Karachi is flooded. There are some truly remarkable images and videos online: of shipping containers floating down Bandar Road as the Urdu-speaking videographer morosely invites Imran Khan to take his place on it. A fire engine going down a quiet Defence street, its lights on and sirens blaring, sending waves that push open gates of houses, until suddenly it stops and black smoke gushes out from a short circuit. The Clifton underpass, one of the bits of Karachi I still don’t quite recognise as it changed beyond recognition a place I know well, flooded to the top of the underpass, like a swelling river. Actual flash floods going down streets: policemen rappelling across a rope held tight over raging waters by pedestrians who are themselves holding onto telephone poles and trees. Someone floating down a street, doing backstroke. Someone else on a rubber dinghy, being pulled behind a land cruiser or a vigo, the only sort of vehicle that is not at the moment floating away, another divide between rich and poor.
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