Karachiites

Source: The News

Date: August 06, 2010

Erum is a young mother. Both her children go to a government primary school and her husband is chronically sick with some chest ailment. She moved to Karachi after some Christian families like hers were threatened by a group of youth in their native village in Punjab. Erum now lives in a squatter-like settlement of Essa Nagri. Minni comes from an old Sindhi village on the outskirts of Karachi. She lives with her daughter, a single parent, four grandchildren and a son who works as a cleaner at a truck station. Minni lives just by the Lyari River in a squatter between Gharibabad and Gulshan-e-Iqbal. My mother asked her once why she was called Minni and what her real name was. She told her that women were sometimes not named in her family. Minni's mother was also called Minni and so was her grandmother. But now she has named her daughter Fehmida and her granddaughters have different names also.

 Rabia is another woman whose family comes from a village outside Multan. She is the lone bread-earner and supports a family of seven. She lives near old Sabzi Mandi, of course in a squatter. Rabia's friend Nafeesa comes from Orangi Town. She was ten-year-old at the time of the fall of Dhaka. Her Bihari parents were shipped to Karachi. Her husband is a cleaner and sweeper at a few shops on M A Jinnah Road which sell auto parts.

View the link: http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=255073