My Country: Pakistan, The Land I Call Home
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| From the mountains of the north to the streets of Karachi — this is home. |
I started this at 11 at night with a cup of chai going cold next to me. No plan. I was just wondering what "home" even means, and every time the answer came out as Pakistan. Which felt too obvious, so I kept thinking. Same answer.
You know the school essay. "Pakistan, My Homeland." Mine had "beloved" in it something like six times because our teacher loved that word. I didn't feel a single line. I wanted to reach the bottom of the page and go play.
This is not that. Nobody's checking it. I'm not even sure I'll explain it properly, but I'm going to try.
14 August
Every August the whole country turns green and white. Flags on rickshaws, badges on school shirts, that one uncle who blasts national songs from his car for two weeks straight. It's fun. It also makes it easy to forget what the date cost.
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| Every August the whole country turns green and white — but that color carries a cost few talk about. |
Millions of people left their homes in 1947. Some walked for days. Some didn't arrive. Families got split at the border and never found each other. I've read the history, sure, but what stays with me is the stuff old people say when they think nobody is listening. A house locked in a hurry, key kept in a pocket for sixty years. A mother still laying a plate for a son who never came back. Villages that don't exist on any map now, but an old man says the name and you can tell it's still real to him.
I never had to pack one bag and leave the rest of my life behind. I was born into a country that was already here, already speaking my language. Somebody else paid for that. Weird thing to inherit.
It catches me off guard sometimes. In a bank queue. Or when the anthem plays before a match and my throat gets tight for no reason.
North to south
"Pakistan is so diverse" sounds like a line from a tourism ad, and the annoying thing is that it's true.
Up north, Hunza, Skardu, Swat, and K2 somewhere behind all of it. The mountains look edited. The rivers are loud enough that you have to shout. Then a local uncle hands you tea and asks which city you're from, and you're just a guest again. I like that. Huge landscape, small-town manners.
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| The mountains are massive, but the hospitality feels as small-town as it gets. |
Punjab is flat and green. Wheat, sugarcane, and in winter the mustard fields go so yellow you forget your phone for a minute. The country eats because of this land. Nobody says thanks.
Sindh has Mohenjo-daro, roughly four and a half thousand years old, with proper streets and proper drains. Drains! We complain about our roads and here's a city that sorted out drainage before most of the world had cities. Funny, and a little embarrassing.
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| One of the world's first organized cities — they figured out drainage before most places had cities at all. |
Balochistan I know the least, honestly. Pictures, and stories from people who went. Bare hills, a long coast, and a quiet they all describe as heavy. I want to go properly one day, not as a "let me post a photo" trip.
Karachi doesn't sleep. Two in the morning and there's a chai wala open, a bun kabab guy at his tawa, a family arguing on the footpath about where to eat. Loud, sticky, tiring. Somehow also the most awake place I know.
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| Even at 2 a.m., Karachi is awake — tired, but never quiet. |
Language
Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki, Urdu, and loads more I can't name. Each one has its own kind of humour. Some Punjabi jokes die the second you translate them. A good Pashto proverb hits harder than a whole speech. And a Sindhi folk song can shut up a noisy room, I've seen it happen.
Then we all land in the same sentence anyway. Half Urdu, half English, one Punjabi word for emphasis. Strangers become "bhai" and "baji" in about four seconds. Nobody planned that, it just happened.
Khana
Food is where people get serious. Say the word biryani in a group and wait for the lecture. Karachi's is sharp and spicy, Sindhi biryani is its own thing, and every family is convinced theirs wins. Lahore does nihari and paye in winter and halwa puri on Sunday mornings, the breakfast that drags a whole house out of bed. Peshawar has chapli kabab off the tawa with pomegranate seeds hiding inside. And a Multani mango in June, cold from the fridge, juice running down your wrist. I go silent when I eat one. Argue with me and you'll lose.
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| Say the word "biryani" in a room and watch the debate begin. |
Ask a Pakistani where they're from and in two minutes you'll know what to eat there, at which shop, and which corner of that shop.
Chai, obviously. Doodh patti, strong, boiled way longer than any doctor would allow. You serve it to guests, you make it after a fight, you make it at 1 a.m. when sleep isn't happening. I honestly can't picture a house here without a kettle.
Small stuff
Iftar is hard to explain if you haven't lived it. Last twenty minutes before Maghrib and the whole mohalla is quiet and busy at once. Plates of pakoras and samosas going back and forth between houses. Rooh Afza with too much ice. Someone always sends extra and nobody keeps count. Then the azaan and the street exhales together.
