I WILL NEVER LEAVE PAKISTAN
Focus= The Choice to Stay
A dispatch from the Bureau of Belonging
Every few months someone asks me the same question, usually with a visa form open in another tab: when are you leaving? They expect a date. I give them an answer they do not expect. I am not leaving. Not because I cannot. Because I have looked at the alternatives, honestly, and chosen this.
The honest part first
Let us not pretend. The electricity bill hurts. Inflation has bitten every household. The roads in some cities test your patience and your suspension. Anyone who writes a love letter to Pakistan without admitting this is selling something. I am not selling anything. I am telling you why, with all of that on the table, I still choose to wake up here.
The table is never empty
In Pakistan, a guest is not an inconvenience. A guest is an event. Knock on a stranger’s door in a village in the north and you will likely leave with tea, food and directions you did not ask for. Families here still eat together. Grandparents still live with grandchildren, not in a care home two cities away. When something goes wrong, you do not call a service. You call a cousin, and three more turn up.
That instinct is measurable. In a nationally representative survey of about 10,000 households, the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy found that around 98% of households gave in some form, whether money, goods or time (Express Tribune). A country that gives like that is a country that will catch you when you fall.
Food that remembers you
Nihari at dawn in old Lahore. Sajji in Quetta. Chapli kebab in Peshawar. Biryani in Karachi that starts arguments. A bun kebab from a cart that costs less than a coffee abroad and tastes better than most restaurants anywhere. Here food is not a product. It is a language, and everyone speaks it.
A landscape the world flies in to see
Within one country you get the Arabian Sea coast, the deserts of Thar and Cholistan, the plains of the Indus, and then the north: five of the world’s fourteen peaks above 8,000 metres, including K2, the second highest mountain on Earth (Pakistan Tourism). People spend their life savings to see what some of us can reach on a long weekend.
Five thousand years under your feet
Mohenjo-daro, Taxila, the Lahore Fort and Shalimar Gardens, the tombs of Makli, Rohtas Fort, Takht-i-Bahi. Six UNESCO World Heritage properties (UNESCO). You do not visit history here. You commute past it.
Young, and building
About two thirds of Pakistanis are under 30, according to the 2023 census as reported by the government (MoIB). That is not a statistic. That is energy. Pakistan’s IT exports reached a record $3.8 billion in FY25, with the freelance and remote-work segment up 90% (Dawn). You can earn in dollars from a room in Multan and spend in rupees among the people you love. Few places on Earth allow that equation.
Why I stay
- Because a life is measured in people, not passports.
- Because the cost of a good life, with family around you, is still within reach here in a way it is not in many Western cities.
- Because the problems are real, and someone has to stay to fix them.
- Because when my country is rebuilt, I want to be able to say I was here for it.
Leaving is easy. It takes a form and a flight. Staying takes a decision. I have made mine.
— Illuminati Pakistan
The Eye is Watching