A Portrait in Pictures of Karachi, Pakistan, by photographer Aliraza Khatri

[p]Karachi is Pakistan's biggest city. Its reputation in the west is marred by a few, high-profile instances of Islamic militancy--bomb attacks and the murder by beheading of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, by Islamic fanatics in February 2002. But Karachi, which sprawls so ravenously over the land that it's the world's 20th largest metropolitan area, is also considered to be Pakistan's "city of lights," a center of culture, immigrant energy and economic activity unrivaled in the rest of the country. Just as Karachi's western reputation is disproportionately tarnished by a fes instances of sensational violence, so is Pakistan's reputation in general too tarnished by its political upheavals. These photographs, by Aliraza Khathri, a 16-year-old boy in Karachi, are remarkable for their evocative power and reflections of a city's variety in art, history and atmosphere. (They are used here by permission.)