K A R A C H I

I have been accused of crossing borders too easily. I inhabit the voices of my forefathers in the temporal measures of pipette drops from dripping taps in locked rooms. I am Marco Polo speaking the same city to fractal infinitude for the ears of Kubla Khan, I am an Andalusian Dog, I am an Orpheus placed like a chess piece, wide-eyed from international flights, and cowering from Medusa stares.

I prefer the white noise of a fan rippling bedsheets and peeling up the corners of loose sheets of paper, the popping buffets of a rolled down window, to the too cool touch of air conditioning. The point is not to deny the city, but to let it simmer against a man-made breeze.

There are thousands of Karachis that coexist, knotted together and held tightly against the surface of sun-blasted concrete. I observe from a single jealous viewpoint.

In one the water is laced with pathogens, fine for hands but not unprimed lips, and the air carries biting insects laced with tropical fever - I drink from bottles and sleep nighty, bridally, in an unhung mosquito net, smothered in DEET to ward off the needle jabs of mouth parts. There are bomb blasts and maimings fraying small holes in the fabric, secreted unseen in newsprint and reportage.

In another there are boys carrying jasmine bracelets to the windows of cars, against the stream of riotous peacock metal of the Patan buses, which line the back streets at night containing softly sleeping men. Sand-coloured dogs with black muzzles trot through foothills of discarded packaging, snuffling for food.

Last night we hired a sailing boat and crew, and trod through a concrete pagoda in the port, past the sacrificial stains of spit paan. After a moment of negotiation, because foreigners are not allowed to enter the port for reasons of security, we were tugged out to a stretch of water in the harbour, past the point where the tang of sewage entering the sea was diluted enough to disappear, and dropped anchor in the moonlight. We were surrounded in the distance by the black shapes of empty boats, with the occasional blinking light, that form a loosely wound floating land mass on the water, mediating between the edges of the city and the Arabian Sea. The crew cooked freshly caught crab in Masala spices by lamplight, and we pulled the sweet white flesh from the claws with our teeth, and ate it with curried potato and fried naan.

On the way back some firing had broken out on a bridge, so we formed a hushed convoy, apart from logistical phone calls, and traced an alternative route into the city via the tire-furrowed lines of a military route.