Let me tell you what it’s like. In Karachi, before a big rain, everything stops for a second. The sky looks angry. This is weird, dark purple, and the air dies. You take a breath and you wait. You wonder, is this going to be one of the bad ones? Well, yesterday was. The heavens just opened up. It wasn’t rain; it was a wall of water. Honestly, within an hour, the streets were gone. Not just flooded, but gone and replaced by these quiet, dirty rivers that used to be our busiest roads. It’s the silence that gets you. The silence of a thousand stalled engines. It’s a strange feeling, being completely stuck, watching your loud, crazy, vibrant city get washed away into silence.

So the engine was off. No point in even trying. All I could do was watch as this murky line of sludge crept steadily up the side of my tire. It was almost hypnotic. The rain was a constant, drumming noise on the roof, and it kind of numbed you out. It’s in moments like that that you realise how completely powerless you are. The whole city had just given up, surrendered to the storm, and we were all just… stuck. It’s a strange kind of lonely, being surrounded by hundreds of people all sealed in their own little silent worlds. I was starting to lose track of time when something moved in the grey blur outside. Something that didn’t belong. It........

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