Karachi in the 1950s
Monday, 2 December 2013I’ve been going through my elderly mother’s photo collection in recent weeks. I posted some shots of vintage BOAC airliners, reminders of my dad (an RAF pilot during WW II) and his time with the airline. Here’s a BOAC check in desk from over 50 years ago. Doesn’t look that different today does it? ▼
◄ In my new book Dark Lands I write about one of my earliest memories, an encounter with a rabid dog in Karachi, Pakistan. Today, going through another photo album, I found the photo in question:
More years passed before I finally got back to Karachi, clutching a photo of the house where I’d lived so many years earlier. In the family photo album I’d even found a snapshot of a small me standing beside the cook’s even smaller daughter. Driving back to Bath Island Road one day, my mother piloting the family Morris Minor, we’d found the girl being pursued down the driveway by a rabid dog. My mother managed to get the car between child and crazed canine and told me to open my door. We dragged her safely on board. Later the dog was lured into a garage behind the house; the police came round, flung open the door and, when the dog raced out, shot it. As any five-year-old would be, I was impressed.
