Karachi, After Midnight, Vol. 1, Part I of III: Counting Traffic
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Volume 1, Part I of III. This paperback holds one part of Volume 1. The Volume 1 Complete Edition holds all of its parts in one book.
A gay man’s online diary from Pakistan’s dial-up era.
Karachi, After Midnight: Volume 1, Part I compiles Shams’s entries from July to August 2003.
These are the first posts, written in the middle of Karachi’s rain and infrastructure collapse. Shams starts by literally counting: cars, buses, motorcycles, the minutes of traffic jams, and the city’s motion turned into numbers. He writes from inside congestion, heat, and the small humiliations of the street, then swings into sudden declarations and nervous comedy, including the early “I am gay” moment he repeats like a dare to himself.
There’s already a private world forming behind the city noise: MIRC conversations, the first “boyfriend” post, and the fear of what it would mean to tell his family. The tone is restless, obsessive, and alive, like someone writing to keep himself from disappearing.
Publisher: Khajistan Press
Author: Shams Tabrizi
Language: English
Type: Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-970281-00-2
Pages: 167
Item Weight: 0.43 lbs
Dimensions: 5 x 8 inches
How Karachi, After Midnight is sold
The diary is published in three volumes. Each volume is one book, and it is also printed as shorter paperbacks, one per part. Buy the Complete Edition to get a whole volume in one book. Buy a part if you only want that stretch of the diary. A Complete Edition holds every part of its volume, so you do not need both.
Volume 1 (2003)
Part I: Counting Traffic
Part II: Storm Season
Part III: City Electric
Complete Edition, Parts I to III in one book
Other volumes
Volume 2 (2004), Complete Edition
Volume 3 (2005 to 2009), Complete Edition
The Complete Editions of every volume, as a set
Karachi, After Midnight Series
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