To Have & Have Not

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arachi, like Pakistan itself, also suffers from an identity crisis. Aside from Israel (though Pakistanis hate to be reminded of this), Pakistan is the only modern nation forged primarily out of faith. The problem plaguing Pakistan remains that its founders never agreed whether it should be a relaxed country whose citizens happen to be Muslims or an austere Islamic state adhering to Shari'a law. This ambiguity is responsible for the ongoing tug-of-war between the country's religious extremists and Westernized moderates; Karachi embodies these contradictions. As sociologist Arif Hassan of the nongovernmental organization Urban Resource Center puts it, "For Karachi's youth, there are two choices: go to America or join the jihad."

These ideological fault lines translate at ground level into real, geographical divisions. The poor, who tend to be more fundamentalist, live mostly in dust-blown shanties on the outskirts of town. There, they clan together, Pathans with Pathans, Baluchis with Baluchis, seeking to replicate their tribal life from their homelands. In some ghettos the clergymen have banned television, women wear burqas and the only education on offer for youngsters is the mesmeric recitation of the Koran at local madrasahs. Crimes are punished by elders inside the community according to Koranic law, and the police never hear about the transgressions or the rough justice.

The rich and influential live in the Defence and Clifton suburbs, in the latter along a wide, crescent shore, in faux Grecian- or Californian-style mansions. Every few years their walls grow taller—concrete evidence of the rising tide of instability that engulfs Karachi. The latest fad among the very wealthy is to have a lion cub or a Siberian crane (an endangered species), which clacks loudly when a stranger approaches, roaming in the garden. In a country where more than a third of the population lives below the poverty line, many of the wealthy believe in enhancing their status by importing Filipina maids. The spoiled kids hang out at Karachi's single mall, listen to heavy metal, and some of them form gangs with cry-tough names such as 9mm, Kryptonite and Outsiders. Every so often, they'll rumble over a girl and arrange for their bodyguards to trade a few punches in the KFC parking lot. There are no burqas here: the girls wear tight jeans; their mothers prefer designer salwar kameez of watered silk and diamanté Chanel sunglasses.

Here, Islamic prohibitions are the distant constraints of life in the colorless slums. "What do you want?" asks stylist Amin, who looks like a brawny pirate. He has two silver rings in one ear and dark eyebrows arched like two hissing cats. He picks up his cell phone and jokingly plays the part of a low-life genie: "A Russian hooker who looks like Pamela Anderson? Ecstasy? A bottle of Black Label? An AK-47, or a 40-carat diamond? It's all here—just a phone call away." In his sleek, black outfits and his silver bracelets, Amin is a familiar figure at Karachi's private parties and rave clubs, which never advertise or display signs and are set back from the street in high-walled compounds beyond the hearing of mullahs or cops looking to shake down a few rich kids. Ecstasy and ketamine are the drugs of choice. Back home in their mansions, the élite space out in other ways, too: staring for hours at the TV. "What we have is the satellite television culture," says artist Unvar Shafi Khan. Amin agrees. "It's never about individuality. Women in their 40s say, 'Make me look like Dynasty [a 1980s soap opera],' and their daughters want their hair styled like the girls' in Friends," says Amin.

Bombs may be detonating, journalists beheaded or neighbors kidnapped, but for the people of Clifton and Defence, this violence seldom penetrates their cocoon. They simply build their garden walls a few meters higher or buy another lion cub, this one in darker brown, perhaps, to match that Gucci purse. They're blithely unaware, for example, that when Qari Shafiqur Rehman, a Koranic teacher with burning eyes and a coal-black beard, walks by a McDonald's and sees these affluent Karachiites chowing down their Happy Meals, he feels "a deep rage" rising within himself. Rehman also belongs to Sipah-e-Sabah, an outlawed extremist group associated with a string of killings and bombings across the city, so his fury should be taken seriously.

Occasionally, reality does intrude into this TV-inspired and narcotics-fueled never-never-land of Karachi's pampered élite. After Islamic terrorists exploded a car bomb outside the U.S. consulate last year, members strolling on the flower-banked lawn at the colonial-era Sind Club nearby found the severed arm of a woman, with lacquered fingernails and bangles, which had been blown over the wall. The woman was one of the 12 fatalities, and 43 others were wounded in the consulate attack. Club president, Hussain Haroon, whose family owns the English-language Dawn newspaper and has been prominent in Karachi for more than 150 years, says glumly, " With the Sind Club, I feel like I'm protecting an island in a sea of anarchy."

Yet no matter how imperiled a Karachiite might feel, calling the cops is seldom an option. Too often, the lawmen are part of the problem. "You have to realize," says a land developer, "that police stations have no money, not even to change a light bulb or put gas in their cars." As a result, he says, police stations become "revenue-generating centers" and catching thieves and murderers is a secondary occupation. Police earn money by shaking down prostitution and gambling rings, and they will often demand a bribe even to register a complaint for burglary. A constable's monthly wage is only $69; a typical middle-class salary in Karachi is $2,000 a year.