Flying back to Karachi

It happened in a matter of seconds. Before we knew it, a stranger clad fashionably in a pair of jeans, T-shirt and a hat opened the back door of our car, got inside, pulled his gun out and asked dad to drive. At a corner he was joined by his crony. The only other people in the car were dad and younger sister; one was driving while the latter was seated in the passenger seat. Both men very politely asked us to hand over our wallets and our cellular phones. We were officially being robbed at gunpoint. Rewinding to how we got there, my younger sister and I had gone to the airport to pick up our father. He had just concluded one of his journeys and was coming back to the homeland via a flight from Dubai. After picking him up, we were turning down the street from Sharea Faisal towards home when two motorcycles behind us crashed into each other. The only other vehicles on the road were a white Mehran, which was on our left, and a black Corolla in front of us.

A man got out of the Mehran and slapped one of the riders. We were shocked. We stopped, as did the black Corolla in front of us, and dad unlocked the car doors so he could step out to see what was going on. And that is when it all happened. Interestingly, the motorcycle riders and the Mehran cleared the road seconds later. It was all a set-up.

The road on which this happened is manned by a pair of policemen who, very conveniently for the robbers, weren’t at their positions when the incident occurred. However, they did appear soon after we were robbed.

While in the car (I was sitting at the back with the robbers, one of the guns rested on my left leg) we cooperated and gave up our wallets and mobiles. The robbers were nice enough to only pick out the cash from the wallets and return them to us – saves us the hassle of cancelling credit and identification cards and other documents.

At a certain point, in the middle of a busy street surrounded by hospitals, dad parked the car and asked the men to leave, since they already had what they had come for. Then he started yelling, more than the robbers, that upset my sister who started crying and begged dad to calm down. Interestingly, the robbers were waiting for their ride to pick them up. In order to placate dad, they returned our cellular phones!

They asked dad to relax and asked me whether they had behaved badly with us. I responded with a quick ‘no,’ careful not to look them in the eye. Unlike my sister, my mind had gone into pilot-mode, I didn’t feel a thing. I still don’t feel the expected shock people keep talking about.

Taking the car keys, the robbers left. My sister and I walked home while dad stayed with the car. Accompanied by a neighbour, my mother went with the spare key towards dad and to register a report with the local police station.

The news swept like wildfire among family and friends and pretty soon we were inundated with calls by well-wishers, some of whom had shared similar experiences. What was disturbing to note was the similarity in the stories that they shared. In one, a family of eight was returning from the airport after performing Haj. As is customary in some families, they had bought a lot of gold jewellery on their trip. Soon after leaving Sharea Faisal, they were cornered by a small group of men who threatened them with guns and then robbed them.

In another incident, a couple was returning from Canada after attending their son’s graduation ceremony. They managed to get home safely somewhere in Defence, but that’s where their safe passage ended. They responded to an immediate knock on the door and were confronted by a man and a woman pointing guns at them, who searched the house for valuables and apparently knew which country the couple had just flown in from. They abducted the couple and hours later, left them stranded on a road in Gulshan-i-Iqbal.

All these incidents began at the airport. There are apparently groups of robbers keeping an eye out for all the passengers leaving the venue since they expect them to carry valuable gifts for their friends and family, especially those flying in from foreign locations. Once considered to be a safe place, the airport has been targeted as a place for selecting victims in the manner of a watering hole in the African jungle, where carnivorous predators pick their prey.

Another odd thing about the robberies has been that those committing the crime seem to come across as regular, educated, college-going individuals: they dress nice, talk well – they don’t fit the stereotype.

Instead of lamenting the lack of security being provided to citizens, all I can say is: please keep your car doors locked at all times and don’t make an attempt to help anyone who’s seemingly caught up in a roadside quarrel. Call the police. They’re bound to arrive… at some point.