Stirring Point

*The following is a snippet from a memoir I’m writing. It reflects on a scene that took place in Karachi, Pakistan, while meeting a new friend. Next week’s essay will complete the piece.*

It was a late night in Karachi and the air was thick with mischief. I’d come to the city with a friend from Islamabad, hoping to cobble together a clearer picture of Pakistan. America fed me stories of nuclear threats with India, Daniel Pearl’s murder and Bin Laden’s hidden compound. These, of course, were terrifying historical watermarks, but I wanted first-hand interactions. This was a nation the U.S. viewed as a regional ally, albeit with endless suspicion. I needed to sit face-to-face with its people and patch together a view I could trust.

Karachi is dangerous: Seriously dangerous. Criminals on motorbikes haunt pedestrians by pulling up and robbing them at gunpoint. Resisting stickups results in hundreds of injuries and deaths each year. This happens around the clock, but at night—when darkness falls and power outages strike—the jackals begin their prowl. Locals refuse to walk more than a few blocks, instead opting for taxis to avoid being targets. If you’re a visitor to the city, Karachiites will implore you to do the same.

I was sitting in the dank apartment of a local filmmaker when I’d caught a contact high. As we spoke, he puffed spliff after spliff of strong Afghani hash, hotboxing the room in a swirling haze. The sidestream smoke and billow from his lungs eventually found my chest, my bloodstream and brain. The hash yanked me from reality and plunged me into an altered state. For a moment, I’d burst wide-eyed through the surface, lucid and alert, following along with his story. Then, like a child searching for the siloutte of their parent in a crowd, he’d turn a corner and I’d lose him. I was lost; I was high.

I sat in a squat chair to the left of the bed, leaning heavily against a weathered armrest. We munched on fig and goat cheese pizza he’d ordered while my fingers picked at a patch of the chair’s loose threading. Yellow light spilled from a bulb overhead and gave the room the feel of a flophouse. Pakistani rock music blared from an old laptop while ashtrays sat piled high with debris. We took turns sharing our backgrounds. Me: traveler and aspiring writer from the Poconos, where the harmony of the woods defined my childhood. He: filmmaker and artist from the Swat Valley, a mountainous region at the base of the Hindu Kush, where jagged peaks and fields of wildflowers defined his.

He’d come to Karachi, the seat of Pakistan’s film industry, to work on documentary features. He asked why I’d come to the city. “Jiu Jitsu, culture—the fusion of the two,” I told him. I wanted to hear the voices of Pakistanis from every corner of the country. The words felt silly spilling from my mouth. Had my life become this niche? The hash asked me to step back and clear the air, which seemed more like a reframing for me than for him. “I love travel, I need it, and jiu jitsu fast-tracks me to a community of people.”

“I love that, man,” he said. “Seeing the world through your own eyes.”

I was desperate to visit Peshawar, I told him, then head north to Swat to hike the surrounding hills. But I hesitated to go as the safety reports were mixed. In a few days, I’d head to Hunza instead, following the Karakorum as far as the Chinese border. I understood the Swat Valley was no longer under Taliban control, but traveling there alone was risky and I had problems with trust. I’d been on the road long enough, and I’d seen too many watchful eyes, peering eyes, burrowed their way into my doings. Not all strangers are nefarious, but when my gut told me so, I followed it. For Swat, I felt ill-prepared to calculate the risks.

“No risks, no problem. None whatsoever. You’ll love Hunza. But you have to go to Swat. My family lives there; my friends live there; it’s my home. I own land; I’ll take you.”

“What about military control? Will the checkpoints give me an issue?” I asked.

“Not to Swat. North of the valley can be an issue, but we’ll cover you up, put you in the trunk, or dress you like a local.” We laughed for a moment before he interrupted. “No, I’m not kidding. You can be my mute cousin or some bullshit. We’ve dealt with the military for years. There are always ways around. You must see the valley and beyond. You’ll be my guest.”