Susan LaffertyThe 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.
This week I’ve walked on the soft, white sand of Pensacola Beach and stared out at the deep blue and aqua waters of the Gulf. I’ve relaxed, breathed in the ocean breezes. Watched sandpipers race the tide.
My first memory of feeling sand between my toes was a 1964 family vacation in Bali. We loaded up our 1958 Chevrolet station wagon in Surabaya early in the morning and drove across East Java to the ferry at Ketapang, just north of Banyuwangi.