#Karachi Street Night View

[molkolsdal]

Pakistan's Transgender Community Is Hiding Out in a Hostile City

As Peshawar has come under increasing sway of an extremist view of Islam, its community of transgender hijras has been increasingly marginalized.

By Beenish Ahmed, 16/05/2014 Photos by Abdul Majeed Goraya

"My father used to beat me and ask, 'Why do you have to go around pretending to be a girl?'"

Now at 35, she says her cheeks burn and fists tighten if anyone refers to her as a man.

Khushboo, whose name means fragrance, classifies herself as a hijra, a South Asian gender designation that encompasses transgender and transexual people, as well as transvestites and eunuchs.

She has a different definition for herself and the estimated hundreds of thousands of other hijras across the region. "Our souls are female and our bodies are male," she says, dipping a rag into a red plastic pail filled with a chalky mixture of water and face powder. Surrounded by a group of several other hijras in a room they call their "office," Khushboo smears the dripping rag over her face and adds, "I've known I was a hijra since I was a child."

She used to wear her sisters' clothes. At 16, Khushboo slipped out of the house in one of their outfits and didn't return home for years. Along with another hijra, she settled in Peshawar, a city in northwestern Pakistan one night's drive from the costal city of Karachi where she'd grown up.

Peshawar has long been home to cultural traditions that insist on strict gender segregation, and the city has come under increasing sway of an extremist view of Islam in recent years. These intolerant, conservative beliefs are made brutally clear through the bombings and shootings that are now near-weekly occurrences. Taliban suicide bombers killed 85 worshippers at a church there last September, and militants killed thirteen people at a cinema showing pornographic movies in February. Lesser attacks are momentary blips on local news coverage featuring bloodied streets and blaring sirens.

Khushboo points to battered doors and broken windows around her. She says young men—"college boys" she calls them—wreak havoc on her and fellow hijras who are preparing for a dance performance later that night. Sometimes the men recite scripture and beat the hijras to shame them out of their profession as dancers, and other times they force them to dance or even rape them, she tells me.

Despite the extremism that has only further marred the city since her arrival nearly 20 years ago, Khushboo has an affinity for Peshawar because it's where she had a sort of rebirth as her new self.

Free from the abuse of her father and brothers, as well as the sense of dishonor she felt on behalf of her mother and sisters, Khushboo embraced a new life of openness—and was adopted into a new family.

"In this field we have mothers. We have gurus. We have uncles and aunts," she says, and then points to a girl who's rolling a spliff in the corner of the room. "She's my daughter. I'm a daughter of someone so she has a grandmother too. And," Khushboo adds, "She also has a father."

That last bit comes so quickly that I almost miss it. I inquire further about the girl's "papa" and Khushboo says, "Her father is married to someone else, but he loves me." She then goes on to explain what their relationship entails—and it's all very practical until it gets utterly tragic: "If I'm sick, he comes by and brings me medicine," she says proudly. "If I don't have money he drops some cash off. If I die, it's this man who will dress me up as a man and take my body to his house to carry out the cemetery. He might not explain the full story and just say that I was killed in the market or that there was some kind of shooting, but he's the one who will take care of the funeral."

I can't help but think that this grim possibility is one that Khushboo has discussed with her "husband"—and one that he too has come to terms with.

"In Pakistani society, there is a really strong [sense of] place and family," says Dr. Jamil Ahmad Chitrali, a professor of anthropology. "There is no alternative for anyone."

Based at the University of Peshawar, Chitrali has written about the city's hijra community. He says that by forging the same sorts of familial connections that they left behind, hijras create a social order that mimics the very society from which many of them fled.

"It's forcing all those revolutionary individuals who are against those binaries of man and woman to come into a structure which is reaffirming patriarchy," he says.

Pakistan's hijras have made some strides in recent years despite their rather isolated existence. In 2012, the Pakistani Supreme Court allowed for a "third gender" category to be added to national identity cards, which effectively gave hijras increased legal standing. It's because of this broader recognition that hijras could vote in that year's presidential election—at least five hijras even ran for office.

But the third gender classification has made little practical difference in Khusbhoo's life. "We live in a third world," she says, the difference between her life and that of a cisgender person just as stark as the difference between life in Pakistan, and say, Monaco.

And, she says, no matter what she does, she'll always be seen as different.

"Even if I give up dancing, everyone will still call me a hijra so what's the point? Why not do what I love?" She adds that even if she were to become a traveling evangelist, her family would still regard her with the same disdain. "I'm better off staying a hijra."

And that's the hardest thing that Khushboo has to face: her family. She got back in touch with them after five years of not speaking, and goes to see them in Karachi at least once a year. But when she does, she goes dressed as a man.

Though she moves about as a woman in Peshawar, Khushboo wears a black floor length, full-sleeved robe (or abaya), and a face covering (or niqab) that reveals only her eyes to hide herself from prying eyes. Even so, she's been thrown out of several houses by people who fear hijras will ruin their neighborhood.

While they occupy a marginalized space across Pakistan, hijras are probably worst off in Peshawar. In all of the other major cities in the country, they are frequent sites at traffic intersections or in shopping centers where they offer a prayer for a few rupees. Many passersby fear denying them might mean a curse and so will either oblige quickly or turn away completely.

I've spent a lot of time in Peshawar over the years, and have never seen hijras out in public the way they are in other cities. After speaking with Professor Chitrali, I learned that might be because hijras have a different role in the Pathan society that dominates the Peshawar area. In this part of the country, hijras aren't seen to have some sort of greater spiritual connection than cisgender people—instead, their role is celebratory. They're often asked to sing and dance at weddings and births.

