KARACHI – Despite spending years in foreign cultures and countries, aGerman politician of Pakistani origin feels her love for her hometown ofKarachi is as fresh as a daisy even today and she has a yearning to be hereforever.
Sorya Leonie Lippert, who is currently serving as mayor of the Bavariancity of Schweinfurt, was born in 1954 to a Pakistani father and Germanmother in London. She was three years old when she first came to the portcity of the South Asian country along with her parents.
Lippert spent her childhood days in different parts of Karachi, before shewas sent abroad for education. She married a local man and got settled inGermany.
Talking to an international media outlet, she said her love for Pakistangrew after she moved to Germany.
“I may be a German according to my passport,” she told Arab News, “but whenI see the vibrancy of this town [Karachi] and the friendliness of peoplewho may have big issues in life, I know that my heart is in Pakistan.”
Lippert was a classmate of Pakistan’s first woman prime minister lateBenazir Bhutto and they spent two years together at a boarding school inMurree as close friends.
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It is her love for Karachi that she visited the city every two yearsdespite her busy schedule as a mother and a politician.
Still searching for her ancestral home in the port city, the German mayorused to visit the beach whenever she is in Karachi.
“We have a little hut at the Sandspit Beach,” she said. “My friends alwaystell me, ‘You can’t go there. It’s dangerous.’ But I need to go there.”
Lippert said she did not intend to run for mayor’s office again andexpressed that she would like to embrace Karachi as her permanent home.
