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.