Islamabad

Islamabad is younger than most of its residents' grandparents. When Pakistan was created in 1947 the capital was Karachi, but the government found it remote from the army's headquarters at Rawalpindi and vulnerable on the coast. In 1959 a commission under President Ayub Khan chose a site on the Potohar plateau below the Margalla Hills, beside the existing city of Rawalpindi, and the Greek planner Constantinos Doxiadis was commissioned to design it. Construction began in the early 1960s, the government moved in from 1966, and the name — "city of Islam" — was chosen to signal the new state's identity.

The plan was a grid of square sectors, each about two kilometres to a side, each meant to be largely self-contained with its own market, mosque, schools and parks, arranged on a triangle with its apex towards the hills and designed to keep expanding away from them. Sectors were given a letter and a number, and the lettering still governs how people describe where they live. Rawalpindi served as the interim capital while the work went on, and the two cities have since grown into a single metropolitan area of very different halves.

The capital's history since has been national rather than local: military coups and civilian governments, the long consequences of the Soviet and later American wars in neighbouring Afghanistan, and the refugees, aid agencies and security apparatus that came with them. The bombing of the Marriott Hotel in 2008 and the siege of the Lal Masjid in 2007 were fought out in the capital's own streets. Protest marches from the provinces have repeatedly converged on the Red Zone, where parliament, the Supreme Court and the presidency stand. Building has continued south and east, and the sectors that were farmland in the 1960s are now dense suburbs.

Islamabad is the least Punjabi city in Punjab. Its population was assembled from every province — civil servants, army officers, academics, diplomats and, later, migrants from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Kashmir and beyond — so Urdu, rather than Punjabi, is the common language of the street, with English dominant in offices. The result is a capital with a reputation for being polite, cautious and a little dull, summed up in the old joke that Islamabad is half the size of a Karachi graveyard and twice as dead.

Its cultural life is institutional: the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, Lok Virsa's folk collections, the literature festival, embassy-sponsored concerts and film screenings, and a small circuit of galleries and bookshops in the F sectors. Qawwali, classical music and theatre appear in seasons rather than continuously. Hiking has become a genuinely local pastime: the Margalla trails fill with families and students on winter weekends, and trail numbers are common shorthand.

Social codes are those of Pakistan generally — modest dress, elders greeted first, hospitality pressed on guests, shoes removed indoors — with the added formality of a government town where rank matters and introductions are made carefully. The Friday midday prayer empties offices, and the Faisal Mosque draws tens of thousands. Weekends run Saturday and Sunday, and the city's evening life is domestic: dinner at home or in a market restaurant rather than anything resembling nightlife.

About 1.1 million people live in Islamabad proper and roughly 2.4 million in the Islamabad Capital Territory, while Rawalpindi next door holds more than two million more. The two form one urban area, joined by the Metrobus and by the tens of thousands who commute daily between a cheap old bazaar city and an expensive planned one.

Government is the economy. Ministries, the parliament, the courts, the central bank, the universities and the headquarters of national institutions employ a large share of the workforce, alongside embassies, international organisations, telecommunications and IT companies, and a construction industry that never stops. Property is the local obsession: housing societies spread across the plateau, and plot prices are a standard topic of conversation.

Daily rhythms are office-bound — early starts, a long lunch break around Friday prayers, heavy traffic on the main avenues at either end of the day. Families walk in the sector parks and Fatima Jinnah Park in the evening, and drive up to Daman-e-Koh or Pir Sohawa at weekends. Persistent problems include water supply from Rawal and Simly lakes in dry years, uncontrolled building on the fringes, encroachment on the national park, and the road closures and internet restrictions that accompany political protests. Air quality is better than Lahore's but no longer good, especially in winter.

Islamabad has no cuisine of its own. Because it was populated from everywhere, its food is the food of the whole country brought together: Punjabi karahi and seekh kebabs, Peshawari chapli kebab — a flat, spiced beef patty fried in fat — and namkeen karahi from the north-west, Afghan pulao and mantu, Kashmiri gushtaba, and in the better restaurants Sindhi biryani and Balochi sajji, a whole lamb or chicken roasted on a stake.

Breakfast is the old Punjabi standard: halwa puri with chickpeas on Sundays, nihari or siri paye in Rawalpindi's bazaars, and doodh pati, tea boiled with milk. Street snacks are chana chaat, samosas, pakoras and dahi bhalla, sold at market corners in the late afternoon. In the hills above the city, corn roasted on charcoal and tea from roadside stalls are part of any weekend drive.

The eating geography is simple. Melody in G-6 and Aabpara have the older, cheaper grills; Jinnah Super and Kohsar Market in F-7 hold most of the cafés, bakeries and international restaurants; the Blue Area feeds office workers at lunch; and Saidpur Village and the Margalla ridge are where the city goes for dinner with a view. Sweets follow the Punjabi repertoire — gulab jamun, barfi, jalebi and, in winter, gajar ka halwa made from carrots, milk and ghee.