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| Twenty minutes before Maghrib, the whole street goes quiet and busy at once. |
Eid morning. New clothes, stiff shoes that hurt, rushing to the mosque. After that, door to door with crisp Eidi notes in your fist and sheer khurma smell coming out of every kitchen. I still feel like a kid on Eid. I'm not sure I want that to stop.
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| New clothes, tight shoes, and Eidi money in your fist — some feelings never get old. |
Basant, I never saw the best years properly, but ask anyone who did and their face changes. Rooftops full of kites, speakers so loud the walls shook. It got banned because the string was killing people, and fair enough. Still. You can hear the missing in how they talk about it.
Look at a Pakistani truck sometime. Flowers, eyes, birds, poetry, little chains and bells, all painted by hand, for days. It carries cement. And still someone decided it should look like that.
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| It's just carrying cement — but someone still decided it should look beautiful. |
Also the rickshaw driver who sings along to an old song when he thinks you aren't listening. And the roadside chai stall where you say "bas, last cup" and stay another hour.
Cricket
Nothing else makes the whole country go quiet at the same second, or scream at the same second. In a close match the streets are empty. Shopkeepers watch on tiny phone screens. Offices pretend to work. And there's always one person who yells "don't move, don't move, we're winning while you're sitting like this," and everyone freezes exactly where they are, half up, half down. Nobody wants to be the one who breaks the luck.
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| For one moment, the whole country holds its breath together — win or lose. |
1992 is the big memory, strangers hugging on the road. Then all the heartbreaks since, the ones where you swear you're finished. Next match, you're back on the sofa with chai. Hoping. Like an idiot.
Arshad Nadeem in Paris, 2024, was something else. Javelin, small village, hardly any facilities for most of his career, and he came home with Olympic gold and a record throw. For one evening nobody was talking about petrol prices. Matlab, we don't get many evenings like that.
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| For one evening, nobody was talking about petrol prices. |
Load shedding diaries
I'm not going to pretend it's all fine.
Load shedding. Inflation running faster than any salary. Traffic that steals two hours for no reason. Corruption news you scroll past because you read the same story last month. Gas bill, electricity bill, phone bill, and that dull feeling in your stomach that you're falling behind even while working hard.
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| The power went, the fan died, and someone just said, "no big deal." |
I used to study for exams by candlelight, or under one of those emergency lights that lasted maybe forty minutes. Then the fan would die, the heat would walk in, and someone would say "phir chali gayi" and that was the end of the discussion. We didn't even get angry. Anger takes energy and we needed ours for the paper.
What's odd is how this made people tough without anyone deciding it. Light goes, and inside five minutes someone has found a UPS or a generator or a torch, or just shrugged and said "chalo, koi baat nahi." Prices jump and families adjust. A bit less here, a bit saved there, keep going.
I go back and forth on this though. Part of me is proud of it. Part of me thinks it's messed up that people need to be this strong just to have electricity. Surviving a broken system doesn't make the system okay.
So no, I don't think we should just put up with it. Vote. Pay what you owe. Don't cheat when nobody's looking, because honestly that's where most of it starts. But I also believe that staying, and staying invested, counts for something. You can't fix what you've already walked away from. (Some people say you can fix things from abroad. I half believe that. Not fully.)
Edhi and everyone else
When something terrible hits, the 2005 earthquake, the 2010 floods, the 2022 floods, people just show up. Blankets, food, money, clothes, whatever they can spare. Students standing on corners with donation boxes. Shopkeepers emptying shelves. Guys driving trucks of supplies for hours to places they've never seen.
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| No fancy office, simple clothes — yet one of the largest ambulance services in the world. |
Edhi is the obvious name. Simple clothes, no fancy office, and he built one of the biggest ambulance services in the world. He picked up bodies other people wouldn't touch. And regular Pakistanis kept it running with donations, a hundred rupees here, five hundred there. That's how it got built, one small note at a time.
And mehman nawazi, hospitality, is on another level. A guest walks in, tea. Then a snack. Then obviously dinner, even if the month is tight. The host insists, the guest says no, the host insists again, and the guest always loses. Once at a relative's place I ate so much I couldn't sit straight, and they still asked if I wanted more. I said no four times. The plate came anyway.
Foreigners who visit bring this up all the time. It's not exaggerated.
The kids building things
Lately I keep noticing how many young people are just getting on with it. Freelancers in small rooms with slow internet, selling design or code or writing to clients on the other side of the world. Students teaching themselves programming off free videos at midnight. Girls running small online shops from their bedrooms. Guys whose whole income is a laptop and a power bank.
