(MONSOON: AUGUST 2000)
Today is August 14, Pakistan’s Independence Day, and crowds of boys and youths are running wild in the streets, lighting fire-crackers, shouting “Long live Pakistan,” and waving cricket bats. It’s not polite for a guest in Pakistan to be anything other than enthusiastic about this special day. I’ve been asked a dozen times, “Which is the best country: India or Pakistan?” I dissemble. I say both countries are nice and, in the bakery, I don’t join in the men’s curses against what they think of as the bullying, imperialist, giant neighbor but only tut diplomatically at the evil that is India.
The street is busy with men walking to Iqbal Park on the far side of the Badshahi Masjid, and from the roof terrace I can hear the proceedings of a political rally relayed by loudspeaker. The importance of the day and the number of visitors to the area are matters of concern to the local authorities. The garbage Dumpster that usually stands surrounded by mounds of putrefying garbage at the top of Fort Road has been removed, and the men’s open-air and very public toilet that runs along the adjacent wall of the old water tank has been scraped to within a few inches of cleanliness.
The Hazoori Gardens are full of men and the Pakistani flag is everywhere: on posters and embroidered or printed on badges and caps. Some of the youths are wearing Western-style clothes and T-shirts printed with the words “I love Pakistan.” Visitors squeeze their way through the entrance to the fort, but the main action is taking place fifty meters in front of the Alamgiri Gate. A large crowd has gathered and a policeman is shouting and wielding a lathi, a long bamboo cane. At the center of the crush two young female Japanese tourists are drinking cans of Coke. They’re wearing tight tops and spray-on jeans. Even in Shahi Mohalla the men rarely get to see a woman in anything as revealing: it’s like an open-air sex show. The girls move off toward the masjid and the all-male audience moves with them as a gigantic, fused body.
A flourishing trade is being conducted by Roshnai Gate. Tangas loaded with four-foot-long shafts of ice race by, leaving a watery trail up the road. The ice will be chipped into blocks and sold to those without refrigerators. Street vendors have fashioned lavish displays of fruit and vegetables on their carts. The mountains of mangoes are the most impressive. South Asian mangoes are peerless—sweet and highly fragrant—and in July and August they are everywhere in Lahore: assembled in tall towers at juice stands, piled on carts, on stalls, and in baskets strung over bicycles. It’s worth enduring the monsoon to feast on mangoes. Their skins and big flat stones, sucked bare of their orange flesh, lie scattered on every road.
My landlord, Iqbal, has been working on a new painting over the holiday. A woman comes each day and sits in a modern yellow rickshaw outside the house as Iqbal arranges his easel and works for thirty or forty intense minutes while the light is perfect. He is worried about the bright colors on the rickshaw—worried that all we will see are the colors and not the woman inside. I watch as his frustration and concentration change the shape of his face.
He needs a break from this place, a way to find a different perspective, but I think this will never happen. And if it does, Iqbal might be able to find a kind of peace, but there will be no more pictures that have a voice: when Iqbal Hussain paints, he does so from a troubled heart filled with sadness and an anger that he cannot speak.
Ama-Jee
I’m pleased to be back in Heera Mandi despite the damp, enervating heat and a worryingly unhygienic interruption to the water supply. I have a crate of mangoes in my room, and I’ll take the best to share with Maha’s children. I’m always happy for the first few days of my visits: I catch up with all that I’ve missed; I eat plenty of hot, tasty food; and I wander around the galis. I sit in the vaulted calm of the Badshahi Masjid. I settle into my room and call on my friends. It’s like returning to a sorely missed home—one that hides a disturbing secret. I love this place and hate it in equal measure. It’s both fascinating and loathsome. When I’m away from the mohalla I am desperate to return, yet when I’m here, I can’t wait to escape.
Maha has moved yet again during the two months that I’ve been in England. She’s left the “American kitchen” and come home to the courtyard where she’s taken four rooms on the second floor of a decaying mansion opposite my own room. Little else has changed. Nisha is still ill. She’s thinner than ever and her bones are becoming progressively more deformed. She refuses her medicine and sulks when she’s forced to swallow the tablets. She says they’re too big and they taste awful, so most of the time no one bothers to monitor her medication and the tablets sit in the cupboard gathering dust.
Adnan is still the same indifferent or absent husband. He told Maha that she can go to the Gulf to earn some money, so she’s been working hard: her weight has stabilized and she’s busy transcribing page after page of lyrics in her songbooks. She practices for hours to extend and perfect her repertoire, and harmonium and tabla players visit the house every day to run through the routines.
Leaving the children is going to be difficult. Maha will be away for three months. Not only that: she’s leaving them in the brothel quarter at a time when three of her daughters are ripe for the business. Her family refuses to help unless she can pay them more money than she will earn. They may even put the girls into the business themselves.
Maha is resourceful and she has a plan. She’s found a woman who will care for the children. The new home help lives in the house and works for little more than her food and a bed. She looks to be about 60, but she might be much younger. Whatever her age, she’s quick-witted and fast on her feet. She has bright green eyes that sparkle in a dark, fine-boned face and her plaited hair is long and silvery white. They call her Ama-Jee, which means “respected mother.” It’s a good name for her.
Adnan seems unaware of Ama-Jee’s presence. He doesn’t care about anything except his drugs. When he visits Maha’s home he no longer comes for sex but to smoke hashish and heroin. He changes out of his ordinary clothes and wraps a dhoti around his waist. He sits in a corner, bare-chested and cross-legged, often in the semidarkness, and he lights his hashish and relaxes. I can see the tension ebb from his body. At times I pity him: he’s not the cruel, vicious client of my imaginings—more a fraught and lackluster man struggling with addiction.
“I want Mumtaz to die,” Maha cries. Tonight, yet again, Adnan smoked, gave her a few rupees, and then left. Maha had made a big effort to look attractive: she’s wearing a tight black shalwaar kameez, a lot of shiny pink lipstick, and dramatic coatings of eyeliner. And still he wasn’t tempted.
“I hope she gets cancer,” she spits through tears. “It’s black magic. She’s using black magic.”
Ama-Jee sighs. She’s a servant, but that doesn’t stop her giving Maha the benefit of her wisdom or loud reprimands whenever she feels that Maha is behaving badly. She has some good advice to hand out on the subject of Adnan, and I’m glad, because Maha is obsessed with him and his vilified wife. Whenever we meet she asks the same questions. “Does he love me? Does he love Mumtaz? Does he like sex with Mumtaz more than with me?” I have no idea of the answers.
Tonight we’ve reached a new low. Maha has decided that Adnan prefers his wife because she has larger breasts. I look at Maha’s pneumatic bosom barely contained in a tight kameez and think that the possibility of finding a woman with larger breasts is remote. To clarify her point Maha pulls up her kameez. “Look. Are they nice? Do you think Adnan will like them?” She looks wild and tearful. I assure her that her breasts are absolutely wonderful and that they would be the envy of most women. I also add that it is unlikely that Adnan will measure his love by the size of her breasts, and if he does, she would be better off without him. Maha looks at me as if I’m deranged and without an ounce of understanding.
For once Ama-Jee agrees with Maha. She nods and speaks with an age-old wisdom and a wicked grin. “Men like big tits, big smiles, good hips, and a little kusi.”
Shadi—Wedding Ceremony
Men and women are equal but different in the eyes of Islam: they have separate roles and live in segregated worlds, but both can enter heaven. Real life is not quite as generous to women. Men can have up to four wives, and although it’s usually only better-off men who can afford to support more than one wife, husbands can initiate divorce with such astonishing speed that aging or disappointing women are very vulnerable. Wives don’t have such prerogatives: they’re permitted only one husband at a time, and although they can divorce erring spouses, they invite social death by doing so. A divorced woman in Pakistan is pitied. I’m viewed with compassion by many of the women here because I’m divorced. My friends in Heera Mandi say I should look for a new husband quickly while I still have the youth and looks to capture a man. I don’t think they’re optimistic about my chances.
