The Essay - Karachi Postcards - Leaving a Hot City for Life on the Beach...

The London based novelist Kamila Shamsie returns to her city of birth every winter, and this time decides to explore it properly: 4. Leaving a hot city for life on the beach... "Each time I visit Karachi there is a particular strangeness that accompanies me... invisible to x-ray machines... undetected by sniffer dogs. It is the strangeness of returning." London based novelist Kamila Shamsie returns to Karachi every January to see her family and old friends. But it's not where she lives anymore, so it has a fresh and often surprising quality to it. Over five 'postcards' for The Essay, she explores the city of her birth in this uncertain and often intriguing light In her fourth postcard, Kamila escapes the hot, steamy bustle of the city centre and heads like hundreds do to the nearby beaches, where a poetic and calm state of mind and body takes over..