I am sitting in the departure lounge of Karachi airport, waiting for boarding to begin my first leg: Karachi-Dubai.

There are a number of labourers travelling alone, going back to their jobs after visiting their families.

There are others; Pakistanis with foreign passports, who are going back with their families after paying a visit to their parents or in-laws. They are better dressed and are walking by with an exaggerated swagger, some have a hint of a smug smile.

Between the two categories, I clearly fall in the latter one. However, I lack the swagger ... and the smile. I want to sit down, away from the crowd and ... cry.

Duct-taped emotions

I have always found ‘leaving’ a very painful thing to do, so I discouraged my parents to accompany me to the airport. However, exchanging Khuda Hafizes at home, too, became an ordeal; despite my attempts at making it easy with a tale of some silly event, meant to be funny. My parents smiled weakly, though my mother looked lost in some other world.

She recovered in time to say she had put some bangles and two cones of henna in my suitcase for her granddaughter, whom she saw several years ago; and two cotton pyjama bottoms for me, which she had sewn herself.

I had bought cricket bats for my boys, which were not wrapped. My dad found a roll of duct-tape and helped my brother to secure them, before reminding me that I had forgotten to take him for his hearing test, and that he would go with me now when I next returned.

I learned some years ago that leaving everything for the last minute helps, as the anxiety and panic of missing the flight displaces the sadness of leaving your parents, whom you don't know if you will see again and even if you will, under what circumstances – would they be able to light up with joy on seeing you; would they be able to smile, stand up and hug you anymore? My parents are entering that age where the effort required for everyday actions has become exhausting.

A chaotic, broken dust bowl of a city

This visit to Karachi had been very good, even if it was only for five days, or maybe because of it.

In fact, it was marvellous. I had flown in to attend the wedding of my nephew to his longtime girlfriend. Yes, in Pakistan, sometimes they do have boyfriends and girlfriends, though the terms they use may not be the same. Also, some of the ishqs do lead to marriages, not murders of the couples' ghairatmand brothers.

Whether ishq leading to a marriage can be called successful, I am not sure, but I do know that many of us, on the wrong side of 50, can be a bit too cynical in our comments about the beady-eyed young lovers, who are convinced of the strength, purity and permanence of their indestructible and eternal love.

Karachi was more dusty, chaotic and broken than before.

The roads were terrible, the traffic a nightmare, multi-storied flats appeared to be multi-storied slums, water unclean and the heat utterly oppressive. Many roads had been reduced to dirt tracks, the sewage was appalling and a network of entwined, convoluted aerial telephone cables and electrical wires ruined the view everywhere.

Damaged roads and messy, electrical wires are a common eyesore in Karachi.—Reuters/file

Personal security has been a nightmare for a number of years, with petty crime astronomically high. Everyone had a number of stories of having their phones and wallet being snatched at gunpoint. This usually goes completely unreported, as the vast majority have given up on the police.

My nephew (groom) had been robbed at gunpoint a day before my arrival, while my father had been overpowered by three youths (who were younger than his grandsons) the year before, robbed of his money and phone.

In fact, what seemed more astonishing was the semblance of normalcy and order instead of complete anarchy even in the face of an absolutely under-resourced police – their entire energy appeared to be directed at escorting VIPs, preventing bomb blasts and communal carnage, with no time for any petty or property crime, or a personal injury less than murder.

My parents live in a tower block of flats with a parade of shops on the ground floor, and small houses scattered around. There was nonstop hustle-bustle on the adjoining streets and anarchy on the adjacent main road.

Cricket on a Karachi street.—AFP/file

On a personal level, however, everyone was always extremely polite and good-humoured. The shopkeepers called my parents Auntie and Uncle respectfully and proudly introduced me to people that I didn't know and found hard to converse with, after an exchange of simple pleasantries.

The one-eyed poet

I was walking with my dad to the car once (which he parks at a small distance from the flats to save on the parking charges), when we saw an ancient, emaciated, short man with a short, grey beard and a dirty white kurta pyjama sitting on a broken chair outside a hairdresser's shop.

"Jamshed meet Mr Rehman. Mr Rehman, meet my son. He is a doctor."

The man had only one eye behind cheap plastic Harry Potter glasses, taped on the side. He jumped up from his chair and shook my hand earnestly and then placed his right hand over his heart as a sign of respect.

"Mr Rehman is a poet," my father explained, "and one year younger than me (84)."

Mr Rehman smiled.

"How are you?" I asked.

"Betey tabiat theek nahi rehtee," he replied. Then, pointing to my dad, he said, "Raja Sahib ne Punjab ka paani pia hai, hum se bohut behter sehat hai in ki, mashallah."

I explained that my father was Punjabi in name only, as he had hardly lived in Punjab, which was true, but Mr Rehman politely shook his head.

My dad interjected, "let me recite one of his shairs".