"It's their performance which gives [a family] social recognition," Chitrali says, though the tradition is fading as weddings move from family houses into wedding halls. Some might have other professions—Khushboo says she has hijra friends who are lawyers and pilots and act cisgender in order to maintain their jobs, though they're free to "be themselves" with her and other hijras. Due to a lack of societal acceptance, many hijras live marginalized lives as low-income entertainers, but they've got a bit of a role as educators, too. Hijras sometimes teach—or even initiate—young men into sex. For many in Peshawar who live by strict religious and cultural codes that denounce almost any pre-marital interaction between the sexes as sinful, hijras provide a sort of in-between, or a "cushion," as Chitrali calls it.

"If you cross the domain of manhood into womanhood, that is against the culture, that is crossing your limits. But you can always move into the gray area, so this hijra community, in that sense, in a clear binary of man and woman among Pathans, [forms] a gray area." But he says that this "learning experience" is becoming less common with such how-to's readily available on the internet.

In Peshawar's increasingly religiously-motivated milieu, the presence of hijras—be they dancers or sex workers—is frowned upon and politicians vie for favor by pushing them out of their homes and worksites.

Seeing this, Malik Iqbal says he wanted to do something. "I sympathize with them because no one gives them any space," he tells me.

He rents out the office that Khusboo and her fellow hijras use to prepare for their dances.

"I didn't used to be on their side," Iqbal says. "Now I help them. I say they're humans too. We should have some empathy for that reason. Not just me, everyone should empathize with them as people."

But some believe Iqbal's connection to hijras goes beyond a shared humanity. Though he refuses to speak about it, Iqbal was arrested in 2010 for attempting to marry a hijra called Rani. Such a union would be illegal under Pakistani law, which only recognizes marriages between men and women. He has repeatedly denied the charge and claimed that police were trying to extort money from hijras at an event that wasn't a marriage but an innocent birthday party. Either way, the shock the story garnered reveals just how far removed everyday Pakistanis are from the hijra community. A big-grossing film called Bol, or Speak—released in 2011—may have helped some, but real connections like Iqbal's remain few.

And not everyone in close proximity to hirjas is sympathetic. Noor Illahi, who owns a grain shop down the street from the hijras' office, doesn't have a problem with the hijras themselves or even their work, but thinks they should find some other place to go. "My work has suffered because of them. The other storeowners and I, we think they should be given some place off to the side. It should be separate."

He's worked in his store for 15 years and says that sales have dropped fifty percent since the hijras set up shop next door a few years ago. "There are a lot of fights here now. They create quite a scene sometimes."

The raucousness has driven away his customers. Those who stop in the area are more interested in the hijras than the sacks of flour he has for sale.

"I'm not personally offended by them. But look," he says, pointing to a group of several white shalwar kameez-clad men loitering outside the hijra's building. "These poor people have earned just three or four hundred rupees all day ($3-4) and they'll come here and waste it all on them."

The men are all rickshaw drivers. One by one, they go on the record to deny being there to solicit sex. "We're just here to chit chat with them," one says while peering over his shoulder to see if any of the hijras have come out into the alley. "It's a totally innocent relationship that we have with them."

Back up in the hijras' office, the lights have gone out as a part of the rolling power outages that have frustrated Pakistanis for years. It might be another hour before they're ready to leave for their performance. When they do, they'll be cloaked in massive shawls and under the cover of night.

[h-o-ney-blog]

Hidden Nightclubs and Bars in Karachi

Karachi is quite an enormous city, being the largest city in Pakistan and despite this, it has a poorer nightlife when compared to most small towns which are in Europe. Here, it is quite hard for one to find nightclubs. Also, there are no public bars which do serve alcohol, and the sale of alcohol has been quite highly restricted. The Pakistanis will confess that behind the closed doors, there are quite very many secret parties and the underground clubs but I wasn’t connected enough to find out if this is true or even not.

If you are among the expat, who is living in Pakistan or even if you have a high-level local friend, still you might not access those. Even if you do, you can go on and share the experience which you will have. The easiest way to be able to drink alcohol is to ensure that you choose a hotel which has a bar that is licensed to be able to sell alcohol. Only very limited are allowed to sell alcohol.

Alcohol Limit

Non-Muslims in Pakistan are only allowed to buy up to a maximum amount of alcohol every month. This is about 3% of the population or even 6 million people. You can be surprised to know that one of the local alcohol manufacturers is among the most successful that you will ever find. This is Murree Brewery. Legal and the black-market spirit shops which are quite common in Karachi, and this is especially among affluent neighborhoods of Defence and Clifton. Many of these can sell to Muslim without necessary asking for an ID.

Enjoy a night out in Karachi

Karachi provides a very amazing nightlife where you have a lot of things that you can engage in. This City has a wide selection of bars, clubs, and cafes so whatever the venue you want, you can rest assured that it is available. If you are keen, you will note that these spots have continued to increase with each day. The hotspots have continued to sprout up all over a city, and it provides a very vibrant nightlife to the visitors. You can drop in any popular club in the city to find Call Girls in karachi and then you can enjoy very tasty, local snacks as well as some classy cocktails in a very comfortable and a relaxed ambiance. Some of these clubs are quite famous for the atmosphere where you can be able to unwind and also enjoy drinks and music getting to be played in the background.

Interestingly, most of the hidden nightclubs and bars where Karachi escorts usually be available are situated in Clifton and the Sea View areas of this city. Get to watch a beautiful fountain which has been constructed in front of the Clifton beach, the fountain has been well decorated with the powerful lights, and they can be watched from any part of the beach.