Sex outside marriage is technically illegal for everyone in Pakistan, but in practice this rule does not apply to men. A marked double standard operates. Women must be chaste daughters, faithful wives, and celibate widows—good women whose sexuality is under tight control. Men, in contrast, are at liberty to have extramarital affairs and indulge themselves with lovers, like those from Heera Mandi, who will be condemned for participating in those same relationships. In places like Shahi Mohalla, society has created a group of women, distinguished from the chaste daughters and faithful wives, who live under another form of male control: simultaneously celebrated for their sensual beauty and derided as unclean.
Men’s first wives are usually selected for them by their parents: they are not romantic partnerships but arranged marriages allying two families rather than two individuals. For this reason it’s unlikely that these marriages will end in divorce. Men who can afford the expense of another wife may enter second and subsequent marriages for more selfish motives: for passion or romance.
Romantic love is forbidden to most people throughout South Asia, and yet, paradoxically, it is also extolled as a cultural ideal in film, music, and literature. Men visit Heera Mandi for sex, but some also come in search of the love and companionship they don’t find at home, and some of the relationships that they form with women of the mohalla are intense, happy, and enduring. A far greater percentage of women, though, will have short-lived marriages: a few may have a shadi, a wedding ceremony in which they wear a beautiful gold embroidered wedding dress, but even fewer possess a nikah nama, a legal contract of marriage. Most will talk about a shadi as a way of speaking about the transactions involved in selling sex. A wedding in these instances can last a single night.
No woman in Heera Mandi claims on first or even second acquaintance to be a prostitute. They say they are nachne walli, dancing girls, and those who are involved in longer-term relationships say that they are married. They have to say this because, otherwise, it means that they are committing zina, unlawful sex.
Young girls aren’t encouraged to commit themselves to a single patron. Their teenage years are their prime years, the years in which the forward-thinking dancing girl must maximize her earnings from clients who are willing to pay a premium for youth. Tying herself to one patron only makes sense if he is extremely wealthy and can offer the teenager the resources usually provided by a number of clients. Once a woman is in her twenties, demand for her services begins to drop. It is at this point that she will consider settling down with one man: she will stop taking other clients and she won’t dance in the bazaar.
Even the most infatuated client rarely stays with his Heera Mandi “wife” for long. His visits will tail off after a couple of years and then cease altogether. The woman will have to look around for a new patron, but by then, she will be a little older and a little fatter. Her options will be more limited and her clients will have less money and status. Maha’s first long-term relationship was with a rich high-status sayeed. Now she’s with Adnan—far less wealthy and a drug addict to boot. She knows that when he leaves, as he almost certainly will, her chances of finding a decent husband will be almost zero.
The most successful of Heera Mandi’s courtesans form relationships with powerful Pakistani men. Farida has a sumptuous home in Gulberg, a rich suburb, that she shares with her sisters and their children. The house stands in its own compound with carefully tended lawns. Guards rush to swing open the gates as we arrive, servants appear, and a couple of gardeners glance up from pruning the bushes and watering the flowers with the fine spray from a hosepipe. We’re taken into a tiled porch bordered with terracotta planters and trailing jasmine, and then through an elaborately carved wooden door into a spacious and shady hall where the air-conditioning gives merciful relief from the summer heat.
I wait with Iqbal in a room full of finely worked wall hangings, sumptuous curtains, and sofas scattered with unyieldingly hard cushions until Farida floats in, petite and vivacious. She is one of three daughters from a family in Heera Mandi who was trained in classical singing and dancing. By the time she was 15, she had become an accomplished performer. Luckily for her family she was also pretty and adept at pleasing her patrons. Her sisters didn’t possess her charm and beauty, but they could still command a sizable fee, and in time the whole family moved away from the mohalla to the comfort and respectability of the suburbs.
Farida became the mistress of a well-known Pakistani politician. There were other women in his world—his wife and the other pretty girls from Heera Mandi who passed through his life, rarely staying more than a few weeks—but for years he came to Farida for relaxation. It was his favorite way to escape the rigors of public life and the pressures of his official family. After almost a decade, the patron found a new love and no longer visited. Today, like so many of the women of Heera Mandi, Farida is alone. Unlike most, though, she possesses some special advantages—a house, a savings account, and, locked in a bank vault, a safe-deposit box brimming with jewels: gold bracelets from Dubai; ruby and emerald sets; and other tokens of love from her former patron that she now sells to sustain her lifestyle.
Ursula is another of those rare women who have escaped the brothel, and her prim manner rarely betrays her upbringing in the galis of Heera Mandi. I refuse a gin and tonic in her reception room because it’s not respectable to drink and Ursula never touches the stuff. She’s unlike any other woman I know in Heera Mandi: she doesn’t carry the mohalla in her every gesture.
Ursula’s husband is twenty years older than her. They have a mut’a marriage, something that until a couple of decades ago was common among the Kanjar. Mut’a is a temporary-contract marriage, the length of which can be specified in advance: it can last hours, days, months, or years. During the marriage the husband supports his wife financially, and as her part of the bargain, the wife provides sexual, domestic, and emotional labor. When the contract ends, the obligations end, although a man is required to support any children born as a result of the marriage. Ursula has had a succession of year-long mut’a marriages, and when one marriage comes to an end, her husband decides whether to get married all over again: she’s on a kind of rolling contract.
It has paid her well: she has a lovely house in the exclusive suburb of Defence. Ursula’s home, like Farida’s, possesses manicured lawns, an army of servants, thick carpets, and uncomfortable sofas. Her husband arrives from the Polo Club in his new Mercedes, striding in, exuding confidence, and giving us a hearty greeting. His English is impeccable, the result of a British education, and he sits like a potentate in a large leather armchair conversing upon many topics of international interest. He gives no indication that he is embarrassed by being caught at the home of a former Heera Mandi dancing girl. It’s acceptable for rich men to have many wives, and extramarital affairs are almost compulsory for a man of status.
Respectable Wives
I have lots of noisy neighbors. The loudest open their shutters and play their tape decks at full blast. Sometimes, several families set themselves up in competition. Punjabi songs are the most popular with their catchy melodies and rhythmic beat, but they have to battle with the sounds of rickshaws, youths on motorbikes, and the shouts of children playing or fighting. When I sit on the rooftop and concentrate I can also hear shouting from the house twenty yards down the street, and over the weeks it has become part of the background noise, blending with the other commotion.
I’ve never seen the young woman who is being shouted at. I know of her existence only because I’ve been told that she’s there and I can hear her being instructed and reprimanded by others in the household.
The house is owned by Rani. She’s a friendly woman, and I spend the odd evening with her, sitting on the floor and eating spicy fried potatoes. Rani’s eldest son is 22, and it is his wife who is the household’s ghostly figure, hovering somewhere upstairs. She’s a “proper” wife: she is not, and never has been, in the sex business. The sons of nachne walli don’t marry dancing girls: their first wives are girls of unquestioned virtue. Many come from outside the mohalla, from respectable but impoverished families in the villages.
In Pakistani society control over female sexuality is a marker of a man’s status and honor. To win respect men must compete with, and dominate, other men in the public world, and they must keep tight control of the sexuality of the women in their family. The sons of the mohalla are unable and unwilling to exercise this kind of rigorous control over their mothers, sisters, and daughters, but they can do so over their secluded and protected wives. In a bizarre twist, the daughters of these women will enter the sex trade when they are teenagers.
In this brothel community, women have a high status because they sustain their families with the sale of their bodies: they have a clear financial value. Ironically, respectable wives like Rani’s daughter-in-law are only one step removed from domestic slaves. They do all the household chores: they wash, clean, cook, sew, produce children, and care for them. These women don’t get paid, and so are often treated with contempt. For Rani’s daughter-in-law, the benefits of being a genuine wife may not be all that clear. Unfortunately, I cannot ask her directly. She is completely secluded, and I will never see her.
