitation antique craft work. I meet Askari - a homoeopathic doctor and pir.  He is immaculate looking, dressed in a white sherwani and the "Jinnah" cap. He is staying at a hotel, and I am invited by Mr Chand to his room. Inside is a dishevelled bed and a rather suspicious looking hairless bodied young man draped only in a sheet. Mr Askari merely beams at me unashamedly. I quickly leave.

Niggle and I sit in the evenings. I don't see him pray very much - except once when we saunter through nearby Jheel Park one night. There is a full moon and it sheds beautiful light onto an open shiny concrete area in the park.

"Lahdidah," says Niggle. I often hear him say this. I assume he is invoking the name of his errant Shaykh. Niggle looks at me and smiles.

"Lahdidah."

Then he runs to the moonlight flooded platform under the almost invisible palm trees and begins praying. I wait in the dying light enjoying the silence and suspense of the moon above. I remember the scene in "A Passage to India" where Dr. Aziz stumbles across Mrs Moore in a mosque.

Niggle sips back and nods.

"OK?" I ask

"Lah - dih - dah," he says contentedly.

Jheel Park

We saunter again out through the main gate back into the bustle of Tariq Road.

Karachi - Pakistan - begins to perform its magic on me. And I realize I am slowly, gradually falling in love...