Timings

During winter, many of the shops in some of the areas get to remain open until midnight. You will notice that there many nightclubs and bars that operate in Karachi. They range from Huqa Pani Café that is situated in Clifton to the DJ Means Disc Jockey to the Party Club located at Karachi. Others include Playboy, Oasis, Club 007, Samar and Nightlife in Karachi appeal among many others. Elbow Room Lounge which is located in Mumtaz Hussain Street offers cocktails to the customers.

Karachi has witnessed a new generation that is willing to review the partying traditions. This is the main reason we have seen investors investing in the renovation of most hidden bars and nightclubs to ensure that they meet the best standards possible. Many of these nightclubs have gone on and recruited resident DJ as well as live bands.

[adventuroustiming-blog]

HANGOUT PLACES IN KARACHI

The city Karachi of Pakistan is called the city of lights. Among all the hustle bustle of the people, Karachi still has the raw touch of the golden history in the background. However, if you are in Karachi and have a day of, you are surely in dire need of a place where you can hang out with call girls in karachi, right? Well, let us help you out a little here. Have a look.

6 PLACES TO HANG OUT IN KARACHI

1. Dolmen Mall

Undoubtedly, Dolmen mall is one of the famous hang out places in Karachi. Among all the other malls of Karachi, this mall is the biggest one with variety of shops. It has a giant food court as well where you can easily satisfy the tantrums of your taste buds. And if you are up to some game night, the ‘Sindbad’ in the mall is the best place to go for.

2. Port Grand

Port Grand in Karachi is another hang out place that everyone loves to visit. This lakeside view place has numerous food stalls waiting for you. You can sit there and have a little chat with your friends without any interruptions. This place showcases fire dance and also plays live music as well.

3. Nueplex

Are you feeling for a little movie? If so, Nueplex of Karachi is the best-suited place for you. Not only that this place will give you the ultimate cinematic experience but it will also give you a thrilling free fall ride as well. You can watch any movie in here. And if you are feeling a little hungry after the movies, you can have a great meal at any of the restaurants of this mall without any worries.

4. Boat Basin

If you need an early morning breakfast hangout place, Boat basin place will give you a warm hug. Filled with street food stalls, this place in the best hangout place in Karachi! You will get authentic Pakistani food in here and also, you can take in the fresh morning air and chat your heart out with your friends.

5. Pi Social

If you are in search of a hangout place with little game room on, Pi Social is there for you. Along with offering food and beverages, this place has set up different board games as well to set your mood up for the best. You can get together with your buddies without any worries and have a little drink and play game.

6. Scream

And there’s Scream! What can be a better hang out place than an ice-cream joint, right? Also, it is not any normal ice cream; it is the liquid-nitrogen ice cream stall. This place is perfectly decorated for a nice evening with your buddies. Also, the ice creams in this joint are not costly at all.

So, here are the top 6 hang out places in Karachi where you can reunite with your buddies and have a great evening. So, just go out and have a blast!  

[fatabassama-daahikan]

karachi snapshots

Riding in the back of a rickshaw, a dozen people packed into space for six. Cotton shawls lining laps, work-weary arms encircling bundled babies, fine strands of hair sticking to backs of sweat-soaked necks. A picture-perfect view of dirt roads; of dust billowing from wheels and exhausts; of a once-blue sky painted over with the charcoal of industry; of pedestrians and motorcyclists, cars and buses dancing to the heartbeat of the city. Sunburnt shopkeepers, dust-kissed schoolchildren, harrowed housewives and husbands all scuttling through the streets like scattering bracelet beads, unaware that they, too, step in time to the city’s hypnotic thrum. Engines revving, voices shouting, the zuhr adhan trilling from the heavens--the tune on top of the drumbeat, chaotic and confusing.

Karachi, the city of bumping shoulders and streetside arguments, of pigeons strutting along power lines and spice-scented smog. A city where too many things happen at once, where too many voices overlap, where too many cars pack not enough roads, where disorder is law and chaos reigns supreme. Karachi, a city of gunfire and carjacking, of heart attacks and sour medicine, of trash on beaches and corrupt politicians. A city of hugs and cheek-kisses, of joyous clamoring around dinner tables, of late-night conversations with cups of chai in hand.

It’s not luxurious, it’s not pretty, but it’s my home.

[theeurasianpost]

One killed, seven hurt in Karachi blast

One killed, seven hurt in Karachi blast

Karachi blast. Photo: Twitter/RadioPakistan KARACHI: A young man was killed and seven others wounded in a bomb blast at one of Karachi’s busiest streets in the Saddar area on Thursday night. This was the second major terrorist activity in the city within a three-week period. Earlier, on April 26, four persons, including three Chinese teachers, were killed in a suicide attack at the University of…

[idasolonline]

Watch: Minal Khan turns reporter for Ahsan Mohsin Ikram during night out in Karachi

Watch: Minal Khan turns reporter for Ahsan Mohsin Ikram during night out in Karachi

Watch: Minal Khan turns reporter for Ahsan Mohsin Ikram during night out in Karachi Lovebirds Minal Khan and Ahsan Mohsin Ikram are hitting the streets of Karachi. Turning to her Instagram on Friday, the 22-year-old diva gave fans a glimpse into her ride with husband Ahsan. “Cameraman Minal khan k sath Ahsan ikram from Karachi,” captioned Minal alongside the clip featuring Ahsan speeding up on…

[lavishinterior935]

This is how we dressed this window by the bay. Day & Night curtain allows full view over a stretch of palm tree 🌴 and pool 🏊‍♀️ Lavishinterior +92346-0334421 Shop No.1,Plot, 11-C 35th Street, Tauheed Commercial Area Defence Housing Authority Phase V, Karachi City, Sindh #Curtains#Blinds#wooden#floorings #Sofa#fabrics#ceiling#carpets #Lavishinterior (at Lavish Interior) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVrumtGIlMl/?utm_medium=tumblr