Tibbi Gali
Tibbi Gali is the cheap end of the Lahori sex market. It’s easy to get lost in this part of Heera Mandi, and I’ve been told repeatedly not to come here alone because of the danger. It’s supposed to be a terrible place, with bad women and many thieves. Absolutely everyone says the same thing—even the people who live here. The women say it of themselves: they are kharab—bad, spoiled.
A group of young men sitting in the bazaar insist that the women in Tibbi Gali are the very worst kind of women. “They can’t dance or sing. They sell their bodies, that’s all,” one says indignantly.
“And they do it for nothing—for one hundred and fifty rupees [$3],” says another, disgusted by the contemptible price.
“The old ones are even cheaper,” a youth tells the others. “An old woman costs twenty rupees [thirty-four cents].” They shake their heads and laugh. It’s the price of a bottle of Coke.
There are several ways to enter Tibbi Gali, but today I walk down the road from the bazaar to Taxali Gate, past the shoe shops, left down a narrow road, and then left again up into the gali. It seems like a long walk. The gali climbs and winds through tightly packed buildings, alleys branching off and tapering into narrow, gloomy passageways. Women lean against door frames, lie on rope beds or blankets in tiny, dark rooms flanking the gali and passages. A few younger girls saunter by in brightly colored shalwaar kameez, chatting to their friends, their body movements supplely relaxed and loaded with provocative sexuality. Respectable women don’t move like this; they keep their bodies stiff and strictly regulated.
The road turns again and then curves quickly downhill to where Tibbi Gali joins the road to Bhati Gate. At several places along the gali the bricks and paving stones covering the drains have collapsed, leaving gaping holes in which wastewater pools with sewage and decomposing rubbish. At one point, not far from the shoe market, the collapse is so severe that almost the entire ten-foot-wide gali has fallen into the drains. A couple of stepping stones allow the constant stream of pedestrians to do a deft hop over the filth-choked subsidence. The most vacant of the matted-haired drug addicts stumble through the morass oblivious. Passage along the gali is made difficult by other kinds of obstacles. There are goats tethered to the houses, piles of fodder, disoriented drug addicts, peddlers selling fruit and vegetables, and testosterone-fired youths riding motor-bikes at insane speeds.
I can see fifty or sixty women. Even in the shadow of their little rooms you can see the brightness of their lipstick. Only rarely does it appear as if it’s been applied with the aid of a mirror. They don’t look like women in the other parts of Heera Mandi: these women are clearly for sale. Most are looking at me quizzically. Some are stony-faced. Others shout to their friends to come and see the goree, white woman, passing through their world. They peep out of the darkness and laugh. Some smile and reply to my greeting. They are friendly, these women who are the most despised of the despised.
The Luxury of Purdah
Most women in Pakistan wear a dupatta, a piece of cloth about three feet wide and seven feet long. It’s used to cover the hair and breasts—those signs of female sexuality considered to incite men to lust. Wearing a veil is a sign of respectability, but no one wears a dupatta in Tibbi Gali: there’s no point. These are the lowest order of women, and they are granted no comforting pretenses when they work here. Pretensions only cost them money, so they remove their dupattas to show that they’re public women for sale.
Many women wear a chador, which is like a very large dupatta. Some wear a burqa, a long black cloak that covers them from head to foot. Dupattas, chadors, and burqas are part of observing purdah, which means “curtain,” and is the real or symbolic divide between the sexes. Islam is very positive about sex, providing it takes place within marriage. The problem is that attraction between men and women is considered so inevitable and so uncontrollable that it will lead to chaos if it isn’t regulated. Separating the sexes is essential to prevent fornication and maintain social order. Men and women have to live in separate worlds. Ideally, they are divided by walls and physical space and women are secluded in their homes. Well-off families can afford to keep their women in the luxury of purdah as a sign of status, but the poor don’t have the finances to cocoon females within their family, so when these women appear in public, they are divided from men by the use of a veil. These rules on veiling don’t apply to Westernized, educated elites, and throughout Lahore rich Westernized women wear a dupatta as a hair accessory rather than as a head cover. Some walk around bare-headed, their veils no more than a sliver of gauze tossed over their shoulders. The old women of Heera Mandi, steeped in tradition, think such styles are brazen.
I spend a lot of my time walking, veiled, in the streets; I want to observe the mohalla, and occasionally I like to get out from between four walls. The local women ask me why I do this. They say, “Why do you go into the streets like a shameless woman?” We don’t understand each other. Perhaps it’s surprising that they still want to be my friend. I’ve thought about this often. I used to think it was because I’m foreign and am assumed to be rich and generous, but the reality is a little more complicated. Sex workers in all parts of the world are friendly: being nice to strangers is their trade. In Heera Mandi, women who stay at home most of the time enjoy receiving visitors because it breaks the monotony of the day. And, perhaps most importantly, having a foreign acquaintance is associated with status and with an international lifestyle. I’ve never had the slightest difficulty making contact with the women of the mohalla: higher-class women lean out of their windows and beckon me in, and in Tibbi Gali, they rush out of their rooms and take me by the hand. Most of the women are unfamiliar with the names “England” or “Britain,” but they’ve heard of London, America, and New York, and they like to introduce me to everyone they know as their friend from one of these exciting places.
I may be socially valuable, but I’m also alarmingly indiscreet because I don’t always adhere to the strict rules over the separation of the sexes. Sometimes I speak to men in the courtyard, and in the evenings, I sit with Iqbal on his roof terrace. Excuses are made for me, but I realize that I cause confusion. The idea that men and women can be friends—and no more than friends—is inconceivable, especially in the mohalla. I have a friend, a Pakistani man whom I’ve known for years. We meet occasionally when he flies into Lahore and we go for dinner at the Pearl Continental Hotel. Maha is always excited when I’m about to see him, coaxing me to put on more makeup. A couple of nights ago I returned from a meal with him and Maha was expectant. She wanted to know the details.
“How much did he give you?” she asked.
I looked askance, and she tipped her head to one side.
“Twenty thousand rupees [$337]?” she questioned, trying to read my face.
“Thirty thousand [$505]?” she gasped. “You were that good?”
Shame
A competitive, often cutthroat hierarchy operates in Heera Mandi. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women sell sex in the mohalla, but even though they live in the same geographic space, they inhabit separate social worlds and do not interact except during religious events. An unofficial grading system divides women. The elite are “A” class: young and beautiful, with rich clients and a quality background that breeds good manners. Middle-ranking women fall into the “B” category: they’re not so pretty—perhaps older or with coarser manners. The cheapest women, like those in Tibbi Gali, are “C” category. A privileged place in this order has to be worked at, and women like Maha behave in a way that is meant to underline their status. Slipping down the hierarchy is the nightmare of higher-class women. They know that aging will cause their foothold on the career ladder to falter and then to fail catastrophically. To forestall this, and to compete with the constant supply of fresh girls new to the trade, they perform an unending, complex, and nuanced piece of theater.
In Heera Mandi, a rich, secluded, and veiled woman has honor. She has superior patrons, and because she is protected in her home and has fewer clients, her fees are much higher. There’s a finely judged code about exactly when and how far a woman should veil. When a male visitor calls at Maha’s house, she adjusts her dupatta in a manner that reflects his social status in relation to her own. If the man is important and has high izzat, honor, she sits on the mattress while covering all of her hair, her breasts, and her legs with a dupatta or chador. She may also lower her gaze and speak quietly. If the man is less important, her dupatta is looser and her hair often tumbles out from under the material. If he’s of low status, the dupatta barely sits on her head and she jokes and laughs loudly while lounging on the mattress. If the man is a workman or a servant, she doesn’t even bother to veil and the dupatta lies crumpled on the floor.
Maha manages what is called her “shame” very carefully. Shame is behavior that is considered demeaning for a woman: it’s associated with sexual activity of any sort, with contact with men, and with the failure to control and discipline the body. Dressing inappropriately, being too friendly with men, smoking, drinking, talking, and moving in a relaxed way—all these things are “shameless.”
