One day, Safdar claims that he and a colleague were apprehended by Chaudhry Aslam, the then police superintendent. He cut open the sacks of rice, looking for weapons, and took them into custody. The incident demonstrates the dangers of operating an ideologically independent organisation in a corrupt and unpredictable state. Safdar is sanguine. “My only regret is that I was not able to slap Chaudhry Aslam in the face as he arrested us.”

“My job was to take groceries to homes,” says Safdar. “We couldn’t do much for the injured as the government was involved. But lots of families had other emergencies – heart attacks, going into labour. We catered for that despite the operation.”

Edhi workers have not always had an easy relationship with the police. In April 2012, Lyari was consumed by a new iteration of an old gang war. The police staged a crackdown, shutting down electricity and water supplies. Whole streets resembled a warzone as police and gangsters battled. With thousands of people trapped inside without basic supplies, Edhi announced that his ambulances would deliver water, rice and powdered milk door-to-door. This allegedly angered police, and led to widespread conspiracy theories and (unsubstantiated) allegations that ambulance drivers distributed arms.

In Karachi, the security operation that ensued involved a substantial number of alleged extrajudicial killings by police. Sometimes, ambulances are called to clear up the mess. On this subject, Safdar is uncharacteristically reticent. “Whether it is a big raid or a small one, back-up is needed. Sometimes we arrive and find police in masks. It is our job to check if anyone is alive, not to ask any questions.”

A group of Edhi workers arrived at the scene soon after the first blast and provided medical back-up to the security forces. Clad in bulletproof vests, Safdar and his colleagues were inside the airport for 16 hours as the gun battle raged. “During the active fighting, our job was to keep in a corner and watch for injuries and see if someone was shot,” says Safdar. Workers darted out with their stretchers to pick up the wounded. Of the 28 who died, 14 were security officials.

The security crackdown began in earnest in 2014, triggered by two major incidents. One was a Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar, one of the country’s northern cities, on 16 December, in which 150 people, mostly children, were slaughtered. The other, on 8 June, was a brazen assault on Karachi’s airport. Around 11pm, ten heavily armed militants entered the airport and launched an assault. Heavy fighting with the Airports Security Force ensued.

The Defence explosion was caused by a domestic gas cylinder, and four people were badly injured. The rate of injury and death from poor health and safety standards is particularly noticeable now violent crime has reduced.

“I don’t consider them ambulances,” mutters Safdar. “As far as ambulances go, we are the dons and these guys are just kids.” Once, he got into a physical fight with some Chhipa drivers. Edhi was still alive then and made sure Safdar was arrested. “He wanted to teach me a lesson,” Safdar says.

The Edhi Foundation has around 500 ambulances in Karachi, out of a fleet of more than 1,500 across Pakistan. This makes it the world’s largest voluntary ambulance service. The Chhipa Ambulance Service is also philanthropic, running on a similar model to Edhi. Founded in 2007, it is Karachi’s second-largest ambulance fleet.

Safdar drives at alarming speed, weaving between lanes of traffic, careering down alleyways, siren blaring. Edhi ambulances – small Suzuki Bolan minivans equipped with a single stretcher and oxygen canister – are not set up for pre-hospital care. But their small size means they can zip through Karachi’s five lanes of frequently gridlocked traffic at high velocity. Safdar shouts through his loudspeaker for people to move. “Hey Muslim! Go quicker!” he calls to a man with a long beard wearing a prayer hat. “Rickshaw driver, get out of the way! Old lady, move it! Son of a bitch, are you drunk?” He screeches to a halt outside the flats where the explosion has taken place. A crowd of journalists has assembled, and blue-clad drivers from the Chhipa Ambulance Service greet Safdar warmly.

Sitting in the tea shop, Safdar pours a small amount of his tea into the saucer so it will cool quicker, slurping it up from the plate. “I am always on call even though I’m free right now,” he says. A call comes through. In an instant, Safdar is in his ambulance. There has been an explosion in the Defence Housing Authority, an upmarket suburb.

Until recently, ambulance drivers were constantly on the go. Now that the security situation has calmed, what drivers term “gunshot incidents” – targeted killings, bomb attacks and gang battles – are less common.

Between jobs, Safdar can usually be found in one of the small shops near the Kharadar base. The biryani stall dishes up heaps of steaming rice and meat to drivers on their breaks. The ‘juice bar’, with white walls and bright orange plastic seats, sells fried chicken and canned drinks. Safdar loves to cook and sometimes takes over the kitchen here. The tea shop nearby brews vats of traditional masala chai; milky, sweet, spiced tea which fuels everyone at the Kharadar office through their long shifts.

Safdar holds a sheet to cover a body retrieved at the port. © Akthar Soomro/Reuters

The call comes in the early afternoon. A dead body has been spotted in the sea, near the port. Siren blaring, Safdar weaves between cars. “It is not common for us to have accidents, and when we do, it is usually the public’s fault,” he says. A large truck fails to give way. “I don’t think you can even hear the horn!” he shouts, glaring at the driver.