[canaryrecords]

An unfinished obit for Leo Sarkisian (January 4, 1921 – June 8, 2018): Leo Sarkisian arrived home from World War II as a man in his mid-20s with nine battle stars including a bronze star “for meritorious service” and initiative, energy, and perseverance. He had volunteered straight out of art school in September, 1942 and for a year a half had been a topographical cartographer for the U.S., stationed in Algeria as part of Engineer Intelligence Services. Because he had been tasked with studying overhead photographs of German bases in Salerno, he was sent in with the Commandos in Italy because he knew the lay of the land. He walked in with the assault. A third of the U.S. force died. He had seen that – friends his age. The war over, Sarkisian lived first with his uncle, a dry cleaner, in New York City on 8th Avenue near 24th Street. His uncle got him a job as an illustrator – magazines and books – during the day. Lots of Armenians were engravers and illustrators. At night, he went out and listened to music and drank and blew his wages in jazz clubs in the Village listening to Artie Shaw, Lionel Hampton, and Vido Musso, Benny Goodman’s Italian tenor saxophonist. Leo had always been a clarinetist himself and played jazz. Then there were the “oriental” clubs up and down 8th Ave, where music in Turkish, Greek, and Armenian thrived among the immigrants - The Egyptian Gardens, The Brittania. The music there was close to the music from childhood in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where the older Armenian men played oud, violin, zurna, and dumbek and sang Ottoman folk songs in Turkish, listening to Marko Melkon and “Sugar Mary” Vartanian, and Louis Matalon, Sephardic Jew at whose side Leo often sat, watching him play the 72-string dulcimer, the kanun. That was when Leo wasn’t throwing money at the dancers or ordering another drink. And it was like the fleeting, fun nights in Rabat and Casablanca when Leo had heard Arabs playing the same instruments with bellydancers. There was one night when he had been chased off by the French police because the music “stirred up the locals.” There was another when he had a moment of stardom because he, an American G.I., had gotten up and played oud and rocked the house. A bellydancer had wrapped her arms around him because played a song he knew from back in Lawrence. The nightclubs in New York were for the weekends. Weeknights were all in the New York Public Library. Four nights a week, Leo read anything about music from Asia and Africa. There he saw patterns of expansion of instruments and ideas. The kanun and its scales travel from here to there. One instrument travels to another place. A local instrument replaces it, but the idea of how it’s played remains. There is a connection from the Ottoman Empire to the Arab world. Then, Africa to India and China… There is a deep musical connection among all of these people, including a boy from Lawrence, Massachusetts who feel compelled under the city’s lights to understand how his own feeling of music connects so many other people. “I don’t know why,” he told me in 2014, when he was 94 years old. “I’m reading, reading all this stuff. There was something in me that I had that feeling that whoever wrote those books didn’t really have that feeling… Even if someone does get a degree in music and stuff like that, there’s something between – under – inside of you. They can’t get that.” Leo’s father arrived through the port of Boston from Diyarbekir in present-day Turkey in 1901 with the great wave of Armenian immigration following the Hammidean massacres of 1891-96. A quarter of a million Armenians died in that wave of killings, twenty years before more than a million more Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces. That moment coincided with one of the largest waves of emigration to the United States that the country ever saw with Christians and Jews from Eastern and Southern Europe flowing in to just the port of New York, never mind Boston, San Francisco, or anywhere else, at a rate of 1,000 souls a day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade. Most of them came from Eastern and Southern Europe, meaning that most of them were not from the Northern European counties who were the culturally dominant ethnic stock of the U.S. That wave came only about forty years after the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. gave equal protection to all naturalized (male) citizens to the U.S., including the right to vote. The existing Protestant majority of the U.S. took such a dim view of idea that the Catholic and Jewish immigrants might vote that Congress had hearings in which mid-Western eugenicist authorities argued effectively that the breeding stock of the U.S. would be diluted if a serious change in immigration policy were not implemented. With the 1896 Chinese Exclusion Act as precedent, in 1924, three years after Leo Sarkisian was born and nine years after the genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the Reed-Johnson act set quotas for immigrants by country of origin, based on a complicated set of mathematics aimed at keeping the U.S. ethnically stable and exactly as White as it ever was. 51,227 Germans were allowed to emigrate each year. 54,009 from Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 5,982 from Poland. Only 120 Armenians a year were allowed. Zero from Africa or Asia. Living in a room over beer joint in the Village in 1952, Leo showed a friend of his some notes he’d made on Central Asian music at the library. He’d made some smart connections between the descriptions of one imperialist traveler and other, and when Leo’s friend showed them to Irving B. Fogel of Tempo Records, a friend of Walt Disney’s whom everyone called “Colonel,” Fogel knocked on Leo’s door and asked him to move to Hollywood to work for Tempo. “You’re who I’ve been looking for,” Fogel said. Leo said OK and took with him an Armenian girl who had gone to his same high school in Lawrence but whom he’d met when they were both in the military. Tempo was largely a specialty label offering among the first muzak-type sound programs. After a year of luxury in Hollywood and working with great sound engineers, he worked on the hit record “Sweet Georgia Brown” by Brother Bones and the soundtracks of African Queen, and six Tarzan movies. Fogel decided to send Leo and Mary to record music in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Burma for the label. So, in 1950, still in their late 20s, Leo and Mary went first to Karachi then in Lahore before pushing through the Khyber Pass in a jeep loaded with recording equipment, Budwiser and vodka to Kabul. They were treated as dignitaries, and Tempo released the 10” LP Drums Over Afghanistan from their efforts. That trip was Leo’s phD in listening to people – dignitaries and folks alike – hanging out with them, drinking, talking, digging music, and making friends. There were diplomatic problems with Russians, but nothing he couldn’t handle. On the way back across the subcontinent, he met and recorded Alludin Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, Bismillah Khan. There was a world of master musicians he had access to now for only the reason that he was American and had learned how to travel and to be good guest and cared deeply about music. Leo was learning to be a great ambassador for the U.S. At the same time, he was learning that wherever you go, you meet Armenians. Leo and Mary were greeted on New Year’s Day 1955 at the airport at Dacca, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by a delegation of Armenians who took him to the Armenian church and the cemetery, where they saw graves of Armenians dating to the 15th century. “The big guy looks out for me,” he told laughingly. “Because God is Armenian!” In 1959, Tempo relocated Leo and Mary, then in their late 30s to Ghana and then, about a year later to Guinea with an eye to creating African recordings for the American market. A knock came at their door in 1963 in their home in Conakry, Guinea. Incredibly it was Edward R. Murrow, who had been appointed head of the United States Information Agency by President John F. Kennedy. Leo and Mary invited Murrow in to listen to some of Leo’s recordings, and Murrow offered Leo a job as the Voice of America’s broadcaster for Africa. They were allowed two years to travel the continent to learn before Leo first broadcast Music Time in Africa in 1965 from Liberia where they lived until 1969, when they moved close to Washington D.C. For more than forty years, Leo broadcast African music to Africa and made many trips. He claimed to have visited every country on the continent, and he drew hundreds of faces. The Leo Sarkisian Library at the Voice of America now houses not only his LPs and CDs but also 10,000 reel-to-reel tapes that he made on his travels, including early performances by musicians who later gained recognition, Fela Kuti among them. It is for Music Time in Africa that he will always be remembered, among the pioneers of Western recordists of African music including the Opika brothers, Hugh Tracey, and Willard Rhodes. There were fan clubs through the continent in the 70s and 80s. Bags of letters came thanking him for celebrating what was good about being African. His enthusiasm for the music was obvious. He never referred to anyone’s “band,” always an “orchestra.” In D.C., he continued to play kanun with Armenian bands, playing on a couple of LPs as a talented sideman. His Silver Spring, Maryland home was covered in his paintings of the faces of African women. When Mary’s vision failed, he said, “she took care of me for fifty years. Now, I have to take care of her for fifty years.” He donated his personal collection of instruments to the University of Michigan. The defunding of the VOA under the Obama administration such that he could not travel there as he liked troubled him deeply. He had served the United States under thirteen presidents, every one since Truman, and it pained him when at the age of 91, the oldest federal employee, he stepped down from Music Time in Africa, handing the reins to Heather Maxwell.