Haseenon se abhi tak rabtey hain
Abhi ye silsala toota nahin hai,

Pohunch jata hoon unki khilvaton mein
Tassawwar pe koi pehra nahin hai.

I laughed and said out loud, "wah! wah!"

Mr Rehman smiled, encouraged by the praise and I could detect a hint of mischief in his only eye. All of a sudden, he looked like someone I could happily spend the next few hours with. Gentle, kind, funny, and more importantly, subversive.

But dad was taking me to see one of his only class fellows still alive. He happened to be living in Karachi too, following his retirement, although the two had graduated together in Lyallpur and had not seen each other for ages.

In the car, I asked my father about this poet. Apparently his wife had died and he lived with his married son and spent long hours sitting on a chair in front of the shops to while away the time and talked to anyone who would care to stop and listen.

Dad knew the whole ghazal and recited another couple of his *shairs:.

Ye kis khudsar ka sar hai, jo abhi tak
Faraz-e-daar se utra nahin hai,

Woh merey saath hain tanhaiyon mein
Riaz-e-be nava tanha nahin hai.

Nostalgia, food and festivity

Although the city could look like a repulsive dust bowl of a place to the uninitiated, the roads were bustling with traffic and crowds of people going about their business in the scorching heat. Karachi was alive and working. My younger brother was driving and the house in Defence needed some finding, as we were unfamiliar with the area, even if the layout was more ordered and streets signposted.

Dad was not helping things either, by constantly criticising my brother's driving. He becomes more cantankerous every time I meet him.

Bird's eye view of the always alive Karachi.—Aliraza Khatri

We entered a nice, elegant house and were ushered to an exquisitely decorated ‘drawing room’, a term used only in the posh stately homes here in England. How did this man manage to retire in such a plush pad, whereas my dad was stuck on the fourth floor of a dilapidated tower block with a dodgy lift, which had crashed numerous times, luckily without any loss of life?

Well, because my father worked in different factories, but his friend was a businessman making towels for export.

The friend walked at a painfully slow pace, leaning on a stick with a square base to rest on the floor, obviously in discomfort. My father and his friend greeted each other, sat down and after quickly getting the preliminary pleasantries out of the way, tentatively ventured down memory lane.

While they were trying to recall events, my brother and I started to chat to the respectful young grandson of the host, about his college first and then local politics.

But my dad insisted on us listening to the stories of the two friends from yonder years, when they were in college together several decades ago. They conversed in gentle Urdu, probably for our benefit, only occasionally breaking into their native Punjabi.

A sumptuous meal followed, but it was almost 4 o’clock and there was a wedding reception to attend that evening, so we ate cautiously despite exhortations by the hosts to try a plateful of everything.

Then came the wedding, which was wonderful, spread over two days and filled with delicious food and songs and dance.

An early goodbye

I was due to leave early next morning.

My brother reminded me that the flight departure time was almost upon us. I hugged my dad quickly and my mother for a little bit longer, as she looked more affected by the imminent departure of her eldest son, gathered my bags and headed for the door, without looking back.

It was early morning. My sister was awake with one of her sons, who wanted to come along and see me off. The rest were still zonked out from the celebrations which continued late into morning.

The immigration at the airport was brisk, but my mind was swimming with images; the noise, the smells and the sounds of Karachi; the buzzing rickshaws and the annoying, ubiquitous horn, used out of habit for no apparent reason.

I could hear the laughter of my three-year-old niece and her various instructions, and the regular updates in broken Urdu to her Taya (me) when people were getting ready to go out. I could feel the touch of my parents, my brothers and my beautiful sister; and the sight of all of them happy and laughing; and the divine taste of the food, the water which was dodgy and the salad which at all costs, should have been avoided.

While waiting near the departure gate, I found a newsagent and started to grab at random books on the shelves, pretending to read; avoiding the crowd of passengers in case I got overwhelmed by the bubbling cauldron of emotions, in case cracks appeared in the delicately maintained façade, and I started to look like an old fool, evoking sympathies from bypassing strangers.

The announcement for boarding was made and I joined the queue. As I sat in my seat on the plane, I thought to myself:

If Karachi were a person, who would it be?

It could be Mukhtaraan Mai: the defenceless woman repeatedly and brutally assaulted by men; determined to survive and live with her head held high, pursuing her tormentors bravely.

Karachi is just as resilient, and may well rise from the ashes like that brave woman from Meerwala.

I, however, would like to think of my city as Mr Riaz ur Rehman, the emaciated poet whom my father introduced me to outside a hairdresser's shop.

Dishevelled, unsteady on the feet, and with one eye missing behind his broken glasses, but polite, always smiling, accommodating and with a gentle sense of humour ... a refined poesy behind a downtrodden exterior.

How could you not love and easily turn away from such a man, or such a city?

I can’t.

Related:

Karachi Time Machine
10 things that will happen when you move to Karachi
SKE: Adventures into the unexplored corners of Karachi