Read more: Shahrukh Khan Detained in New York Airport, South Asian Tsunami Averted
Last weekend, my sister Safiya and I volunteered as photographers at the YOUR DIL Chicago netWork It For Education event, where journalist Ethan Casey was the guest speaker. The event raised over $5,000 for schools in Pakistan. Here are our photos from the event, published in a couple of news publications (click to enlarge).
As a Karachi native, I consider myself forever connected to that tangle of a metropolis even though I moved to Chicago at a year old and have lived here ever since. It is a notoriously tumultuous city, a microcosm of mismanagement, violence and instability. Despite my deep personal interest in Karachi, its history and current state are difficult to unravel and daily changes impossible to follow. Having read Steve Inskeep’s “Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi,” I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Indian Parliament building. Credit: js42/Creative Commons
Life moves fast. News moves faster. Four children and their bus driver were killed Tuesday when a gunman opened fire on their bus in Peshawar, Pakistan. The first weapon, a rocket-fired grenade, missed its target but subsequent use of AK-47 assault rifles killed five and sent another 18, including 15 children, to the hospital. Pakistan’s Taliban militants carried out the attack, perhaps in response to Osama bin Laden’s killing earlier this year.
Life moves fast. News moves faster. Nepal’s parliament elected Baburam Bhattarai its new Prime Minister on August 28. Bhattarai is a prominent member of the country’s Maoist party; despite Bhattarai’s verbal commitment to a “national unity government,” Nepali Congress and Unified Marxist Leninist party members do not trust him or his party.
If anyone were ever an armchair adventurer, it would not be me. My favorite books are emotional and psychological. I like to read about feelings. But despite that, I loved “The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2.” For all its action and adventure, it was the psychological trauma and tension that came to life and made this an entrancing read.