[proiqra]

KMC launches night operation against encroachments in Khajoor Bazaar - ARY NEWS - Proiqra

KMC launches night operation against encroachments in Khajoor Bazaar – ARY NEWS – Proiqra

KARACHI: As the anti-encroachment drive by Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) continued into Friday night, the authority cell led a night operation in Khajoor Bazaar of District South, ARY News reported. The Anti-encroachment cell of KMC has reportedly sniffed out and seized all the hidden pushcarts, cabins, and stalls from the streets that are put in violation of land remits. Many…

[khalilhumam]

In Pakistan, women stage nationwide protest in response to shocking rape incident

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/in-pakistan-women-stage-nationwide-protest-in-response-to-shocking-rape-incident/

In Pakistan, women stage nationwide protest in response to shocking rape incident

The protesters also voiced opposition to public hangings

Aurat Azadi (Women's liberation) March at Lahore Liberty Roundabout on September 12, 2020. Screenshot from YouTube video by Ilme Alim. Translation: Why liberal women are against capital punishment?

Pakistani women staged mass demonstrations in the country's major cities on September 12 demanding justice and accountability for sexual violence following a widely-publicized rape incident in the Lahore region. On September 9, a woman who was travelling with her three children from Lahore to Gujranwala (97 km) at night was robbed and raped at gunpoint by three men after her car ran out of petrol in the Lahore-Sialkt Motorway. According to Punjab's police, the newly-opened motorway does not have police patrol. Social media went furious after the capital city police officer (CCPO) of Lahore, Umar Sheikh, blamed the incident on the victim's decision to travel at night during a TV interview. Shortly after, a hashtag demanding the Sheikh's resignation began making the rounds on Twitter, Pakistan's federal minister for human rights, Shireen Mazari condemned the CCPO's declaration:

For an officer to effectively blame a woman for being gang-raped by saying she should have taken the GT Road or question as to why she went out in the night with her children is unacceptable & have taken up this issue. Nothing can ever rationalise the crime of rape. That's it. — Shireen Mazari (@ShireenMazari1) September 10, 2020

Barrister Khadija Siddiqui, who in May 2016 was brutally assaulted by a male classmate in a street in Lahore, also rebuked the CCPO:

Ccpo claiming that in our society women/children arent allowed to go outside after 12:30 am! Who are you to set time limits for us? I was stabbed 23 times in broad daylight! Dont tell us that ‘time’ is directly connected to the commission of offence! #motorwayincident pic.twitter.com/8z9ERuJ3Rc — khadija siddiqi (@khadijasid751) September 10, 2020

A major slogan of the September 12 rallies was “Mera Jism Meri Marzi” (“my body, my choice”). The organizers of Aurat March (Urdu for “Women's March”), who helped organize the protests in different cities, published a charter of demands, which includes opposition to hangings and support for judicial and police reforms to ensure “our bodies are safe and there is accountability for violence.”

