We Stand on Guard for thee...

One thing that stood out when I first arrived here in Karachi was the sheer number of armed guards. They’re everywhere. Now, I’m from Canada, so, unlike my American friends, I’m not used to seeing guns everywhere you look. Private guards here protect coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, multi-nationals… you name it. Generally they seem to approach their task with a dedicated air of complete and utter boredom. They stand there, shifting their weight from one foot to the other, lazily holding their rifles whatever-which-way they please. They’re just like our "rent-a-cops" at home, except, you know, with sub-machine guns.

And to tell you the truth, the guns kind of scare me sometimes. Not because they have guns (a guard over here would be pretty useless without one), but that they wield them so haphazardly that sometimes I really question whether they’re actually real. They’ll have the weapons slung over their shoulder, or braced across their knees, held by the stock, or just clutched at by the strap. It doesn’t help that most of the rifles have serial numbers painted on the side with corrective fluid. Sometimes I imagine a big bin full of weapons and all these guards filing through like the Coyote and the Sheep Dog arriving at work in the Looney Toons… "Mornin Inayut"…. "Mornin Rahim"… "How’s the wife"… "Burnt the daal again"… "Oh-ho, what’re you grabbing today?" … "Oh, sawed off shotgun I think." … "Fair enough, there’s one in the bin."….

Many places also have metal detectors to walk through. When I first arrived, I would dutifully take the coins out of my pocket, put my cell phone in the bin and walk through. Ultimately, my belt (or my tin-foil wrapped cucumber) would set the thing off, so I would stop to be checked. I quickly discovered that this was totally unnecessary because the guard would already be waving me through. So apparently the metal detectors are just there to determine that you do, in fact, have metal on you. "Ok, good, he does have some metal somewhere on his person… thought so… Go ahead." All in all, pretty pointless. But just try to walk around one of those metal detectors and you’ll see these guys jump into action. "Sir! Sir! Through here sir!" So, I’ll stop, go back, set off the metal detector and get waved through. Fair enough, it all makes sense to me. Every once in awhile, if your lucky, you’ll get a quick pat-down frisking, which is exciting, because it’s just about the only action I can get over here.

At first, walking past a guy with an automatic weapon on my way to a coffee shop was kind of intimidating. But now, like most things, it's all par for the course. In fact, even though I seriously question what one of these guys would do in a crisis, if there wasn't a dude outside Espresso I would be thinking, "What's going on here, what kind of operation are you trying to run here. You expect me to drink my coffee without protection?"