Men and women must maintain physical distance, and they mustn’t look at one another either. Orthodox Muslims are trained to observe “purdah of the eyes.” Looking at the opposite sex is like a form of adultery. The women of Heera Mandi are shameless in their flouting of this social code. In Tibbi Gali, the women look men in the eyes as equals. In the fancy kothas of the mohalla the practice is different—more sophisticated but just as daring. The women dance, hiding their faces behind their hands and peeping through their fingers. They keep their eyes fixed on their clients and then, for a carefully choreographed few moments, they drop their gaze to the floor and slowly, longingly, they look back at him. It works every time: the tamash been—customers—are transfixed.
Manipulation of the veil and management of the gaze is an art. Women flirt with a glance that lasts a fraction of a second, and they are provocative even while wearing a piece of material that’s supposed to obscure their sexuality. They fold and refold the cloth, they flick it around and tease it, and then they smooth and drape it in suggestive ways. Paradoxically, a veil can heighten rather than lessen a woman’s sexual power. A woman clad in a burqa walking with the utmost decorum through Heera Mandi can make every man’s head turn with the tinkle of her ankle bracelets, the bright polish on her toenails, and the heavy, intoxicating scent of her perfume.
Shela’s Shop
Shela has a shop on a corner in Tibbi Gali. It’s more like a cupboard than a shop: it measures three feet by four feet and only a few dusty items are on display—cigarettes that she sells one at a time, soap, sweets, sachets of shampoo, noodles, a selection of cheap, artificial jewelry, and hair bands, combs, and clips.
Shela doesn’t usually sit in her shop but on a step on the opposite corner of the gali. She’s a traffic hazard. The gali narrows here to less than six feet wide and pedestrians are forced to negotiate a bend in the lane as well as Shela. Peddlers struggle to pass through, heaving the baskets of goods that are strapped to their bicycles around the shopkeeper. Shela sits in the shade and never flinches. She must have an important position in the gali’s hierarchy to receive such consideration.
Shela appears to be doing well despite her limited stock. She wears gold bangles and lots of dangling earrings from her numerous ear piercings. Like so many women—both inside and outside the brothel quarter—she wears her wealth: it’s the safest way to keep it. She’s around 45, with handsome features and the confident, sharp-eyed look of successful madams. She must trade in far more than the goods on show in her shop. Whenever I take a walk in Tibbi Gali, she calls me over to drink tea. I add to the congestion by sitting with her in the shade. A little stool is brought out for me and an audience congregates until they grow bored by the spectacle of the foreigner drinking tea. A handful of men inquire about my availability, but Shela sees them off with a raucous shout.
A group of young women work near Shela’s shop. They lean against the walls chatting and waiting for customers. There are four or five regular women who are here all day, every day. One of the friendliest is Sabina. She’s around 20 and has a deformed leg that causes her to limp. When she’s propped up against the wall, though, you would never guess that she has a disability. She was born in Tibbi Gali and is the daughter of a prostitute. Her own daughter—a child of 5—will follow in her mother’s and grandmother’s footsteps. Sabina thinks I’m funny but I’ve not worked out why.
One of the women is standing on the periphery. She’s not joining in the conversation but is looking around at the others nervously and without making eye contact. She’s tense and doesn’t slouch against the wall. She stands rigidly at attention and doesn’t seem to know what to do with her arms, folding and refolding them over her breasts. Her skin is unusually dark—almost black—and her face hasn’t yet lost its childish curves. She has rounded cheeks, beautiful features, and the half-formed body of an adolescent. She can’t be more than 13. I’ve not managed to speak to her, and when I catch her eye, she gives a stiff little smile that doesn’t extend beyond her lips.
This girl is beautiful enough to be in a higher-class brothel, but her skin marks her as cheap. Black skin is considered ugly and bad. When the women of Heera Mandi want to damn someone, they’ll shake their heads and say, “She’s very black,” or “He’s rich but he’s very black.” It’s considered an affliction.
Being fair-skinned is thought to be good. Being white and freckly is not. I have red hair, white skin, and freckles on my arms. In the summer I get a smattering of them on my face too. People in Heera Mandi think I have a contagious disease. On three or four occasions mothers have motioned to their children to move away from me when the sleeves of my suit have worked up my arms. Most don’t say anything: they just look worried. Others are more direct. They say, “What are those spots on your arms?”
Shela’s attention is caught by a new customer: a khusra is peering into the shop. She’s well over six feet tall and her brown flowered kameez hangs over broad and painfully thin shoulders. She stoops further to speak to Shela. Her face is pockmarked and she has a deep, velvety voice. She has neither youth nor looks, and she certainly has few friends around the shop. She buys a single cigarette and leaves. Shela jerks her head in the direction of the khusra’s disappearing back, “Pathan. Ass-lover,” she says and the other women snigger.
A young woman called Nazia works further up the gali. She wears the thickest makeup I’ve ever seen. It forms a pink-white mask on her brown skin, and I thought at first that it must have some medical purpose. On closer inspection it seems that her foundation is so thick and clogged because she never removes the previous day’s makeup before applying a fresh coating. The layers have been building up for months.
Her mouth shares some of the same characteristics. It’s hard to identify individual teeth because they’re so heavily furred by plaque and encrusted with food. I feel sorry for this neglected girl, but then I’m disconcerted to see that she’s looking at me with compassion. “What happened to your hair? It’s terrible,” she cries. She sits me on the step next to her fat, middle-aged brothel keeper and tries to get my curls under control. She sticks some pins into my hair and uses a fine-toothed comb to try to contain the rest. It’s torture.
“It’s all wrong,” she concludes and gives up with a sigh. She takes me by the hand and leads me down the gali to Shela’s shop. She searches around in a bag and pulls out a plastic fuchsia head-band. Then she counts out a few rupees and gives them to Shela.
“Here,” she says pushing back my hair and fixing the band in place. “That’s better. Now you look like a pretty lady.”
Dirty Girls
Nazia is always in this doorway. It’s noon—almost a week later—and she’s sitting in the shade to avoid the sun. I join her and her madam, a woman of 50 or 55 with vast thighs and those familiar, sharp, brothel keeper’s eyes. She’s friendly but doesn’t give much away. She tolerates me sitting in the front of her brothel because it sends more clients Nazia’s way and because she wants me to help her get a visa so she can start up a little business in London. I say it’s difficult and prohibitively expensive, but she isn’t convinced.
Nazia is the only woman working in the brothel. Her madam does the haggling with the customers. They walk up and down the gali glancing at the women and moving briskly as if they’re in a great hurry. The ones who are interested in Nazia negotiate a price with her madam. If it’s mutually agreeable, the men disappear into a back room with Nazia. I’ve been sitting with them for an hour, and in that time Nazia has entertained four young men, all in their twenties and early thirties. The turnaround time is fast—perhaps five or ten minutes. Then the customers leave—again in a hurry. As the young men stride away down the gali there’s a lot of splashing from inside the room. Two minutes later Nazia is back on her seat. I glance around at the returning girl and try not to look surprised. Nazia’s bright mask is undisturbed by whatever goes on in the back room.
The tamash been are a mixed bunch. Most are young men, laborers, and not by any means the poorest. They look fit, and more than a few are good-looking. A couple of the customers stand out from the rest. A devout-looking man in his sixties with a big beard and a small hat called a topi is approaching us. I assume he’s a maulvi—a holy man—and I brace myself for the preaching. He does launch into a speech, but it’s only to ask for Nazia’s price to be reduced. He is, he claims, a poor but decent man and he can’t afford the going rate. Nazia’s madam tells him to clear off, and we watch him wander down the gali trying to arrive at a cut-rate deal with the other women, with equally fruitless results. Ten minutes later, he’s working his way back up. “He’s got no money,” the brothel keeper says with a dismissive wave. “And he’ll take a long time.”