Our charter of demands for the protest today at 5 PM liberty roundabout. We oppose public hangings and call for meaningful reform to ensure our bodies are safe and there is accountability for violence.#MeraJismMeriMarzi pic.twitter.com/1lV5QWj03s — ⁧عورت مارچ لاہور⁩ – Aurat March Lahore (@AuratMarch) September 12, 2020

We, as the organizers of the protest that's being held in light of the heinous motorway attack, demand swift justice for all victims of sexual violence BUT we oppose capital punishment & violence begetting violence. Here is our list of demands. #EndRapeCulture #MeraJismMeriMarzi pic.twitter.com/r7m4ca3RC3 — Aurat Azadi March Islamabad (@AuratAzadiMarch) September 11, 2020

We, the organisers of the Mera Jism Meri Marzi protest in Karachi, demand justice, accountability, an end to violence, and structural reform. We demand radical change within our public institutions to ensure that this culture of patriarchal violence and control comes to an end. pic.twitter.com/6fmCIMAc2r — Aurat March – عورت مارچ (@AuratMarchKHI) September 12, 2020

In 2019, 3,881 cases of rape and 1,359 cases of child sexual abuse were registered in Punjab only. According to data by the Punjab police, 2,043 rape cases were registered in the first six months of 2020. The police is investigating the motorway incident. While suspects have been identified, no arrests have been made yet.

Read more: Bengali, Pakistani, and Amazon indigenous women perform ‘The rapist is you’ song

Social media debates capital punishment

Whenever a rape incident gains media attention in Pakistan, people demand that men accused of rape are punished with death. This time was no different, and the hashtag #HangRapistsPublically trended on social media. The women's wing of Jamat e Islami, a religious political party that also organized protests in response to the motorway incident, was among those who tweeted the hashtag.

General Secretary of JI Women Wing, Ms Durdana Siddiqui spoke from the protest today at Khi Press Club. She asked for the Women Protection & demanded to #hangrapistspublicly #تحفظ_فوری_انصاف pic.twitter.com/Sb1dmXrT8u — Jamaat e Islami Karachi (Official) (@KarachiJamaat) September 11, 2020

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also defended hangings in an interview. “They [rapists] should be given exemplary punishments. In my opinion, they should be hanged at the chowk [intersection],” Khan said. The federal cabinet also endorsed the PM's views, while favoring “chemical castration” as punishment in order to protect the country from Western criticism.

I personally think pedophiles & rapists must be hanged publicly but I'm told that we have international repercussions. EU's GSP status for trade with Pakistan will be affected by public hangings. Hence I think chemical castration must be conducted on those criminals #PMIKon92News — PTI (@PTIofficial) September 14, 2020

But others expressed opposition to such punitive measures. Journalist Mehreen Zahra Malik said:

EU’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP-plus) status, granted to Pakistan in 2014, is contingent upon observation of international conventions, such as human rights. Don't think they'll be too happy with #chemicalcastration & public executions. #motorwaycase #motorwayincident — Mehreen Zahra-Malik (@mehreenzahra) September 14, 2020

Reema Omer, a legal advisor at the International Commission of Jurists, said:

In addition to public hanging, certain MNAs have also suggested “chemical castration” as punishment for rape A similar proposal was made to J. Verma Committee (constituted for law reform after the Delhi gang rape) in India The Committee rejected it for the following reasons: pic.twitter.com/IfD09BYqeV — Reema Omer (@reema_omer) September 14, 2020

Journalist Zarrar Khuhro tweeted:

Systemic reform is what we need to be talking about. Chemical castration, public hanging, dissolving in acid…all that has to come later. Most #rape cases go unreported because of police, legal and societal problems. And of those who go to court, 96% are acquitted. — Zarrar Khuhro (@ZarrarKhuhro) September 14, 2020

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by R Umaima Ahmed

[dinshaw8]

TDF Ghar We #Karachiites are #foodies!  So, when we received a circular for a #Bohri food night, we jumped at it, on the roof of TDF “Ghar” (“house” in Urdu)- super dinner, pleasant weather, outstanding view of Quaid-e-Azam’s Mausoleum, typical Parsi loudness and laughter, great service by our Bohri hosts & excellent value for money! However, what was just as interesting was #TDFGhar- one of the old, pre-partition houses in the old city of #Karachi, wonderfully restored by TDF.  Quoting from TDF’s history – “TDF Ghar was built in 1920-30’s.  This house was initially owned by a Hindu woman, Haribai Motiram, which she sold in April 1948 to Hajiani Hanifabai for her daughter Aisha Bai Dawood in June 1948 as a residence. In April 1961 the House was donated to #TheDawoodFoundation.  In 1965, #AhmedDawood established Hanifa Hajiani Haji Gani Vocational Training Center for Women.  The training center used to enroll over 150 students per batch and train them in typing, cooking, sewing, painting, hand & machinery embroidery and English language.  TDF Ghar is open to all to promote informal learning spaces in Karachi.  TDF Ghar is based on a self-sustainability business model- revenues generated from rentals and tickets is re-invested in the upkeep and development of the Ghar.” With a small café on premises, we experienced families, youngsters & groups socially interacting with each other; playing board games; reading; using the library.  It was an amazing experience.  It was surreal finding such an oasis in bustling Karachi! Kudos to The Dawood Foundation for yet another public service to the citizens of Karachi … and Pakistan! (https://dinshawavari.com/2019/08/30/ohthe-clean-clean-not-streets-of-karachi/) (https://www.dawoodfoundation.org/tdf-ghar/)   #thedawoodfoundationghar @karachi_biennale @goetheinstitut_pakistan #goetheinstitutekarachi #alliancefrancaise @tdf.studio @DawoodTdf #Dawoodfoundation #sabrinadawood #karachitourism #karachipublicspaces #jamshednusserwanji #jamshedquarters @pkBritish #britishcouncillibarary @MichaelHoulgate #Michaelhoulgate #karachifoodies #foodiesofkarachi #hotelsinlahore #hotelsinkarachi #hotelsinislamabad #hotelsinmultan (at Beach Luxury Hotel Karachi) https://www.instagram.com/p/B94iZE3HnBO/?igshid=nc1gg6v0drli

[ali-bhutto-blog]

The Caste-aways

Feature published in Newsline.

