Aslam became a cop in 1986, a year of jolting change in Karachi. One day a speeding bus driven by a Pashtun knocked over and killed a female student named Bushra Zaidi, who happened to be a mohajir. The accident triggered days of rioting between mohajirs and Pashtuns in which over forty people were killed. A fuse had been lit. The mohajirs, who thrived in the early decades of Pakistan, felt marginalised by the wave of incoming migrants. Now they rallied behind a charismatic young leader, a student pharmacist named Altaf Hussain, who urged them to arm themselves with newly available guns, most
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