Another unusual client stops to take a look at us. He seems out of place: a middle-class man in a poor area. He’s in his fifties, and is wearing a clean suit in starched and brilliant white. A cloth printed with multicolored flowers and fruits is bundled bizarrely around his head and tied so loosely that it flaps over his ears. The effect reminds me of Carmen Miranda and I’m sure he is wearing lipstick. I think he’s an aging khusra, but then I change my mind: he’s another client. He smiles sweetly and speaks to me in English. “You know what this place is, don’t you? You know what these women do?”
“Of course,” I reply and add, “Do you live here?”
He rolls his hands over and over and then brings them to rest in what looks like supplication. Licking his lips, pursing them, and then licking them again, he explains: “No, I don’t live here, but I like to come to look at all the pretty girls.” He glances around at the women framed in the doorways and adds with relish, “There are lots and lots of pretty girls.” Before he moves off down the gali his eyes linger over my shalwaar, and I’m glad that they’re crumpled and edged with dirt around the ankles. On reflection the grime might have contributed to my allure. The essence of the thrill: going to the dirty place to meet the dirty girls.
Jamila
Jamila’s house is tucked between a shoe shop and a tea shop. There’s no electricity, no running water, and the uneven floor is made of bare earth. There’s no roof either—only a tarpaulin and a couple of tattered plastic sheets. The rest of Jamila’s room is open to the skies, and when it rains, water cascades through the footwide gap between the plastic and the walls, turning the floor to mud. The sun shines brightly after the storms, sending the temperature outside to over one hundred degrees. Inside it gets even hotter, and anyone caught between the muddy floor and the plastic roof is steamed into stupefaction. Staying too long in Jamila’s house on summer days is to invite a severe bout of dehydration.
Jamila is in her early sixties, and I met her a few years ago on my very first visit to the mohalla. She was still in the business then, entertaining poor laborers for a few rupees. Now, though, her long career in prostitution is over. She begs on the streets and in the Hazoori Gardens and does a bit of pimping for the women in Tibbi Gali. She has spent fifty years working her way down the prostitution hierarchy and has, at last, reached rock bottom. Her current husband, Mahmood, is her fifth.
“No, he’s the sixth,” Jamila says making a very slow mental calculation. Her first husband bought her from a dealer when she was only a child, kidnapped from her home in India during the agony of Partition. She is not like the Kanjar, born into this trade. Husband number one had a tanga business and kept Jamila for his own pleasure and profit until he replaced her with younger girls and she was passed on to her second husband, a man who had a tea shop and kept her in the back room for the clients to enjoy after tea and kebabs.
Mahmood, her sixth husband is sitting on the bed with his leg lifted off the ground. He pulls up his shalwaar to show me a terribly swollen ankle and an infected wound. He has a congenital limp that hinders his movements, and a year or so ago he was involved in a road accident when he failed to move fast enough through Lahore’s insane traffic. The wound has never healed.
Mahmood is a little younger than his wife, and he must have a genuine soft spot for her; otherwise, he wouldn’t be living with her now that she’s no longer commercially viable. He used to act as her pimp and would stand in the road quietly soliciting customers while she waited in the dark of the house. The lack of electricity and the poor visibility must have been something of a boon. Now, with his leg injury and a serious limp, he can’t stand for any length of time, so perhaps it’s fortunate for him that Jamila’s business has faded away.
Jamila enjoys being at home despite the heat. Eight or nine cats share the room; a couple are fully grown and the rest are bony kittens. They sleep under the charpoy or among the planks, wooden boxes, tins, and rags that have been chucked against the back wall.
Jamila has no children. For women in South Asia this is a calamity because children provide security in old age and endow women with status as fully qualified females. In Heera Mandi a woman without daughters has a bleak financial future and, perhaps ironically, a surprising number will find themselves a victim of this cruel fate—particularly those girls who are not yet out of childhood but who enter the business and entertain too many clients too often, and for too long. They become infertile through injury, infection, and botched abortions. Jamila doesn’t have any children, but she has her cats, and she treats them with a gentle affection. A plastic bowl sits in the corner of her room filled with bits of offal and chunks of ice. She dips her fingers in and sifts through to find a tasty morsel, shredding it and placing it in neat piles on a plastic mat. Those that are too ill to stand are fed by hand.
“This is my son,” she says putting a kitten no more than five inches long into my lap. “And this is my daughter,” she clucks, tickling the tummy of its mother.
Jamila is feeding these scrawny cats with food that is superior to her own.
Swimming in Dubai
Only one of the two sisters from the village family is at home. The other one has already returned to the Gulf because her first trip to Dubai was so successful. The house is full of people and a baby is dozing in a makeshift hammock. A blue sheet is tied to the frame of a charpoy, and the baby is hanging in it, a fraction of an inch from the floor. When his family pass by they give him a gentle nudge that sends him swinging to and fro. His grandmother hangs her foot over the charpoy and pushes him occasionally to keep the momentum going.
“Dubai was so good,” the eldest daughter says with relish. “There was a swimming pool and I wore a swimming costume.” She points to bits of her body to show just how high the legs of the costume were cut and just how scandalously low the neckline plunged. She sucks in her breath through barely opened lips, raises her eyebrows, and gives me a knowing smile. The costume sounds as if it would be entirely normal in a Western context, but in Pakistan, the exposure of so much flesh in a public place can only be equated with the hottest pornography.
The swimmer is leaving to pay a visit to an agent who organizes dancing tours to the Gulf and she promises to get some cold drinks on the way home. She puts a burqa on top of her shalwaar kameez and pulls the black veil over her hair. Her face is covered with a piece of fine black mesh. It’s possible to see through this cloth in bright sunshine, but the world appears dark and obscure, especially where the material folds, and in the shade it’s hard to see at all. She’ll be completely blind if she wears it on her journey down the unlit spiral staircase. An ancient female friend of the family sits cross-legged on a chair and watches the burqa being arranged. “Why don’t you just use a dupatta?” she asks.
“Because I’m a prostitute with honor,” comes the sharp reply.
Law and Order
A couple of policemen are sauntering around in the courtyard, their rifles over their shoulders. There was a raid yesterday on an alcohol shop and distillery, and they must be checking to see that the place has shut down. Alcohol is illegal in Pakistan: it is forbidden by Islam, but you can still find a supply if you have the right contacts. There are little unofficial distilleries in the villages and in the back rooms of houses in the cities. They produce concoctions that are so toxic they can make you blind—or dead.
Christians can obtain a license to buy alcohol from official “permit rooms.” There are two in Lahore. The whole process is grubby and difficult. It takes a long time to find the government building that issues the permits, and then you watch an official—and his dozen helpers—shuffle papers around a desk for a couple of hours. The official is a memorable man, attractive and unpolished, and he spits so often that the concrete floor of his office is iridescent with gobs of green phlegm.
The permit rooms where you use the license to buy the liquor are hidden in the basement or round the back of the big hotels. You creep in past gray shuttered doors and men look at you through a grill. It feels like you’re doing something dirty. Sometimes I wonder why I bother: the spirits are so rough I get a thumping headache after two gin-and-tonics.
The policemen in the courtyard are looking into the liquor factory. There’s no one there and all the bottles have been confiscated. Perhaps the police are having a party up in the police station. It’s impossible to tell which policemen are corrupt, and in Heera Mandi, most of them are involved in the business in one way or another. They take bribes and receive sexual favors, and many stop men in the street and force them to pay impromptu fines. They pick on men from out of town because they are unsophisticated and the easiest to intimidate. Whenever the police find themselves short of money, they launch a cleanup operation in the mohalla: they throw a group of women into the thanna and then demand extortionate payments for their release.
Police work in Heera Mandi is very lucrative. Rumor has it that officers pay big fat bribes to secure a stint at the Tibbi station. Many of the police I see in Shahi Mohalla don’t even work here. They have jobs in other, less desirable areas and just pop into the mohalla to have a bit of fun and do some unofficial duty collecting fines and protection money.
