Frere Hall’s doors open with a gust of nostalgia

Photographs, puzzles and vintage maps fill the hall.

KARACHI:

Footsteps echoed off the creaking wooden floors as the recently reopened Sadequain Gallery hosted an exhibition for the first time in nearly five years since a bomb outside the US consulate. ‘Dekho Pakistan’ is the brainchild of The Citizen’s Archive of Pakistan (CAP) that wants to re-teach the country’s history with greater accuracy.

Curator Sophia Balagam said that the event was part of the Hamara Karachi Festival. “So often Karachi becomes a place where so many communities are marginalised. This is about giving the image that it is a very accepting city.”

Children capered around the ‘Cityscape’, a large map of the city, a ‘Cube Game’ about the armed forces, and ‘On Caps, by CAP’ an empty frame behind which people could be photographed wearing different cultural hats.

Recordings from the Oral History Project played. In OHP, CAP tracked down people who had experienced Partition to record their experiences. “I met Quaid-e-Azam and in 1991,” said Siraj Ahmed, 80. “I proposed that all currency be of common value!”

‘Jinnah - The Man Behind The Portrait’ showcased the “hidden quirks and personality” of our enigmatic founder as well as moving pictures of his funeral procession. ‘Karachi: The Paris of the East’ were reflections of entertainment in Karachi in the 1950s.

At the end there was a model of refugee camps in the city and a board pinned with survivors’ quotes. One by Rabia Begum, 74, read, “We slept under a truck for months in a refugee camp. When we finally reached our relatives in Lahore, my aunt chopped off all my hair because it was so dirty.”

“We felt putting up an exhibition about Partition, focused mainly on Karachi was a good way to re-open the hall,” said CAP’s Adnan Ahmed. “The aim is to re-tell some of the untold history that doesn’t come to the foreground.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 9^th, 2011.