Behind the bazaar and billboards of Ratodero lie dark, winding alleys. Larkana district’s second-largest town of over 67,000 residents is a dense maze of unfulfilled promises. At its heart – in the Harijan Colony, home to approximately 800 Dalits, or ‘Untouchables’ – Ratodero hides those whom it refuses to acknowledge.

Daulat Balbir is almost invisible. He lives in a 24-square-foot quarter on ‘Central Lane’ (Vicheen Ghitti) – a two-foot wide alley. An open gutter occupies half its width. It is his aisle to the outside world. Society keeps him at a distance – a truth that has left its mark on his face. He sweeps the streets of the city and is considered unclean and an embarrassment to be seen with. For this reason, he faces social exclusion and isolation, like all members of the Harijan community. Nobody will eat anything from their hands and few invite them to wedding functions, let alone attend any of theirs.

The educated youth of Daulat’s neighbourhood cannot find employment because they belong to the ‘bhangi’ or sweeper class and are therefore deemed repulsive. Even the police hesitate to come near members of their community, or imprison them, lest the other inmates feel uncomfortable being in the same cell as a Harijan.

The Harijans have lived in the old city quarter ever since it was built – in 1938. The colony of 100 houses, organised in 16 blocks, or quarters, has seen little municipal construction or improvement since. The Harijans are among the oldest inhabitants of the city. “We have always lived here,” says Gian Chand, a resident of the colony and a sanitation officer in the Ratodero municipal administration. “Even Pakistan came later.” Gian is one of 40 members of his community who are currently employed by the municipality, and the only one who has risen above the ranks of a sweeper.

“Up until a decade ago, 200 members of the Harijan community were employed by the municipality as sweepers and around 70 of them were women,” says Mukhi Ashok Kumar, President of the Hindu Panchayat of Ratodero. “Over the last 10 years they have been reduced to 40, of which only six are females.” According to Ashok, the administration now resorts to favouritism and hires sweepers on sifarish. It currently has 472 cleaners in its employ, but most of them do not even turn up to work and are receiving a salary sitting at home, he says.

The result is a decline in the town’s sanitation. Ashok cites as an example, the conditions that prevail on the premises of Ratodero’s water supply, the tree-lined grounds of which have long served as a public park of sorts. “People defecate in the park and no one cleans up,” he says. “The park is in a bad way.” He adds that in the past around six Harijan sweepers had been employed for the upkeep of the park and that it used to be clean in those days. He finds it strange that it is the Dalits who are viewed with downcast eyes, while the supposedly respectable citizens of the city defecate in the park, despite the fact that a new toilet has been installed there, and then don’t even bother to wash up properly afterwards, using stones to clean themselves. “People in our society need to change their habits,” he says.

Sidelined, the Harijans have few avenues for employment other than  to work as cleaners. They cannot run roadside food stalls since no one is willing to eat anything they have touched. “The discrimination isn’t on religious grounds, but purely class-based and a lot of it comes from within the Hindu community as well,” says Ashok. There are some who have turned to small-time entrepreneurial ventures such as fixing mobile phones and motorcycles on an ad-hoc basis.

Ratan Lal and his wife live in one of the tiny, windowless quarters of the colony. Dressed in a white safari shirt and trousers and with his hair slicked back, he looks like a retired denizen of Florida. Ratan is a relic of a different era. He received a diploma in hotel management from an institution in Clifton, Karachi and briefly worked at the Taj Mahal Hotel (now the Regent Plaza) until a car accident sealed his fate. He now lives in his humble abode in a state of fear and suffocation. “Our daughters and sons are educated, but the only jobs they can find are as sweepers,” he says. With great difficulty, his daughter has managed to find work as a kindergarten teacher and his son as an art teacher.

Like every other resident of the colony, Ratan pays a monthly rent of Rs 1,200 for a dilapidated room built in 1938. Some rooms house up to eight people. Driven by desperation and a lack of alternatives, many families have expanded their quarters onto the lanes, making the colony’s public thoroughfares unusually narrow and difficult for residents to walk through.

“Local councillors and political representatives promised to give us plots and jobs, but we never heard from them again,” says Ratan. The only semblance of help came in the form of an attempt by the administration to rebuild the local mandir of the Hindu goddess Devi Mata, but even that has not been completed, he laments. “Rs 10 million were allocated by the government for the construction of the new mandir, but only approximately Rs 1.2 million were spent,” he says. “The upstairs section has not been built and the shrine lacks electrical wiring.”

Of the Hindu community of Ratodero, it is only the Harijans who prefer to bury their dead instead of cremating them, while some request that their bodies be deposited in the River Indus.

Owing to their status as outcasts, inter-marriages are common within the community, between cousins living in Larkana, Sukkur and Karachi. As far as Ashok can recall, there have been no cases in Ratodero of forced marriages, kidnappings or forced conversions of Harijan girls – mainly because of the stigma that surrounds them as the sweeper class that cleans up other people’s filth. “There is the rare occasion in which a Muslim male sees a girl sweeper on the street or working in his home and ends up marrying her,” he says, “but these are consensual affairs and not forced.” He points out that it is not solely due to their profession as cleaners that Harijans are viewed with repulsion. “There are Christian sweepers too,” he says. “But, there is not as much class discrimination against them, possibly because they are better educated and make more of an effort with personal hygiene,” he says.

