(MONSOON: JULY –AUGUST 2001)
The intensity of the June heat has gone but it’s been replaced by an oppressive humidity that’s inescapable outside air-conditioned offices, luxury hotels, and the homes of the rich. It’s not all bad: Lahori summers also offer compensations. It’s a sleepy city during the day and those who are not working are languorous. Lahoris remain awake long into the relative cool of summer nights: the restaurants are open, and at two in the morning there are still crowds around Data Dabar.
Heat and humidity keep the courtyard empty on July days. The bamboo blinds are lowered and the shutters of the houses are half-closed to keep out the sun. Inside people sleep or doze, lolling on charpoys or on the floor, their clothes crumpled and a sheen of perspiration on their skin. The edge of the road from Tarranum Chowk to Heera Mandi Chowk has turned to mud that coats my sandals and leaves a gray-brown crust on the bottom of my shalwaar. Up in Tibbi Gali business is bad. The policeman hanging around Salma’s doorway agrees. So do the rest of the women in the lane. They blame the heat. The men are sleepy—too tired for sex. Nazia has gone and nobody knows where. Perhaps business was bad for her too.
Many of Heera Mandi’s residents find relief from the oppressive heat by sleeping on their roof terraces. As dawn breaks and light creeps over the rooftops, the village family dozes on charpoys in the open air. The family enjoys its comforts. The mother has a large fan wafting a breeze over her and the father has gone one better: he’s brought their new air-conditioning unit up from the living room and has positioned it beside his own charpoy so that the breeze makes the edges of the sheet flap around his face.
Down in the courtyard a couple of rickshaws stop close to doorways. Their passengers are quiet, veiled, fast-moving women returning from all-night functions outside the mohalla. In the half-light of dawn dozens of rickshaws pass through Bhati and Taxali gates on their way to Heera Mandi. They see the mohalla at its very best: the early sunlight is soft and kind, and the sweepers have cleaned the courtyard and the galis and chowks. The Badshahi Masjid is surreally beautiful: its red sandstone walls and white marble domes glow in the morning sun. For a brief moment each day Heera Mandi shimmers.
Virginity
Ariba flings open the door and greets me jiggling with excitement. She looks older. Her hair has been cut and washed. She has a fringe and she’s grown an inch or so. She’s put on weight: I could’ve been away for a year rather than three months. Maha isn’t at home and neither is Nena or Mutazar. They’ve gone to see a promoter. “Nena is going to London to dance,” Nisha says in a great rush, so excited she arches her curved spine to stand straight for a moment.
Maha is away a long time so we wait and sleep on the mattress: Sofiya, Nisha, and I. Ariba wouldn’t stay. She had something to do and vanished into the wet heat of the afternoon.
Maha and Nena are bubbling over with enthusiasm when they return. It’s true: Nena is going to London in September to dance in a group. She’ll dance in shows and Maha confides that she will have “relations” with men too. Payment for this means even more money—the promoter will take half the fee and Nena will have the rest.
Nena has had her official glossy photos taken. She looks sophisticated in a black dress and too much jewelry. I glance at her sitting beside me: she’s prettier in real life without all the paint, when you can see the girl she really is. She’s thrilled by the talk of London and glamorous dancing shows. Maha says that Nena will have to start her career very soon.
“She’s going to Dubai to get married—as soon as we get the papers.”
Nena nods, unfazed by the prospect. She knows what this involves: all Heera Mandi girls do, it’s what they’ve been trained for since birth. There are few formal instructions; they absorb lessons from everyday life.
The papers Maha is talking about are a false passport and visa, ones that will make Nena appear to be 18 and the wife of a respectable man, not a child from Heera Mandi. When she arrives in Dubai the agent who is making the arrangements will marry Nena to a wealthy client. The marriage won’t be legal and will probably only last a night or two, after which Nena will return to Heera Mandi with half the fee and without her virginity. It could be lucrative. Far better to do this, Maha explains, than to send her to England where her virginity won’t command a price nearly as high as in the rich Gulf states.