Tariq and the Sweepers
A sweeper comes to clean my room every day. His name is Tariq and he’s one of the nicest people I’ve met in Heera Mandi: a big, warm, smiling young man with a lot of beautiful teeth. He tries very hard to please me, regularly polishing the same mirror two or three times with a piece of scrunched-up newspaper. Tariq calls me “sister.” This isn’t because he’s being overly friendly but because he is a Christian and thinks that, as I am from the West, I must be a Christian too.
The Roshnai Gate Presbyterian Church is in Heera Mandi Chowk and it would be difficult to identify if it wasn’t pointed out. Even the cross is small and well above eye level. It’s painted a deep, dirty red—the same color as the walls. On my first visit to Heera Mandi, Tariq took me to see the building. It was something he was very proud of, and as we stood outside, I made encouraging but not necessarily truthful comments about its charm.
The interior of the building is more impressive. A plaque on the wall tells us that it was founded in 1908 by the Reverend G. L. Thakur Das and the Reverend H. D. Griswold. It can’t have changed much in almost a hundred years. It’s stark and the pale blue and yellow walls are fading to gray. There’s a small cross behind the altar, and three plastic Christmas trees, and the words “Merry Christmas” have been stuck on to the wall. Dozens of narrow, multicolored crepe-paper streamers criss-cross the ceiling and flutter in the breeze from six ancient ceiling fans.
Today, as always, the congregation is made up of Tariq’s relatives—one giant family of friendly sweepers. They play a confusing type of musical chairs throughout the service—getting up, milling around, and changing pews. A new person comes to sit by me every five minutes, and each time I turn around there’s a sea of smiling faces.
Tariq’s uncle plays the organ and his brother plays a dholak with all the flavor and rhythm of the best musicians in the bazaar. Four other boys and young men form the choir. Everyone is dressed in his or her best clothes. Tariq’s three tiny children are beautiful and immaculate, and although his uncle is wearing a strangely feminine, white-lace kameez, he does so with a great deal of reverence.
The congregation sways and claps, and the little girl next to me jiggles around the pew with excitement. She’s full of energy and barely contained. Every time I glance at her she looks up with wide, dancing eyes and a dizzy smile. Her pretty face is downy and her upper lip is covered with the tiniest beads of perspiration. She’s half-singing, half-shouting, and at the end of each hymn, she sighs with satisfaction and takes some deep breaths to prepare for her next musical eruption. She’s lovely and fresh and so unlike the other girls in Heera Mandi, who are miniature women at the same age.
Most of Pakistan’s Christians trace their ancestry to the churha—the untouchables of the subcontinent who were considered polluted, and polluting, because they did tasks that Hindus defined as ritually impure. They came into close contact with blood, death, and dirt as a result of their occupations as cleaners, butchers, skinners, and scavengers. This put them right at the bottom of the religious and social hierarchy—so low that they were treated as subhuman.
At the beginning of the twentieth century missionaries in the Punjab converted many untouchables to Christianity. The churha, though, were still unable to escape the stigma of their untouchability, and they continued to do the same kinds of defiling tasks. During Partition in 1947, the Christian sweepers of Lahore stayed on to become part of the new Muslim state of Pakistan. Islam is not supposed to have a caste system, but here in Pakistan, one exists unofficially. Tariq thinks there are around two thousand sweepers in the city. He says all of them are Christian and none of them are shown any respect.
“In the tea shops they don’t treat us like everyone else. They give us food on broken plates and tea in cracked cups. Sweepers are treated worse than animals,” he says. And it’s true. They’re not allowed to wash dishes in Heera Mandi in case they pollute them, and even the cheapest prostitutes think they’re better than the sweepers. Maha rarely sees Tariq because they live in separate social spheres, but when she does, she treats him with a distant and patrician kindness.
Sweeper families are invariably very, very poor. The government gives them contracts to clean a specific area. They call this their “duty”—and it’s an impossible task for which they receive a pittance. Dealing with rubbish is considered contaminating and beneath the dignity of most people, so they chuck it out of the windows of their homes or drop it in great piles in the street. It’s left there to stink and rot—a feast for the rats—until the sweepers come to collect it.
Sweepers supplement their municipal duties by working on a private basis for individual families, and they do it for the most meager rewards. It’s almost impossible for them to change their occupation because of the stigma that is attached to their families. They are shamed by their low origins and their dirty jobs and few people support the rights of poor Christians. They are kafirs—unbelievers.
It’s four in the morning and still dark, so I’m walking carefully to avoid falling into any of the open drains. The sweepers have no problem negotiating the galis; they have developed such a long and intimate knowledge of the lanes they clean.
Sweeper women are working, ankle-deep in rubbish, alongside men. Lots of women work in the old city but they do so in the purdah of their homes. They sew, they cook, they assemble things—often for a fraction of what men would earn for doing similar tasks—but they don’t do these things publicly. The only women I see working in Heera Mandi are the beggars, the prostitutes, and now the sweeper women. Some sweep with their families and others labor alone—ragged, wizened women, old before they’ve reached middle age.
In Tarranum Chowk two men are clearing around the addicts lying unconscious on the roadside. They greet Tariq and tell him about their cart: its wheels have broken and it’s impossible to push. They don’t know what to do—the municipal authorities have told them they have to repair it themselves. Four people are sweeping near the church. Heera Mandi Chowk is wide and always busy: it’s far too much work for one person and the sweeper responsible for the area brings his wife and two children to help him. They stop sweeping to speak to us. The father is out of breath and perspiring heavily. “It’s four people’s work and one person’s payment,” he puffs.
We walk around the galis on the fringes of Heera Mandi. We’re on our way to see where Tariq does his “duty.” We pass through an especially narrow alley strewn with debris. “This is the musicians’ gali,” he comments. “They’re very dirty people—the worst in Heera Mandi.”
Tariq has two winding galis to clear. On most days he’ll get up at three so he can start work at three-thirty. His duty takes him three or four hours, so he finishes his government job before the day has properly begun.
By the time dawn has broken Tariq’s brother and nephew have almost finished sweeping the courtyard. They brush the litter into neat piles and shovel it into the government cart. It is a big yellow metal box on hard little wheels, and they take it, squeaking and rattling, to the dump where rag pickers and bottle-top collectors are waiting for them—filthy, thin, and anxious—to sift through the mess.
Tariq wants to know why I’m interested in his work and what I’m going to write about it. I tell him it’s important work. We’ve a different system in England and people from my country don’t know much about places like Pakistan—and especially not places like Heera Mandi. I tell him that I’m writing about life in the mohalla.
“About good things as well as bad things?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply. I have many things to write about, but the dignity of Tariq and his family will be among the easiest. Their dignity stems not from their religion—although this is something that gives them comfort in the midst of perpetual poverty—but from the fact that they are the only people I know in Heera Mandi who are not caught in the soul-consuming web of the business.
White Flower
The most attractive man I’ve ever seen is sitting with White Flower on a sofa in the khusra house. He has a chiseled jaw, a full mouth, and beautiful eyes. He’s the epitome of masculinity—until he squeals and begins to speak in an extremely high-pitched, feminized voice. She’s arguing with White Flower about “deck functions,” and they rub each other’s thighs whenever they want to stress an important point. The handsome khusra says that traditional musicians are best. White Flower doesn’t agree. She thinks deck functions are best.
“The customers don’t want to pay for expensive shows,” she explains with her hand in the gorgeous khusra’s groin.
The argument is loud and they wrestle, dropping to the floor, their clothes getting covered in dust and dirt. A young man staggers from the toilet. He can’t get round them, and so he falls, collapsing onto the floor with his hands over his head.
White Flower introduces me to the youth by pointing in his direction and saying, “He’s my husband.” The youth is too ill to speak: he’s been taking drugs and drinking whisky.
The youth is only about 16 or 17; White Flower is at least 40 and has such a dominant personality that I can’t imagine her adopting the role of wife with this teenager. So I ask White Flower if she ever behaves like a husband.