At the port, Safdar picks up the sheet from his stretcher. Bodies are harder to lift when they are waterlogged: limbs are fragile and parts can come away. When the wooden rescue boat comes in, he and a colleague climb nimbly down the rocks and onto the boat. They roll the corpse onto the sheet, wrap it around, and carry it up to the waiting stretcher. It is a fresh corpse, a few hours old, and has not started to smell. The man was in his 60s.

When a body is found, a strict procedure follows. The ambulance takes it to a government hospital, where the death is logged and if possible, relatives contacted. If the person was not carrying ID, the body goes to a police station. From there, it is taken to the Edhi mortuary, where further efforts are made to track its identity. If this proves impossible, the body ends up in the Edhi graveyard.

The Edhi mortuary is in Sohrab Goth, an impoverished area that until recently was an urban hotbed of militancy. The mortuary is set back from the road, with a large open waiting area lined with benches where relatives can wait. To the left are rooms where bodies are washed. To the right is the cold storage facility. A strong smell of disinfectant pervades the building. This is the only functional morgue in Karachi.

Although state hospitals are equipped with cold storage facilities, most are not operational, with funds earmarked for their maintenance frequently diverted elsewhere. The mortuary deals with unidentified bodies and the aftermath of disasters, but families can also pay for deceased relatives to be stored while they await burial, or for the bodies to be washed in the traditional Islamic way.

Ghulam Hussain, the senior clerk, has worked at the mortuary for 12 years. After his first day, he walked out. “There were so many bodies, in all conditions, fully mutilated, so there were just parts of them. When I saw that, it was like the ground was pulled from under me. It is impossible to forget. It stays with me, it never fades,” he says. Two months later, he returned, and stayed. “Slowly, I got used to it. Human beings tend to manage things.” He says that on average, between four and six unidentified bodies come in each day, rising to between 10 and 12 in the summer. Up to 30 also arrive from families.

A body at the Edhi Foundation morgue, waiting to be collected by relatives. © Akthar Soomro/Reuters

This is difficult work, and Hussain takes refuge in systems. He describes the details of procedures for treating and identifying the bodies. Until a few years ago, bodies were buried within three days, in keeping with the Islamic tradition of swift burial. Now that Pakistan’s ID card system is biometric, fingerprints are taken from corpses and sent to the ID authority to check for a database match. This can take anything from 24 hours to several weeks.

Two men arrive, looking for a relative who went missing eight years previously. Hussain gives them the catalogue, a macabre photo album. When an unclaimed body arrives, staff take three photographs of the face: one from the front and one from each side. These are filed along with a serial number that marks the shroud and then the grave, so that even after burial relatives can find their loved ones.

The cold storage facility is a metal room with its own diesel generator to ensure the temperature remains at zero degrees despite Karachi’s frequent power cuts. The bodies are laid out on metal grills, with three levels. There are two halls. Both smell overpoweringly of disinfectant, but this does not entirely cover the cloying smell of the corpses. In the first room are bodies brought by families for temporary storage, entirely covered by white shrouds, with labels stating their name, age and religion. In the second are the unidentified bodies. Their faces are showing – a practical measure to ease identification. A stray hand or foot sticks out in places. Some bear signs of violence, their shrouds bloodied. One man’s face is caved in. He was killed by a bullet to the head. “It is not shocking at all to me to see bodies in such a state of disarray,” says Hussain.

When there is a big disaster – a terror attack, a fire, a flood or heatwave – the bodies usually pass through the mortuary. Hussain is troubled not by things he’s seen, but times when due process could not be followed. On 11 September 2012, there was a huge fire at a textile factory in the district of Baldia Town. The fire broke out near the compound’s locked gates: there was no escape. Over 600 people were injured and more than 200 died.

Safdar worked solidly for four days to retrieve dead bodies and survivors. “The bodies were so badly burnt that if you tried to hold them, they would crumble. It was so jelly-like that there was no way to hold on to them or carry them out,” he says. “You’ll hate me for saying this, but we had to use hooks from the butcher’s shop to drag the bodies out, wrapped in plastic sheets. You don’t think about it at the time. You just have to do what the situation dictates.”

Most of the bodies went to the hospital and then, too charred to be readily identified, to the mortuary. For Hussain, it stands out not because of the overwhelming volume of bodies to process, wash and identify, but because of the pressure to do so quickly. Karachi is highly politicised, and occasionally after a big disaster, pressure is exerted by one criminal or political element or another to release bodies quickly. That’s what happened in this case. “We couldn’t follow our procedures,” says Hussain. “We couldn’t test the bodies.” He is sure that some went to the wrong families. That still distresses him.