| Welcome to 2020! The less said about the news the better, so let's jump right in.
We're starting off the year with a dispatch from one of our favorite correspondents, Saba Imtiaz, and her deep dive on the dismantling of a big portion of Karachi's Empress Market. Karachi is in the grips of an "anti-encroachment drive," targeting informal structures such as markets, stalls, carts, and rickshaws in the name of progress—and stripping the city of its character in the process. Empress Market, which once sprawled around its central colonial-era building and where you could find everything from scorpions to spices to birds and walking sticks, is not the only victim of the crackdown, but it is the most significant. "There are very few things—or people—in Karachi that are indispensable," writes Imtiaz. "But Empress Market was a vital cog in the food supply chain of restaurants and vendors and households. It supported an economy in and of itself." Around 1,700 shops, stalls, and carts around the market have been demolished, robbing thousands of their livelihoods and hollowing out one of Karachi's most important hubs. But as Imtiaz notes, tracing how the city's modern history intertwines food, crime, and intrigue, this kind of thing isn't new: "Restaurants and food vendors in Karachi have long borne the brunt of someone's rage, whether it is those enforcing the law or breaking it." The anti-encroachment drive also follows a long pattern of Karachi's rulers turning against the very people that make Karachi—Pakistan's most populous and most diverse city—what it is. This week on The Trip podcast, Nathan sips Clamato at Tijuana's Hotel Ticuan with Gera Gámez, a recent deportee with an almost cinematically tough life story. He spent the first nine years of his life in Nayarit, Mexico, before his mother, who had gone north to Los Angeles when he was an infant, came back for him—landing him right in the middle of 1990s gang warfare in South Central Los Angeles and the Rodney King riots. Gera drifted out of high school and into a gang himself, and got shot at the age of 22, paralyzing him from the waist down. (He was shot again later that same year, in the head, and also survived.) After being tapped without papers in Mexico less than two years ago, he has had to adjust to life in Tijuana with no feasible way of getting back to the U.S., but he is now helping others with Al Otro Lado, a legal aid group that helps asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children. The holidays are over, but Luminary is still offering—until January 12th—a 50% discount on subscriptions, so sign up here by Sunday to get The Trip and all of Luminary's exclusive podcasts for just $3.99/month (plus one month free trial). You can now also get started with your Alexa-enabled device: "Alexa, start my free Luminary trial." Tune in for our forthcoming Beirut episodes, recorded in the midst of the revolution. —Alexa | 
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