KARACHI: Sultan Muhammad, a resident of the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, shuddered as he received a phone call that upended his life last week.
On the other end was his daughter, her voice trembling as she pleaded:
“Papa, come home as soon as you can, both brothers have been electrocuted.”
Muhammad’s tragedy was among 17 deaths in electrocution, wall collapse and drowning incidents that were reported in Pakistan’s commercial capital last week, as the city’s crumbling infrastructure once again buckled under heavy monsoon rains. The disaster laid bare both the human toll and the governance failures that accompany Pakistan’s intensifying climate shocks.
For Muhammad, a father of four who works at Karachi airport, only three miles stood between him and his sons, yet choked traffic, flooded streets and paralyzed rescue services turned it into an agonizing eternity.
