Karachi Nights

Sarah Stuteville for the Pulitzer Center (slideshow by Alex Stonehill)

No matter how frenzied the exhaust-coated sun-saturated day is in Karachi—this city really lives at night.

Hawks come out against the dirty pink sunset, their wide ragged wings stretched against the salty wind rising from the clanging port. The yellow street lights buzz on, their harsh glow smeared in the heavy humid air. Children, barefoot and bored, poke their lazy limbs through wrought iron bars that cage apartment balconies.

And then all at once the rising night floods in with the call of a hundred muezzins layering like rounds until one last cry to God falls back to earth as a lonely prayer, settling somewhere among 14 million people, all jostling against each other for some small piece of economic opportunity in this explosive city.