In societies in which female sexuality is closely controlled, virginity is an important marker of ownership and a valuable commodity. In taking a girl’s virginity outside marriage, a man deprives a girl of a husband and a family of its honor. Deflowering girls is connected with power and status because only rich men can afford to buy virgins—like Nena—girls who have no choice but to spend the rest of their lives as prostitutes.
Maha began the negotiations a few weeks ago and now the process seems unstoppable. The dalals agree. They say that Maha has committed herself to the deal: if she backs out, she’ll have to refund the money the organizers have already paid. That’s ten thousand rupees ($169) for providing Nena’s false passport; forty-five thousand ($759) for arranging her visa, and another twenty-five thousand ($421) for the airfare: a total of eighty thousand rupees—more than $1,300.
“Can’t she marry? I mean, can’t she make a good marriage?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
Maha shifts uncomfortably among the cushions. She knows we’re speaking from the same old script we have rehearsed so many times before.
“The daughter of a tawaif is always a tawaif,” she sighs. “Marriage costs lots of money and we don’t have any. And even if we did, who would want her? She’s a kanjri.”
Ariba has returned from her walk in the murky afternoon and is curled up on the back-crippling sofa. Maha hisses about a rape.
I think I’ve heard incorrectly and ask her to repeat it.
“Ariba was raped—just after you left last time,” Maha says more loudly. Ariba stiffens and becomes motionless. “It was some bad-mash”—a gangster—“He took her into a house near the bazaar and raped her.”
Ariba springs up from the sofa and dashes out of the room.
“We took her to the hospital and they said her virginity was gone. She didn’t get pregnant though because her periods hadn’t started.”
Ariba is standing in the shadows of the other room. She thinks I can’t see her, but I can make out the whites of her eyes as she stares at me trying to gauge my reaction. She’s scared. Everyone is blaming Ariba for the rape. It’s true she has been courting danger, and to prove the point, two of her uncles arrive at that moment to berate Maha for Ariba’s loose conduct in public. There’s a loud argument in Punjabi. They say that the family will be shamed if Ariba doesn’t wear a dupatta in the street and spends so much time away from home.
The uncles don’t know about the rape. Hardly anyone does. Maha wants it hushed up because a raped girl is bad for the family: it shows that they can’t protect their women; that they have little social standing; and that they’re not respectable. It’s worse for the victim because once a woman, or a girl—or a boy—is known as the target of a rape she becomes so despised, so shamed, so worthless that she turns into public property. No one is raped only once.
Eating Their Sisters
Five well-fed men are sitting on a charpoy in the courtyard. They’re young—in their twenties and thirties—and tending to fat, with fine, thick moustaches and glossy black beards. Mushtaq is with them, eating and smoking. He’s put on weight and doesn’t have quite the same physical charm he used to, but he still looks gorgeous as he wipes the mango juice from his beard. He’s holding forth and the other men are laughing and attentive.
Maha and I watch them from the balcony surrounded by her plants. She has a rose bush with two brown-tinged yellow flowers. The third—and the best—was picked and given to me as a present. I have a seat on a blue plastic water tub, and I shuffle uncomfortably on the lid while trying to avoid sitting on the handle. In the midst of a profusion of dusty leaves Maha sits and fumes. “See the sister-fuckers. They keep looking at us.” Looking is a method of control, and we’ll have to go inside; otherwise we will be jeopardizing our honor.
“Look,” she says again. “Look at them sitting there and eating their sisters.” Eating food, she means, bought by the sale of their sisters’ bodies.
Inside Ariba is skipping around and moves close to her mother when we sit on the mattress, smiling up at her. Maha laughs and pushes her away. Now Ariba wants to go to Dubai too. She says she’ll go and earn lots of money and then they can buy a nice house. After all her beatings, after the constant, informal exclusion and all the years without affection, Ariba still wants to please her mother.
