It is a known fact that it is man’s nature to be blissfully ignorant and yet it is not an easy fault to forgive.
One of the very first questions I would get asked in Karachi, Pakistan, was: “Are there no universities in Kenya?” and it was by far an easier question to answer than “Do you know my friend so and so from Tanzania?”
Sometime in 2022, my Uber driver, who was far too chatty for my liking, let on that he’d heard about Kenya and this intrigued me: It was a rarity finding Pakistanis who knew about Kenya except for the awfully religious ones that had made their way there for tabligh – a noble bid to spread the Islamic message to the masses.
They would often talk to us in singular words like sima, matatu and usiku – this to them indubitable proof of their mastery of the Swahili language.
The driver mentioned that he loved Kenya because it was a jungle and wished Pakistan had as much wildlife as we did.
I agreed with him and added that it was the best thing about Kenya.
We shared a minute or two of comfortable silence before he animatedly shouted saying, “Look madam, a cow. I know you people only get to see lions and elephants on the streets.”
Earlier that morning, a cousin I had just reconnected with asked me if Karachi had birds. In ungrudging admission of our shared ignorance, I laughed it off.
To talk about Karachi then is to talk about this infuriating carelessness about each other’s way of life.
It is to talk about the long summer days that were relentless in their torture and the short winter ones that never lasted as long as I wanted them to.
It is to talk about the first time I landed, young and afraid, and how almost immediately I could tell there was a little less air than I was used to.
It is to recount my first class and a handful others where I could not recognize the English language I had long acquainted myself with because the tongues were new.
It is to recount the way words would recklessly slip out of me in all the languages I knew: English, French, Borana, Swahili and a desperate amalgam of them all that begged to be understood by a people I could not understand.
It is to talk about the constant stares that weren’t as discriminatory as they were curious – “Can I take a picture with you?”
I never let them.
It was not easy adjusting to this newness and it should, therefore, come as no surprise that for the first year in Karachi, I wanted nothing more than to leave.
I have always believed in the fact that no good thing comes easy and as such, I wear all my struggles with pride. Karachi, however, was not a struggle I envisioned myself facing.
I was miserable; every new day was tainted with the dull memory of the previous one and the dumb hope that I would find a way out of there before it was too late.
Having gotten to the other side, I realize it was not so much the place that brought such anguish upon me but the fact that I had written it off without giving it a chance. It was only when I accepted my fate that life started looking up for me.
I made new friends, an idea I was previously opposed to because I thought I would not stay long enough for them to matter.
With some, we bonded over similar taste in movies and others over love for literature and art.
Some were just really kind neighbours that would often invite me over for tea and snacks although admittedly, I would always decline the tea because they prepared it with salt.
I shudder to think of what it would taste like; I was too much of a coward to ever find out.
People say that home is more of a feeling than a place and Karachi, in all aspects physical and otherwise, soon turned into a home I truly felt part of as Kenya receded to a quiet corner of my memory.
In November of 2020, after being home for seven months thanks to Covid-19, I travelled back to Karachi, where I’d proceed to spend the next two years without seeing my family.
Until then, I had only known an almost gentle but transient loneliness. It was easy to bear.
During those last two years, I suffered a loneliness so grand I felt almost incorporeal.
I once sent a text to one of my close friends saying, “I do not feel real. It feels as though I could disappear without a trace and nobody would notice.”
Even now, I do not know exactly what I meant. Only that I had convinced myself that I would return home to vicious unfamiliarity.
I would go on to suffer a series of depressive episodes, panic attacks, inexplicable anger and insomnia. Karachi became an affliction that would slowly heal its own self.
It was during the hardest moments of my time there that I learnt to allow myself to lean on the people around me.
I learnt to be patient and to steady myself upon my religion because it became clear that it was the only thing that would not give way from beneath me.
It was then that I met kindness through strangers that went out of their way to make me feel at home, seen; to make me feel real.
By the time I was coming back to Kenya, I was not the same person I was five years prior.
I was more grounded, more confident, kinder, more trusting, more hopeful. I was more of everything I had always needed to become and I understand now why it had to be Karachi and nowhere else.
It was the hurt and everything it took to get over it but it was also the ghost stories, the 2am escapades, the coffee on rooftops, the sunsets by the sea, the movie nights, the selfless kindness, the rickshaws and the rickshaw man that chased us into the hostel because we refused to pay more than what we’d agreed upon.
It was the lab classes that only mattered because there was room for banter with my friends, the lecturers, the oddly numerous crows, the fights with old ladies, the late night walks and the guy with the gun that I thought would shoot at us, the kid that touched me inappropriately and the man that asked me to marry him.
It was man the falling down the stairs and up the stairs, the screaming because it rained, the man with a lip tattoo on his neck, the kind lady who welcomed me into her home, the zong cards, the paratas, the pani puri, the friends - God, the incredible friends I made along the way.
According to B.J Neblett, people are a sum total of their experiences. This is true for places too.
Karachi, famously the City of Lights is to me the most profound darkness, adorned wholly with the brightest stars and a moon so full one cannot perceive the absence of the sun.
