Wandered the old walled city solo, posed for at least a hundred cell phone “snaps,” had tea in a handful of homes, squeezed into one of those jittery hand pushed kiddie ferris wheels (those things are WAY more exciting than you’d think!) and temporarily joined a biker gang. True story.
Since I’ve been back in the US, I’ve been traveling with my friend Jayson and his sideshow gig, Ming Donkey’s One Man Band. Spent Saturday and Sunday in New Orleans, that fantastic hobo city of pirates and saints. Everyone has a story there, and all the stories are the same: “hopped a train, had a plan, landed here (that wasn’t the plan)”
I’ve loved this city forever, spent my life escaping three hours south, along the world’s most crooked straight line. Nothing like chasing tattooed clowns. Anyhow, the story starts here:
Donk was playing a farewell party at Saturn Bar, a classy little dive on St. Claude. Our friend John is leaving for Afghanistan. He’s already been dispatched twice to Iraq, and he has a lifelong fear of cannolis, which it’s better not to get into. But his girlfriend, Tami, brought a whole table of cannolis, muffalettas and mac & cheese from the Italian restaurant her family owns. So I ate a cannoli and washed it down with whiskey. This plan could have backfired. Luckily, it didn’t.
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It’s called Funland. And of course the electricity went almost as soon as we got there, but somehow the rides remained dimly lit. It was all eerie shadows and fantastic horror film dimensions, which made the roller coaster death tales seem like more than urban myths. This place is a bit neglected by many of my Karachi friends, but it definitely earns my recommendation.
A man carrying water in Gilgit, Pakistan. April 2011.
A weekday at Seaview, the main public beach in Karachi. April 2011.
A girl from the Indus floodcamp, near Karachi.
These girls were in some tiny village near Thatta in rural Sindh.
