The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation

by Declan Walsh

Somehow, democracy had survived.

Baghdad, it seemed, had come to Islamabad.

At 12,000 feet, oxygen is precious here, but the altitude is cruellest on the animals. Now and then, a horse crumples to the ground, legs twitching, in the throes of a heart attack. Attendants rush over and the unfortunate beast is carted off. Play resumes.

The British Raj, the fear went, would become the Hindu Raj.

give power to the foolish and they will eventually implode.

Who was the good Muslim: Taseer the reformer or Qadri the killer?

A devastating earthquake levelled it in 1935, killing 60,000 people. Today its fault lines are human – ethnic, sectarian, political.

‘God should be a loving God; He must love and respect, not punish. But our mullahs and your priests’ – he wagged a reproachful finger in my direction – ‘their meal ticket is sin.’