An attack on the soul of Karachi

A visit to Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine has always been a source of comfort for many travellers from both near and far. There are those who have grown up seeing it almost every day in its mostly green glory and in recent years in its more psychedelic black and white incarnation with lights flashing on and off in a manic frenzy, not entirely unpleasant. The area surrounding it too is one of revelry, comprised of dhol-wallas, and parrots who tell you your fortune.

Yet I feel slightly uncomfortable making too much of the attack on it. So many bombings take place almost on a daily basis, so what makes one more heinous than the other? For many who live in the affluent Clifton area where the mazar is located, thus far relatively untouched by violence, it felt ‘too close’. The truth is it is always easier to process when the horror takes place far away. Some would say that once evil lands in your backyard, only then you sit up and take notice. The English language press in Pakistan is constantly accused of living in a bubble, and of being comprised of the ‘elite,’ and the privileged, who mostly live in such neighbourhoods – and also perhaps the extent of the coverage given to the attack on the shrine.

However, Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s tomb and shrine is a rare unifier of classes and differing segments of society. Rich and poor alike, religious and irreligious, people from various sects, all converge on it, out of their reverence and love for it. The fact that it is in an upscale area of Karachi is irrelevant. Those, like me, who mourn the attack on it do so because it is the heart and perhaps even the soul of Karachi. It signifies and always has signified joy, devotion and love which we are hard-pressed to find these days on the streets of Karachi or for that matter the streets anywhere in Pakistan.

The disaffected and disenfranchised receive food and shelter here. Pilgrims bring their prayers here, full of hope. In recent years natural disasters have ripped our country asunder, and so the myth that the shrine defends Karachi from the threat of tropical storms and has done so for a thousand years, is not one that is easy to dismiss. In these desperate times, my view is that any protection offered is worth accepting no matter how metaphysical or hard to explain from a purely scientific point of view.

Abdullah Shah Ghazi himself is considered by many to be Karachi’s patron saint. Attempting to blow up the final resting place of a man people consider holy only goes to show the attacker’s hate and bigotry and achieves little else. It also suggests that the people who are involved in such attacks and those who sympathise with them have no respect for humanity whatsoever.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2010.