Kaos in K-Town

I've just spent the past week in Karachi, which makes Sana'a look like an orderly paradise. The only word I could think to describe it is chaotic. There are people, children, animals, cars everywhere and no rules to keep them all straight. 

Even if there is a rule, no one pays any attention. Like boarding the plane at the airport: the announcement said "we are boarding business class and families with children" and everyone rushed forward. Instead of sending them back to wait, the airline staff started collecting boarding cards, so off we all went, business class be damned!

The photo above shows two buses so close to each other a piece of paper would barely fit between them. This is pretty normal and par for the course there -- only an idiot like me would notice and even bother to take a photo.

The nerve centre of the chaos appears to be my great-aunt's house. She has several people who help her in the house, which is also pretty normal over there. But on my first day there, I saw way more people than I remembered from my last trip. 

One guy comes twice a week to dust furniture. But he doesn't do windows, so another boy comes two or three times a week to do that. He is also supposed to pick up some stuff in the garden, but he doesn't, so another guy comes to do that. Something breaks every single day and a new handyman is called to fix each device. No one ever comes alone, so at any given moment there seem to be about two dozen random people wandering the house. Meanwhile, the front door is ringing, back gate is buzzing, both phones are ringing and no one answers till the 10th ring, great-aunt Dee calls out to the cook to send the driver so he can call the gardener... chaos.

Chatting with the immigration officer at JFK this morning, he asked how things are in Pakistan and I tried to explain the lack of order and the people running everywhere. 

"Sounds like Manhattan," he said.

Perhaps!