Osman Samiuddin in Guernica:
This was Captain Akeel’s home, a sprawling bungalow off Sunset Boulevard—the most ambitiously named road in all of Karachi, which, most evenings past midnight, smells like it is rotting because it is on the route through which fish is transported in the port city.
Some years earlier, after his family emigrated to Australia, Captain Akeel knocked down the walls of the entrance hall and adjoining living areas and had the space soundproofed. He wanted to turn his home into a Hard Rock Café, or at the very least a place where he could jam unhindered with his friends. Word got round about the sessions, and they gradually grew into slightly bigger invite-only evenings. He gave it a name: Club 777, after the Boeing 777s he flew.
What Club 777 really was, though, was a simulation of Karachi’s nightlife as it had been in the 60s and 70s. A period celebrated as a cultural heyday of sorts, its absence lamented in countless WhatsApp forwards and Facebook posts, and through occasional features and documentaries. You’re probably familiar with the tone accompanying these, of gentle incredulity and deep sighs: photos of (gasp) Karachiites drinking alcohol in bars, women in (OMG!) short skirts, hippies in hostels (wow) smoking weed; look, look at how we used to be, how we were so not what we are now.
More here.
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