“Karachi was not always synonymous with charred buses and mutilated bodies wrapped in gunny bags. The ‘Guide to Karachi’ distributed to American soldiers posted in the city during the Second World War described it as the ‘Paris of the East’ and the ‘cleanest city in the whole of India’, while praising its ‘sea beach and bathing places’.2 Many Karachiites who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s also remember the city as pleasant and secure—a safe haven where children would spend most of their time playing outside, where doors would be left unlocked and where women could go to see films and relish the latest Indian hits without chaperones.”