Daily Times

KARACHI: Only two weeks remain in Pakistan’s general elections and election activities are in full swing but not for the residents of Lyari who are mourning the exit of their favorite team Brazil from FIFA World Cup 2018.

“Trust me if Brazil had not failed and contested in the finals, no one in Lyari would have remembered there was an election going on in Pakistan,” says Meer Durraj Khan, a young resident of Ali Muhammad Mohala, Lyari.

Meer Durraj Khan says that the people started partaking in election related activities only after Brazil lost the match.

“Even now, there is a lull in Lyari’s election activity and the customary pre-election zeal that Lyari is known for is nowhere in sight because people are still mourning Brazil’s elimination from the World Cup,” he adds.

In Lyari’s Ali Muhammad Mohala neighborhood, almost everyone has displayed a flag of the country they are supporting in the World Cup.

The residents have decorated narrow streets of the Lyari neighborhood with buntings, flags, pennants and penaflex posters of their favorite players.

Flags of various teams participating in the World Cup 2018 have been painted on walls in the neighborhood. In many ways, these walls chronicle the history of FIFA World Cup. Football enthusiasts of Lyari have scribbled the names of FIFA World Champions since 1930 on these walls. One such wall, in the Ali Muhammad Mohala, lists down the years in which Brazil won the football world cup.

Another resident of Lyari Usman Zai says that people are grieving over Brazil’s defeat to Belgium in the FIFA world cup. “I have quit watching football matches after Brazil got knocked out from the world cup. Without Brazil, the final matches will not be as exciting,” declares Usman Zai. Twenty year old Shah Murad alias Shani Al Qahtani, a diehard fan of the Saudi football team says that he will remember 2018 as the year of the World Cup not as the year of the elections.

“We wait for the FIFA World Cup for four years and when it comes, it brings happiness and excitement. Who cares about the elections,” says Shah Murad.

Shah Murad, who nicknamed himself after his favorite football player Yasser Al-Qahtani, says that his biggest wish is that the candidates contesting elections from Lyari come to his area and sit with local people to watch football.

“But no one has so far came” he adds dejectedly, “we (the residents), on self help basis, arranged a mammoth size screen to watch football matches,” he explains.

In Shah Murad’s neighborhood, the residents have reserved a small corner for the screening of football matches.

It is here that a large number of football enthusiasts from the area huddle to watch football matches on a mounted screen. “We collect donations and offer soft drinks to the people coming to watch football,” says Murad.

Published in Daily Times, July 14^th 2018.