Home.

Home is an interesting word, don’t you think? When I was a little girl, its shapes and rhythms reminded me of houses. The stereotypical family house, the one in storybooks. You know the one I mean. Of course you do. The house with the white picket fence, the green green grass and the sloping roof with burnt orange tiles. The word Home to me always looked like that house, that white white picket fence and those orange tiles popped up in my mind whenever I read or wrote the word. Then my life changed.

I grew up in Redmond, Washington. The home of Microsoft (my father worked for them) and Boeing, of Nirvana and Starbucks. I remember only moments from Redmond. I remember an apartment complex and the walk to my school, I remember wearing heels in the rain and walking over the bridge to my school. I remember my Dad’s red car and the days when the heater was broken and those five minutes from our building to school were so cold. What I do remember about that time was the summer. As soon as school was out, we would leave for Karachi (Pakistan) and my mother, my sister and I would spend the summer at my grandparents house. I never thought of Pakistan as home, even though some of my happiest childhood memories are from times spent in the warm cocoon of Karachi surrounded by love, food, cats, and color. I never thought of it as home even as I grew older and began to understand more. Then when I was about 12 or 13, and living in Istanbul, Turkey,  – I can never remember my age with regards to places, I always remember where I lived at that time or where I went to school – a summer vacation from Istanbul turned into a permanent move to Karachi. To a foreign, dirty, conservative, and alien country where I never felt like I had belonged.

I cried. And wept and sorrowed for the life I had lost, the cozy apartment I had left and the, comparatively, privileged life I had had to leave behind. My father left his job at Microsoft and started his own company, and as many people know when starting new companies, for the first few years all your money is funneled into a black hole. I hated Karachi with a passion. I hated the school I had to attend on short notice, the uniform I had to wear, and the mockery I had to face for my accent which many people dubbed fake. I hated it so much I forget the moment I began to love it. I learnt many things while I lived in Karachi. I learnt happy things, difficult things, painful things, sad things, and beautiful things. But most of all, I learnt what home meant. I learnt that home, for me, was going to be always intrinsically intertwined with that place in my mind.

Not many people know this, but Karachi is known as the City of Lights. It is the city that never sleeps, our days begin at 11am and end at 3am. Karachi is like the ocean. We whisper at the edges, always a little afraid of falling in love with it, to drown in its dirt and filth and… and… and chaos and hatred and shaadi’s (weddings) and mehndi’s (dance functions associated with weddings) and prohibition and illegal alcohol and that brisk winter air filled with salt and love and old memories. Loving Karachi is like drowning yourself knowing that you can’t climb out, that you cannot escape because no matter how much you don’t want to love it, you end up drowning in her anyway. But. somehow, somewhere. Slowly and suddenly and forever and all at once I realized it ran in my veins you know? That that dirt and filth and chaos and sadness and dancing lights and happy memories and dark nights and that sky seeped into my skin and bonded with my cells, it became a part of me. Karachi taught me about life, and understanding that sometimes the little happinesses are enough, that life is short and fleeting and home is love.

Home is not that white picket fence and that sloping roof house. Home is not that perfect “normal” western family unit, nor is it the image portrayed of stereotypical India. Home is Karachi, where bad things happen, awful terrible destructive things. Home is where we learn that good things happen too, that on a bad day you can always call your friends and family and find an ice cream shop near the beach or fried chicken in the cool Karachi air. Home is the city that never sleeps. Home is understanding and accepting the future while simultaneously respecting and honoring the past. Home is bright colorful weddings with traditional clothes and modern thoughts. Home is being able to choose to have an arranged marriage, or a love marriage, or simple running away with someone. Home is a family that loves you and makes mistakes. Home is a city that is complex and simple all at once.

Home is not just a single place or a single person. Home is an ever evolving organism, shifting and changing as you grow older and fall in love with people, places, and moments. For that little girl, home is and always will be the city that taught her to love and hate and feel.

This story was partly inspired by this quote from Kamila Shamsie’s novel, Kartography:

“And yet. When I read the Dawn on line and then looked around me to the pristine surroundings of campus life, I knew that every other city in the world only showed me its surface, but when I looked at Karachi I saw the blood running through and out of its veins; I knew that I understood the unspoken as much as the articulated among its inhabitants; I knew that there were so many reasons to fail to love it, to cease to love it, to be unable to love it, that it made love a fierce and unfathomable thing; I knew I couldn’t think of Karachi and find any easy answers, and I didn’t know how to decide if that was reason to go back or reason to stay away.”

The following is an example of a typical Karachi wedding (not of people I know specifically, but an authentic example nonetheless):