She laughs. “I’m always a wife,” she shrieks as if it’s too obvious to state. She undoes her hair clips and tips her head back. “Look at my hair.”
I’ve promised Tasneem a new outfit. She’s admired one of mine many times: it’s blue cotton with pink embroidery and I bought it in Delhi. Her own clothes are a horrible collection of old polyester shalwaar kameez and most have holes or tears. I’ve scoured the bazaars in Lahore for something similar to mine, but there was nothing suitable and I have no time to keep looking. I give her a little roll of notes and ask her to buy her own and explain that I couldn’t find the present I wanted. She pushes the notes into her bra and rushes out of the door in panic, her pupils wide and black with nervous excitement. When she returns, a few minutes later, she’s a little calmer and she tiptoes slowly and stiffly around the room, trying not to draw attention to herself. It has exactly the opposite effect and White Flower screeches at her to turn on the music.
The room is filling up with a new batch of khusras. White Flower picks herself up off the floor and sits in state on the bed. She’s important here because she owns the house and because she’s a very good dancer. She was born into a traditional brothel family and she’s the guru for all these other khusras. This means that she manages their work and much of their lives. There are other gurus above White Flower in Heera Mandi’s khusra hierarchy, but in this house she wields power. She doesn’t live here in this gloomy room so much as hold court.
If White Flower is at the top of the pecking order, Tasneem is at the very bottom. When the phone rings, it’s Tasneem’s job to answer it. When drinks are needed, it’s Tasneem who skips to fetch them. When the guru shouts, Tasneem jumps with fright.
Two khusras are sitting on the charpoy by the open window painting each other’s nails. One is about 30 and the other around 20. The younger one introduces me to her friend. “This is my mother,” she says.
“And this is my daughter,” the older one adds.
It’s common in Heera Mandi to refer to people as relatives even when they’re not connected either by blood or marriage. Good friends aren’t simply friends—they’re something more intimate. I’m not Maha’s friend: I’m her sister and I’m her children’s aunt. It’s even more important for the khusras to have relationships like this: they’ve left their families and abandoned mainstream society and it’s among the khusras—people like themselves—that they find their new relatives and life’s meaningful and lasting bonds.
Someone passes a pair of tweezers to the khusra sitting next to me, and she begins to pluck her beard absentmindedly as she talks. Determined khusras pluck rather than shave. It makes their skin smoother because regrowth is slower and they don’t have permanent, thick black stubble. It’s a nonstop process and the tweezers are passed from one to another in a never-ending circle.
I’m leaving and Tasneem comes down the stairs with me. She kisses me and pats the rupee notes in her bra and, although her guru is three storeys away, she whispers close to my ear. “Don’t tell White Flower you gave me this. She takes everything I have and she’ll take this as well.”
The Rains
An oppressive humidity builds over Lahore during the monsoon, the dark clouds gathering lower until, every week or so, the weather breaks in a sudden torrential storm, clearing the air for a few fresh hours before the heavy, muggy heat returns again to slow the day. A violent downpour immobilized the city this afternoon. It was preceded by a strong wind that tossed the plastic chairs in the rooftop restaurant into the air, tumbling them over and over and crashing them against the walls of the terrace. Gusts blew through the house, banging the heavy wooden doors, rattling the shutters, and setting dry powdered earth and dust swirling through the streets in pale brown clouds. The drier surface layers of rubbish were stripped from the soggy mass underneath and scattered, sticking to buildings and passers-by. Plastic bags whipped back and forth, some getting lodged high up among the lattice of electricity and telephone wires.
Raindrops the size of giant marbles began to drop onto the courtyard with a hollow slap. They came slowly at first, just one or two, and then a deluge followed. It was warm rain that drenched anyone still out on the streets within seconds. Small boys undressed and frolicked in the courtyard in their shorts. They splashed in huge pools, ran through tumbling streams, and then, when they were tired, they rested on an old, sodden, abandoned sofa in the street. Two young men stood side-by-side in the middle of the courtyard, their faces turned to the sky, their eyes closed, and their soaked kameez clinging to their skin. The women and girls watched them from behind their bamboo blinds, keeping dry, as Heera Mandi was cleansed by the monsoon.
Ghazal
Maha continues to rehearse her repertoire in preparation for her trip to the Gulf, and a group of mirasi—the traditional musicians of Heera Mandi—have arrived to put her through her paces. One man is playing the tabla, another the dholak, and a third has a harmonium. Maha brushes her hair, arranges her suit, and applies some crimson lipstick. Her performance must be not only technically perfect but pretty to look at as well.
Maha and her musicians practice for over two hours, producing some wonderful, inspired ghazals in this small gray room. In the heyday of courtesan culture the kothas of accomplished tawaifs reverberated with ghazals, a music drawing on Indian and Arabic tradition to create a complex and refined cultural form that blended rhythm with exquisite poetry. Ghazals were a type of light classical music enjoyed by elites sufficiently educated to understand the sophisticated verse—the short stanzas containing a universe of meaning in two lines and the beautiful, meaning-laden refrain delivered by a pure and expressive voice. The importance of ghazals declined along with the vanishing world of the courtesans, but the genre enjoyed a resurgence when ghazals were popularized in Bollywood films. The songs that Maha sings in her cramped rooms are a modern hybrid ghazal, halfway between a classical ghazal and a geet, a popular, more folksy song, but she retains elements of the true ghazal. Her voice soars, powerfully but gracefully modulated, and saturated with feeling. She is singing a tale of love, repeating a refrain about unrequited, endless longing. She meets her lover by accident and her heart is forever his, yearning and always destined to be alone. They are heartbreaking but uplifting tales that mix the passions of earthly pleasure with a poetic romanticism. Maha executes them so well and with so much artistic truth because they have a personal meaning to her and to all the women of this mohalla. Love will escape the vast majority of Heera Mandi’s women, and the only men they will ever meet will be their clients, who may love them for a while but who will ultimately despise them as kanjri. In Heera Mandi, ghazals are laments and a dazzling, cathartic, public celebration of private tragedy.
Maha and her musicians are happy: they know they’re good. The children are crammed in with us. Mutazar keeps draping himself across his mother’s legs. Sofiya climbs up the bedding arranged in a haphazard column in the corner and she wobbles uncontrollably six feet above the concrete floor. There’s been a fight over an old atlas bought from one of the salesmen in the courtyard and—horrors—the map of Pakistan has been ripped in two. Maha continues singing, interspersing the lyrics with shouts of “Stop it,” “Die, idiot,” and “Get out.” After each ear-splitting, enraged shout she returns immediately to the ghazal with complete composure and an utterly radiant smile. The ensemble stops now and again to repeat a section, to correct some point of musicianship or to perfect Maha’s delivery. Ama-Jee wades through the bodies in the room, distributing tea and namkeen and mopping up spilled drinks and Sofiya’s wee. If Maha can perform in these conditions and with such an unruly audience, she’ll be a star on the stage in Bahrain.
Ariba, Servant, Slave
There’s a strange atmosphere in Maha’s house tonight. It’s a kind of party, but nobody is jolly. Maha introduces me to a new couple.
“This is Saheen and this is her husband. Saheen is my sister…and she’s also Ariba’s mother.”
I look quizzically at Maha.
“Her daughter died a few months ago,” Maha says. “And now Ariba is going to be Saheen’s new daughter. They’re going to Sheikpura tomorrow.”
I look at Ariba and she scrambles out of the room. Nisha and Nena give me a warning look, and Ama-Jee shakes her head and lowers her eyes. I follow Ariba. She’s not in the bedroom or in the kitchen, but the main door is still bolted from the inside. I find her hiding in the kitchen cupboard. She’s rigid: too traumatized to fight and too scared to run, but her eyes are panic-stricken and unforgettably petrified.
I ask to speak to her mother in the semiprivacy of the bedroom and Maha begins her defense. “Adnan wants her to go. He won’t pay for her food. These people will give her things I can’t. They will send her to school and give her good food and a chance to be away from Heera Mandi. She’ll have a better life. She’ll study the Quran.”
