“Why is your hair so oily?!”, said my new khalah, during our trip to the beach.
That night, another khalah storms into the room, furious that I’d quietly paid for our salon session earlier. “That is not the Pakistani way!”
That’s when I knew that I’d been accepted. Family isn’t always blood, to quote Maya Angelou.
There was a stark contrast between my shiny new traditional dress and disheveled head. Khalah is an Urdu title for aunt, and this particular khalah‘s family had taken me in for a baptism of Karachi for five days this month. A pretty good sequel to my chaotic week in Nepal.
May scorches, and so we tend to hide in the comforts of the AC as much as possible.
Three times a day, we feast on increasingly pleasurable delicacies. Aloo ghosh, seekh kebab, biryani, kachori, karahi… A third khalah asks how my stomach is handling all this new food, and they seem delighted that I have held out so far. She giggles, and plays pranks on me throughout the day.
The family reminisces about history, and also of a particularly memorable set of missile strikes in 1971. Fuel reserve tanks are lucrative targets in a war, so once one was struck and started to burn, everyone and their pet quickly relocated.
We visit the home of a friend in the slum area downtown; they had built their house with their own hands. The daughter is a proud B.A. graduate, a teacher at a prestigious grammar school. She runs a low cost tuition centre for her community, and right now, every child is politely sitting through their interrupted study session to entertain their unexpected guests. A goat nibbles on my friend’s hand, and we share some ice cream with the gang.
The tiniest kid in the room puts on the most serious face. I couldn’t believe someone so small could look so solemn.
“She only pays 300 rupees (€1) a month, but she still comes here every day for tuition!”, the teacher jokes. Families of students pay whatever they can. Their eldest client is 70 years old.
I sit here typing this on the plane as I depart the country. There is a confusing and secretive skirmish in Kashmir that didn’t let me leave yesterday. No one in the house was particularly worried about potential escalation into war proper, anyway in the worst case they’ll just stay in the basement for a few hours, like they did in the 60s and 70s.
I am starting to get ill from AC use; a soft, scared westerner amongst one of the toughest people in the world.
Anyway, back to the ocean. We’d rented a hut amongst a consortium of cabins built right by the water’s edge, sand banks forming between dozens of concrete structures lining the long coastline. It was so lovely to see the water again.
Unfortunately, public trash collection is not yet a priority of the local council. We enter a beach proper, and I sit on a rock and get acquainted with some inanimate friends, while the others go for a chaotic swim.
This was by far one of my favourite beach days in a long time. People are awesome 😊
A fly darts into my unfortunate oseophagus, and it’s surprising that my immune system had survived this, but not the AC.
I wash it down with some more scrumptious aloo ghosh. I do a quick MRI in our local hospital at midnight. My knee is wrecked, but that’s okay.
The airport opened prematurely and I’d left in a hurry moments later, €900 poorer for it. I don’t know anything and wish that I didn’t go.
Five days is not nearly enough, and I’m left wondering what I would do if I only had 300 rupees to spare.
Last Modified 8 November, 2025
