Susan LaffertyThanksgiving week. My mind wanders back across the years and the miles. We’ve made some memories.
In November 1997 we traveled from Karachi to Shikarpur (Pakistan) and spent a few days with our friends living there. They’d happened upon two turkeys out in a rural area and were fattening them up for a Thanksgiving feast.
FYI, turkeys gobble-gobble in Pakistan too.
The art was hidden by the crowds that walked through Mangal Bazaar that day in Islamabad, June 1997. Then I saw it. One particular painting drew me in. Maybe it was the camels. Or the street scene reminiscent of Karachi. In the mix of muted and bright, the blue dome of the mosque caught my eye.
Our third move in Karachi was to a grand house called Swiss Villa. The name itself shouted wishful thinking in that desert megacity on the Arabian Sea.
It only took a walk out the gate or a glance off the second-floor balcony to see the irony. Clouds of dust and sand were stirred up by vehicles ambling down the road. Goats and cows feasted on the garbage pile across the street.
And frequent power outages in the extreme heat of summer meant temperatures over 100 degrees inside our living room.
But the house itself was well-built and had a lovely front yard with grass and bougainvillea. In the desert, this was no small thing. Watching our children run and play in the grass was not something I took for granted.