The Riches of the Gulf
The Best Musical Group, the VIP Musical Group, and a dozen other promoters have offices on Chaitram Road, a minute’s walk from Tarranum Chowk. Young men sit at a table or at a desk inside a tiny room, its walls covered in posters advertising dancing shows in which brightly dressed women perform wearing a lot of lipstick and eyeliner.
These promoters recruit women from Heera Mandi, place them on their books, and call them when there’s work. The promoters organize shows and make the women available for sexual services. The women are employed on short-term contracts, sometimes for an evening, sometimes for a week, and, at other times, for the luckiest, for a three-month tour. Some of the bigger promoters take women to the Gulf, and the most prestigious take their girls to England. It can be the chance of a lifetime. If they’re beautiful and can please the customers, they can make a lot of money. When they return they can buy a degree of social mobility: VCRs, large fridges, and the jealousy of their neighbors.
Some bad promoters operate in the mohalla: they lie and cheat, taking women to the Gulf, then confiscating their passports and presenting them with a long line of customers. It happens often but no one talks about it: few want to risk their reputations by describing the ordeal they endured in a foreign country or the fact that they only received a fraction of the money that the many tamash been paid for them.
Two girls from the village family are still working in the Gulf. The girls are not especially pretty, and they’re certainly not sophisticated, but they must be extremely skilled at the kind of services the clients demand. The eldest is on her fourth trip. She goes for three months, returns for a few weeks, and then departs again. All this coming and going is bringing in good money and there have been big changes in the interior of the house. A whole range of new furniture and electrical goods is stacked into the apartment; an enormous bed and dressing table fill the main room. A carpet has replaced the old rugs. It can’t have been cleaned since it was laid, and mashed food is working its way into the weave. In a few months it’ll build to a waxy, glossy shine.
The family is very attentive. They ask me to sit down and ply me with drinks. They’re always friendly and the sons keep out of trouble and chat politely in the courtyard. During Muharram the family paid for a nice feast: they had cooks prepare four deg full of rice and chicken. Despite this, they still have not been integrated into the courtyard community. The others laugh about them, and I understand why they’re called the village people. Two large hens are pecking and scratching around in the room, leaving droppings on the carpet and jumping on the new furniture. It’s as if the family has never left its farm.
The hens stop clucking and look as if they are about to roost on top of the big new television. The family wants to show me something special, so they shoo the birds out of the room and bring in a DVD player still in its box. “It’s from Dubai,” the mother explains. “My daughter bought it.” If there’d been enough space she would have swaggered.
The gola walla is offering a special today, and Sofiya and Nisha are pestering their mother for money. Mutazar whines too: he wants money for a giant balloon. Ariba lowers a few notes into the courtyard in a red plastic basket and the peddler ties a balloon like a six-foot condom onto the ropes. The gola walla balances five plastic bowls precariously in the basket. Although Ariba hauls it back up with slow care, the balloon comes loose and floats off up the gali and the basket swings violently so that the contents of the bowls begin to slop over the sides and the whole basket looks as if it’s about to flip over. The special is a sludgy mixture of bright red syrup, ice shavings, and what looks like a tangle of pasta worms. The children say it’s delicious. I’m not prepared to verify this.
The Bangladeshis who have a reputation for currying pigeons have moved. I spot the pretty daughter while Ariba is grappling with the basket. She’s made up like a doll. The family’s new house is just around the corner, its entrance on a side street only ten meters from the main road where there are a few shops, a gas station, and a tea shop. It’s always busy: lots of men mill around and the family must be able to pick up a sizable amount of passing trade. I watch the father standing at the entrance to the gali. He’s wearing a vest and a dhoti and is chain-smoking. He chats with the men, drinks cups of tea, and frequently meanders into the house with some of his newfound friends. The tamash been emerge after five minutes, by which time Dad is already back at the end of the gali scouting for yet more clients.