They work through load shedding, bad connections, and relatives asking "but what's your real job?"
Some of them are doing really well. That gives me more hope than any speech has. The talent is here. It mostly needs a fair chance, and plenty of them are making their own.
Why I get staying
Lots of people leave and I understand. Things are hard, chances feel thin, and wanting a better life isn't a betrayal. But the ones who go still watch our matches at 3 a.m. They hunt for Pakistani grocery stores in every new city. They cook their mother's daal on Sundays and get homesick from the smell. Leaving doesn't switch it off.
For me it shows up in small moments. The azaan from the nearby mosque. Birds getting loud before Fajr while people walk to pray. An old street where half my childhood happened, same corner shop, same crooked wall, same tree that somehow survived everything. There's a calm there that I doubt I'd find anywhere else, however good it looked on paper.
This country is mine. The good parts and the bad parts both. Maybe that's what loving a place is. You see all of it and you still say "mine."
Last thing
Pakistan isn't perfect. No country is. But it gave me my language, my sense of humour, my taste in food, my family, and most of the memories I care about keeping.
When the green and white flag catches the wind, my chest goes a bit tight and I can't explain it properly. It's cloth, I know. But it stands for everyone who paid for this place, and for everyone who still thinks it can get better if enough of us stick around and do our bit.
I probably missed half of what I wanted to say. Pakistan Zindabad anyway, and yes, I mean it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Why is Pakistan called "diverse" despite being one country?
Pakistan spans deserts, mountains, rivers, and coastlines — from the peaks of Hunza in the north to the beaches of Balochistan in the south. Each province (Punjab, Sindh, KPK, Balochistan) has its own language, cuisine, and traditions, making the country feel like several worlds within one.
Q2: What makes Pakistani cuisine so regionally distinct?
Every city has a signature dish shaped by its geography and history — Karachi's spicy biryani, Lahore's nihari and halwa puri, Peshawar's chapli kabab, and Multan's mangoes. Food in Pakistan isn't just sustenance; it's a source of local pride and identity.
Q3: How old is Mohenjo-daro, and why is it significant?
Mohenjo-daro, located in Sindh, is roughly 4,500 years old and is one of the best-preserved urban settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. It's notable for having an advanced drainage and street planning system, remarkable for its time.
Q4: Why does load shedding (power outages) still affect Pakistan?
Load shedding stems from a mix of energy production shortfalls, transmission losses, and circular debt in the power sector. While infrastructure has improved over the years, many areas — especially rural ones — still experience scheduled or unscheduled outages.
Q5: What is Basant, and why was it banned?
Basant is a traditional kite-flying festival, historically popular in Punjab, especially Lahore. It was banned in most areas because the sharpened or metal-coated kite strings caused serious injuries and deaths, including to motorcyclists and pedestrians.
Q6: Who was Abdul Sattar Edhi, and why is he important?
Edhi was a Pakistani philanthropist who founded the Edhi Foundation, which runs one of the largest volunteer ambulance networks in the world. Known for his simplicity and lifelong dedication to the poor, he became a symbol of selfless service in Pakistan.
Q7: What role does cricket play in Pakistani culture?
Cricket is more than a sport in Pakistan — it's a unifying national event. Streets empty out during major matches, and moments like the 1992 World Cup win remain part of the national memory, passed down as shared cultural pride.
Q8: What did Arshad Nadeem achieve at the 2024 Paris Olympics?
Arshad Nadeem, a javelin thrower from a small Pakistani village with limited early resources, won Olympic gold and set a new record throw at the 2024 Paris Olympics — a historic moment for Pakistani sports.
Q9: What is "mehman nawazi," and why is it emphasized in Pakistani culture?
Mehman nawazi means hospitality, and it's a deeply rooted cultural value in Pakistan. Guests are often served tea, snacks, and full meals regardless of the household's circumstances, reflecting generosity as a point of honor rather than obligation.
Q10: Why do many young Pakistanis work as freelancers?
With limited traditional job opportunities and growing global demand for digital skills, many young Pakistanis have turned to freelancing in fields like design, programming, and writing — building independent careers despite challenges like unreliable internet and electricity.
Q11: What languages are spoken in Pakistan besides Urdu?
Pakistan is linguistically diverse, with major languages including Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, and Saraiki, alongside Urdu as the national language and English used widely in official and educational contexts.
Q12: Why do many overseas Pakistanis stay emotionally connected to Pakistan?
Cultural habits — like cooking traditional food, following cricket matches, and seeking out Pakistani communities abroad — often persist regardless of location, reflecting how deeply identity and nostalgia are tied to home, even after emigration.