***But there has been something different tbiAime around — it's emergency in a time of internet. Yes, the internet was already very much with us 8 years ago when General Musharraf came to power, but those were days of dial-up connections, when having internet access meant little more than being able to use email and connecting to newspapers and news channels in different parts of the world.***

Iwas in a supermarket in London, in the dairy aisle, when a fellow Pakistani-in-

London called on my mobile to say, "I'm calling to inform you about a state of emergency." As I was expecting her and her husband for dinner there was a moment when I thought that she meant some domestic crisis was forcing her to cancel our evening plans. When the real meaning behind her words became apparent, a split second later, I couldn't help but be aware of how familiar my reaction -- despair, confusion, anger,uncertainty- was.

I was four when Zia-ul-Haq came to power, and in the thirty years that followed I had learnt more than enough about "state of emergency," "martial law," "crackdown on opposition” and all those other phrases which were In the news by the following morning.

But there has been something different this time around -- it's emergency in a time of internet. Yes, the internet was already very much with us 8 years ago when General Musharraf came to power, but those were days of dial-up connections, when having internet access meant little more than being able to use email and connecting to newspapers and news channels in different parts of the world.

This time it's been different. In the days after the emergency, I had Pakistan's GEO news channel on almost 24 hours a day. Not via cable or satellite -- but via live streaming video feed on-line. As the government ordered cable operators in Pakistan to block all news channels except state-run PTV, the internet hummed with directions towards websites which hosted live feed -- and soon enough the websites of several

news channels, too, allowed you to watch their transmissions live via your broadband connection.

If time was of the essence, and you only wanted to see the most interesting programming of the day from two or three different channels, the blog pkpolitics.com uploaded clips of talk shows and discussion programs, updated every few hours. For news of protests in your neighbourhood, wherever in the world you might be, there were blogs, facebook groups, email list Serves. The somewhat ironic outcome of all this is that as a Pakistani living abroad, with high-speed internet access, you were likely to have more up-to-date information, and generally feel more plugged-in, than a great many people in Pakistan who didn't have the same facility. Realising that, it becomes obvious that while the internet is a useful tool in times of civil protest, it's also a very limited tool which can only reach small proportions of the population.

For those of us, far away, to whom the internet affords a virtual 24-hour news feed of life back home, the disconnect between the world outside our window and the world we're attached to via our computers can seem very bizarre. Of course, if I were in Pakistan my life would be following more or less its normal routines despite all the turmoil - - but it would be following its normal routines within a world of turmoil, a world in which everyone is keeping one eye on the news, and the air is heavy with rumours and denials. But to live actually in London while feeling yourself virtually in Pakistan is deeply disorienting.

All this Struck me, particularly the first weekend after the emergency. when I left London and my internet connection to take part in a writing festival in Sussex. As

chance would have it, I was part of a panel discussion about the importance of location when writing fiction. One of my copanellists said that when she wrote she tried to ask herself, would this story work if 1 lifted it out of its location and set it down somewhere else? Would it work if it were set in a different time period? For her, she said, it was essential that the answer to both questions were "yes." The stories should have at their heart a human drama, not dependent on time or place.

I felt something close to envy hearing that. When writing about Karachi it is impossible to Imaging lifting the story out of its location and placing it somewhere else. Politics and civil discontentment impress themselves so firmly on the daily fabric of our lives that time and place can rarely be irrelevant to a plot. Does a character turn on the television to watch the news? Well, if it's November 2007, they'll only receive one news channel, parroting distorted versions of the world outside.

Does a couple drive to the airport? If it's October 18, 2007, they'll get caught in the carnage accompanying Benazir's home-coming. Is there a legal battle afoot in the plot? If it's anytime in the latter half of 2007, there are lawyers' strikes to contend with. Whenever I sit down to write anything set in Pakistan, there is a part of my brain which first pauses to ask what was happening politically at that moment in time? How will it affect daily routines, and the directions in which I want the plot to go?

A friend once said to me, “If you're writing about Pakistan you don't ever have to worry about running out of stories." If that's true, why does so much these days feel like a re-run?

Kamila Shamsie is an eminent Pakistani wntw and columnist.