Instant City Quotes

“Jinnah told my father", he (Ardeshir Cowasjee) said, "that each government of Pakistan would be worse than the one that preceded it.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“Heritage is a matter of the stories we choose to tell about our past, as well as the stories we overlook.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“When we build a city, we take our grandest dreams as well as our deepest anxieties and set them in concrete for the next generation.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“If you come to Karachi for a few days you will hate it, but if you come to Karachi for forty days, you will love it and never want to leave.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“Karachi has been a destination for some of the most dramatic migrations of all.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“Is it possible to leave Karachi after living here for so long?”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“From 1947, the country had unwittingly conducted a vast human experiment: what would happen if a diverse place suddenly cleansed itself of many of its minorities, so that almost everyone was, on the surface, the same?

Now the results of the experiment were coming in.

Muslims, the single "nation" championed by their leaders just a few years before, proved to be strikingly diverse. They always had been. Now some looked within their numbers and began singling out new minorities to replace the ones they had lost.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi