I see parallels between Karachi and the cities that I was familiar with: a very different place, but in terms of its human stories not really very different at all. That was what excited me about the place - that it was so complex, as difficult to me as an outsider and yet so human in a way that was ultimately very familiar.
Steve InskeepResearchers have been asking a basic question of young people. Should men be allowed to beat their wives? How you answer that question may depend on where you live. U.N. researchers put that question to adolescent girls in India and Pakistan and 53 percent - a majority of girls - said yes, wife beating is justifiable even if it's for refusing sex.
Steve InskeepLet me name three of the people who influenced me, although it's definitely not a complete list. Ayesha Jalal, the formidable Pakistani-American historian, has rigorously re-evaluated Jinnah's political strategies leading up to Partition. Akbar Ahmed, a former diplomat and now a distinguished scholar, has documented Jinnah's life as a man who welcomed, worked with, and even married people of other faiths. And then there is Ardeshir Cowasjee, the great Parsi newspaper columnist, who in his mid-80s is a kind of living history of all of Pakistan, old enough to have known Jinnah himself.
Steve Inskeep