I’m sure many of you sincerely believe in the words of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Two Nation Theory, the ideology of “Pakistan”, and everything “Pakistani”, but as Karachi burns, bleeds and cries, I don’t see my “patriotic” Pakistan come out. Why? Because maybe, it’s not Islamabad (the heavenly, green capital) and maybe, it’s not Swat (the beautiful vacation spot everyone wants to go to). Oh, no. It’s JUST Karachi. I know friends of mine say, “Oh, you’re from Karachi? Life must be really bad there. Thank God, Islamabad/Lahore/Rawalpindi/Peshawar/Quetta is very safe from all that nonsense.”
It honestly hurts me when people say it like that. Karachi is burning tonight. It was burning yesterday. It will most probably burn tomorrow too, but who gives a damn? Seriously, if someone did, MAYBE IT WOULD HAVE STOPPED BY NOW. They removed Taliban from Swat, didn’t they? They didn’t need endless number of stretchers, a billion ambulance sirens running around the megacities, thousands of innocent deaths to stop, but for Karachi, this isn’t the “necessity of the moment”?
Believe it or not, Karachi is the most important part of our nation’s economy. If you can’t care about it because you don’t belong from there, at least care about where your money is coming from.
I’m sorry. Tonight, my “Pakistan” let me down. It would be really nice if ALL Pakistanis owned up to Karachi - maybe then it would really be Pakistan.
Please, don’t give me a crap about unity again.
P.S, 800 people have been killed this year in Karachi, 748 in the entire 2010. It’s only August now. 4 more months to go.
“I feel my heart ache, but I’ve forgotten what that feeling means.” - Chuck Palahniuk
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