Similarly, the Harijans are not the only ones who are treated like they do not exist. The colony overlooks an empty plot where leaders like Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have staged public meetings in an attempt to rally support. In one corner of the space is a collection of makeshift shanties and tents. They are home to a squatter settlement of Bheels, Bhattis and the Brohis of Kalat.

Aalam Khatoun and her sister, Khadija – Brohis by caste – make the long journey from Kalat to Ratodero every winter with their husbands and army of children, to escape the cold. Skilled artisans, they make and sell axes, knives, sickles and shovels. As homeless wanderers, they are in a constant state of flux, setting up camp wherever convenient. A few days earlier, they were living in another plot and were made to vacate. Khadija carries her medical reports on her at all times and shows them to whomever she meets. She has a problem with her lungs, but cannot afford treatment.

The Brohis’ neighbours, for now, are Bhattis, who reside in a cluster of 25 tents. Haleema Bhatti and her husband Rasool Bux have lived in Ratodero for 50 years and have been homeless for most of the period. Haleema begs for a living while Rasool Bux collects and sells cardboards from garbage dumps. Their 10 grandchildren play amid piles of polythene and scavenge along the banks of open gutters, hands and mouths blackened with dirt. “I went to a government hospital for treatment, but the doctor told me not to come back again,” says Hazoor Bux, one of the elders of the family. “It is only a matter of time before the police remove us from here.”

In the midst of poverty and hopelessness, stands the solitary shelter of Mithi Bhatti, an elderly, childless widow who lives on her own and fends for herself. She survives by begging in the town at night. This mélange of squatters of different castes and creeds are united by a common cause: they are in desperate need of a plot of land, or space that they can call home.

[ethreesixty]

Famous Pakistani Breakfast to Kick Start Your Day

Breakfast is the 1st meal to start the day with. It should be healthy and also tasty so that you can have a really good morning. Pakistan is famous for its rich culture and traditions. In Pakistan you can have a breakfast which you can’t find anywhere else in the world.There are many famous Pakistani breakfast that you should eat if you are in Pakistan.In Lahore people especially come from far flung areas to enjoy the delicious breakfast. Food street is famous in Lahore for its colorful breakfast. In Rawalpindi if you want to have heart full breakfast that you should visit kartar pura though it is always so busy and you have to wait for the breakfast but it is still worth it. Following are the famous Pakistani dishes which everyone loves to eat in breakfast to kick start their day.

Halwa Puri If you visit Pakistan and haven’t tried halwa puri then what was the point of coming to Pakistan. no visit is complete without eating halwa puri. It is one of the most common breakfast available in Pakistan a you can get it from anywhere. Puris are made up of thinly rolled dough, which is splashed into hot oil or ghee. This hot oil makes the dough to puff and form a crispy layer on puris making it crispy from outside and soft from inside. The halwa is the sweet pudding which comes with puri. Along with that achar and chickpea curry is also served to complete the dish. This is the perfect combo of sweet and spice to start the day.

Nihari This dish is most famous in Karachi but it is also available in different regions of Pakistan. Mohammadi nihari is famous for its nihari as they serve different varieties of nihari. They have beef, mutton, chicken and even camel’s nihari. In Karachi javed nihari is famous. Nihari is a think curry in which they put the beef or and other meat’s shank. And spices float on the top surface along with oil or desi ghee. It is garnished with ginger, chaat masala, coriander and lemon.

Paye Paya simply means leg. The recipe is quite simple but the taste is highly complex. The secret ingredient is that the meat is slow cooked for a very long night let’s say a night before serving it. It’s because of the slow cooking that the taste of the bones come out and make it as delicious as we can dream of. Red oil and spices are added making it tastier. It is usually eaten with fresh naan or roti.

Paratha Though you meet find it ordinary if you are living in Pakistan but if you are tourist and visiting Pakistan then paratha is something which you should eat. Paratha is a simple and easily available throughout Pakistan. Women also make them in their home as it is very easy to make. They are basically the ball of dough with is rolled in round shape with flaky layers and then put on the hot pan with little amount of oil. You can eat it with anything curry, egg or even tea to enhance its taste.

Dhood Pati Ending the breakfast with delicious cup of dhood pati. It is not the simple tea which is available everywhere. It is something that is only made up of milk and tea leaves and no water is added. No breakfast is complete without it.   Conclusion These were just the few breakfast ideas. if you are visiting Pakistan for the 1st time or living in Pakistan and haven’t tried these breakfast then you should try them. These are the famous desi Pakistani breakfast. Which one do you like the most? Do share you views with us in the comment section. Read the full article

[girlsatdhabas]

Two months ago, I decided to challenge myself out of my 9-6 routine life, and enrolled myself in a trip up north where all the travellers would be girls. I don't know how to put the joy of roaming around all over Hunza-Khunjerab-Mansehra-Naran with 18 other girls, in words. We trekked toFairy Meadows and Beyal Camp-- it was such a view! In Hunza, the highlight was staying with local families and eating Arzuk, a homemade bread, and jamming with the music students of Bulbulik music school all night long. The youngest among the musical gathering was only 13 years old, and the oldest 60 -- I felt our hearts young and fresh like never before. The people we met were susprised to see us on an all-girls trip, but were also supportive. It was so empowering, yaar. We claimed the streets and our space. And now when I'm back to Karachi, I have no words to describe how terribly I miss that freedom and clean fresh air filling my lungs. How I want to run away and sit on those jeeps and drink water from the springs, climb trees and eat apricots from them, have a tea on the roadside without anyone staring at me as if I'm committing a sin. I lived my life to the fullest in these 12 days at home away from home. ~Sakina Hassan #GirlsOnTheRoad #WhyLoiter #submission #IWillGoOut