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My City, My City

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For Karachi, my beloved

You can hate my city—my city with its murky seawaters
and unsafe, ill-lit streets.

You can leech off the money
and pour it all into the Province of Five Streams.

But you cannot wish it away;
do you hope for the heart to stop
so that the chaos quietens?

You can hate my city—
my city of stained walls
and mysterious disappearances.

You can mock our accents,
our humor,
our bodies,
or brains.
Your lack of awareness
equals our love for the mundane.

Your haphazard ways,
and the conmen’s smiles—
are as crooked as the lines on our map.

You censored the numbers that could have saved us
from the blame.
Dumped all your problems and a thousand tonne of untreated waste
upon my city—
my city that once matched the sun’s blaze.

  • Born and raised in Karachi, Afza Muazzam is an up-and-coming writer. She is a committed pacifist and an advocate for marginalized communities. She writes toward seeing a more just future. When not writing, she reads work that stirs the soul, takes long walks in nature, binges on sitcoms, and spends time with the people she loves.