“She won’t study the Quran. She’ll be a slave,” I plead. “She’s your child. You can’t abandon her.” Pakistan has a long and thriving tradition of slavery, and I fear that Ariba will become another addition to an invisible scandal.
Maha shifts uncomfortably. “Ariba is bad. Everyone says she’s bad. And I’m going away for three months. Ama-Jee can’t watch her all the time.”
Ariba’s eyes appear around the door frame and disappear again. I know that she trades sexual favors to boys in the streets for a few rupees. I’ve heard the rumors and I saw her once pressed up against a wall by a boy of 13 or 14 in a narrow, rubbish-strewn gali off Heera Mandi Chowk. These boys are getting something from her. And it’s a reciprocal arrangement because Ariba receives something from them in addition to the rupees in her hand: she’s wanted—in whatever sense that might be.
“Poor Ariba,” I say.
“No,” Maha interrupts. “Poor Maha! Poor Maha! I have no money. No husband. What can I do?”
“Poor Ariba,” I insist. “If you send her away she’ll be so unhappy she’ll become even more badly behaved. She needs you and she needs her sisters. She needs a mother to love her.”
Maha looks at me and the tears run over her cheeks. Her daughter is hovering by the door and hides in the kitchen as I leave.
She will not go to Sheikpura. Two days later I see Ariba waving from the balcony and blowing me a kiss.
Magic
A spiritual session is in progress when I arrive at Maha’s house. A pir—a holy man—is sitting on the mattress looking serious. He’s middle-aged and wears a white shalwaar kameez. His hair and beard are dyed red. He holds a string of prayer beads, rubbing them and passing them through his fingers, each one circled by a fat silver ring. Maha sits at his feet, her face scrubbed of makeup and her eyes puffy with crying.
The holy man holds his audience enthralled—except for Ama-Jee, who is standing in the other room, out of his sight, pulling grotesque faces.
There are long silences while the pir clears his throat and looks at the ceiling.
“I have seen the sun rise and I have seen it set and I know why.” The beads pass through his fingers a little more slowly. “The moon and the heavens are God’s creation.” Maha cries silently, rocking back and forth in misery. The mystic continues for half an hour in the same vein and then grows silent.
I go into the other room. “What’s happening?” I ask Ama-Jee.
“He’s waiting for his dinner.”
The meal arrives after another fifteen minutes. It is a feast: chicken, dal, curried vegetables, and a tower of roti. The pir polishes his plate and then speaks to Maha in private. He leaves a few moments later and promises to come back tomorrow.
Maha sinks on to the mattress and sobs.
“I knew it. It’s black magic. That bitch Mumtaz is using black magic. And my mother’s new husband—it’s him too. Both of them. Two spells.” She takes long, deep, jagged breaths and trembles. “Mumtaz has paid a man in Peshawar to use black magic to make Adnan love her. And my stepfather wants me to die so that he and my mother can take the girls and put them in the business and make a lot of money. He put some magic powder in my shalwaar while I was taking a bath.” The inexplicable has been explained. And now all Maha has to do is to reverse the black magic and life will return to its happy and ordered state. The cost of repairing her life will be expensive. The mystic will start working on disabling the spells tomorrow and his fee will be five thousand rupees—about $84.
Magic, sorcery, and the evil eye help shape the lives of the people of Heera Mandi and Maha’s world is populated by jealous enemies, saints, and jadugar, or magicians. Pirs like the one advising Maha are regular visitors in the mohalla. They claim to be the descendants of great Sufis—Islamic mystics—from whom they have inherited special powers. Some are deeply religious; some are sophisticated psychologists; and some are total charlatans. Throughout Pakistan people turn to pirs during times of personal crisis, and in Heera Mandi they’re in constant demand.
Pirs are thought to use nuri ilm—luminous knowledge—a good and positive force drawn from God. Kala ilm is the precise opposite. It draws on the negative powers of Satan and demonic spirits and is contrary to Islamic teaching. Jadu, magic, sometimes uses the good knowledge. But in Heera Mandi, jadu is associated with evil and is linked in popular imagination with Hindus and Christians. Its spells and magical potions have a devastating impact upon minds and bodies because they’re really believed to work. The pirs who tour the district specialize in unraveling spells and exorcising evil. Spells cast by Hindu magicians are considered the worst; that is the type afflicting Maha and why she has to pay her pir so much money.
Possessing better luck and a happier life than your friends, family, and neighbors is likely to invite the malevolent gaze and the workings of sorcerers. Jealousy and envy trigger the casting of spells. When a woman has a new patron, new clothes, and new jewelry, she says her enemies are “burning.” They cast an envious eye upon her and those who burn the most fiercely may employ a jadugar to do real damage. Magic and spells are used by those outside Heera Mandi, but they have a special potency here: it’s the way many cope with living a stigmatized life in a marginalized community.
Maha fears her mother’s envy, and she has good reason to worry. Maha disobeyed Kanjar codes: she left Heera Mandi with her sayeed husband and her family lost the earnings that were supposed to sustain them. When Maha went to live in a nice house, her family remained in the mohalla. Maha thinks, probably correctly, that her mother has never stopped burning at the memory, or at the sight of Maha’s daughters who could now be providing their grandmother with a comfortable old age.
Maha also has to cope with the witchcraft used by Adnan’s wife. According to the pir, and fast-spreading rumors among the local women, Mumtaz pays a Hindu sorcerer in Peshawar to cast spells that keep Adnan a happy and faithful husband. He’s given Mumtaz a recipe for a special love potion. Maha is sure it works. Mumtaz mixes her menstrual blood in Adnan’s food and drinks: he’s bewitched and enslaved to his wife’s charms.
The evil eye is everywhere in Maha’s world. Bhuts—the spirits of the dead—inhabit the earth, swooping through houses and dark places spreading terror and the chill of bad luck. Maha knows where these cold, misty spirits dwell so we rush, shuddering, past the sites of murders and ancient but never-forgotten crimes. And when she saw me fall victim to the world of magic, Maha knew how to fight the spells and chase the evil away. She is always here to look after me.
Down by Roshnai Gate a couple of men sell special paparhs—a kind of poppadam that contains roasted coriander seeds and plenty of marijuana. Paparhs are wrapped in newspaper and surreptitiously heated over tiny charcoal fires. They’re given, as a matter of course, to young girls in cheap brothels who service lots of clients. Paparhs can be unexpectedly potent because the Taliban in Afghanistan has released large amounts of opium and heroin on to the Pakistani market and some of this has apparently found its way into paparhs like those made by Roshani Gate. I ate some of these paparhs in a nearby brothel and washed them down with tea, unaware that they contained more than the usual mild narcotic. Within half an hour, I was living in multiple universes: having conversations with my children, visiting Brazil, buying tomatoes in a supermarket, and driving into a brightly lit tollbooth in France. I stayed in these vivid universes—and in Maha’s close care—for days. In the moments when I returned briefly to the realities of Heera Mandi, Maha gave me water and cried and prayed to Allah to save her sister. I woke once to find her circling my body with a bag of meat. Another time it was an egg. Later, I woke to a black hen’s head being waved three inches above my face, its beak open, its eyes staring, and its feathers shaking. Each time she took these things to the balcony and threw them with all her might across the courtyard.
When I’d recovered sufficiently to ask her what she was doing, she took me to the balcony and pointed at the house that belongs to Mushtaq, the big pimp.
“He saw you,” she said. “That time when you were sitting here and Nisha was checking you for lice. You weren’t wearing your dupatta and he saw your golden hair and he wanted you. He put a spell on you.” She believed that I had overdosed on drugs but was convinced that an evil force had led me to eat the intoxicating paparhs. The meat and the chicken’s head that she’d hurled at the pimp’s house were meant to undo the spell. I couldn’t fathom it. Why, if Mushtaq had desired me, would he want to make me ill?
“He’s stupid, badtamiz,” Maha shrugged. “The spell must have gone wrong.”