The next day the Bangladeshi family is sitting outside the shops opposite Roshnai Gate. The father is annoyed that I haven’t been to his new house, and I promise that I’ll come to visit soon. His pretty daughter sits next to me and sips Pepsi loudly through a gnawed straw. She tells me her marriage is over. The man who made bedsheets was no good. She’s adamant: “I’ll never get married again.” He was mean, she explains: he didn’t give her money but still expected her to be faithful and not take any clients.
She huffs and adds, “I’m going to Dubai soon.”
Her father remarks on the expense of the visa as his daughter looks directly at me. Her expression is chilling. Her eyes are not those of a child: they’re flat and dead.
A Baby Sweeper
There’s a new, much-loved baby named Hanouk at the sweeper’s house. He’s tiny, just 19 days old, covered in fine black hair and with thin, crinkly-skinned legs. He weighs nothing and lies in my arms with his big, surma-rimmed eyes staring intently at my face. He spends most of his time being handed from one member of the family to another. The trouble is, the children caring for him are often toddlers themselves. The new baby dangles upside down, his head skimming the floor until the young caretaker realizes this is wrong and jerks Hanouk upward, his tiny neck stretched by the sudden movement and his head and body at right angles. They take him into the other room, narrowly missing smashing his head into the wooden door. I wonder if he’ll survive until my next visit. Tariq and his wife have three more children—all under five and all without obvious disabilities—so I expect that he will.
Auditions
A prestigious promoter is visiting Maha’s house tonight. Her origins are in Heera Mandi, but Maha says that she lives now in a gorgeous house in Garden Town. The woman’s name is Laila and she wears stunningly soft, embroidered silk. Her nails are an inch and a half long, square at the ends, and painted white. She’s in her midthirties, and although she’s not beautiful, she’s so well-groomed, so expensively dressed, and has such an air of confidence that her presence in the midst of Maha’s messy shambles of a home momentarily takes my breath away. She’s accompanied by a middle-aged man—for protection and respectability—but Laila is clearly the one in charge.
They’ve come to see Nena dance. Laila is the promoter who is taking Nena to London, and she wants to take a second look at the goods before she pays any advance. Laila waits for the audition to start. She sits on the edge of the mattress and makes a studied effort to ignore a commotion of flying clothes in the other room. Nena and Nisha are fighting over ownership of a shiny yellow kameez that’s topped with a black net blouse. The highly prized blouse is made of thin, brittle material. It’s more like a plastic fishing net than a piece of fabric, with tears and holes and ragged edges, but it’s the focus of a vicious power struggle between the sisters. Nisha claims it as her own. Nena, pumped up with confidence about her new career, demands the right to wear it. Nena insists that she really needs the black net blouse, unlike Nisha who has no chance of a dancing tour in London.
Nena wins the fight, even though she doesn’t need special clothes; she’d look wonderful if she danced in a sack. She has a natural grace and Laila is impressed. When Nena has finished her impeccable routine, Maha suggests that she should dance too. Only Maha can’t dance any longer—not the way she danced last year or even three months ago. She must have put on another thirty pounds in the past year. She can barely execute half the moves. Instead she relies on her facial expressions and the delicate and suggestive use of her hands. When she falls to her knees she struggles to stand up again; when she twirls around it is with a heavy step. It’s embarrassing to watch, and I want to ask her to stop—but that would be an even greater humiliation for her. Dancing and being beautiful define Maha: they’re what she has done since she was 12 years old. So I keep on smiling and when she’s finished, drenched in sweat, we all clap and Laila says that she’ll arrange work for Maha too. She’s lying. She wants to flatter Maha. She’s shrewd, and she sees Maha’s desperation and her weak spots. Laila wants to get a good deal on Maha’s daughter.
The Pimps’ Turf War
I’m walking home through the dark, busy galis at ten at night. I’ve become accustomed to finding my way around in the gloom and gain my bearings by using special landmarks. There’s a familiar, potholed stretch of road; a particularly offensive drain; a little kiosk selling corn fries in murky plastic bags; two old ladies spitting paan from the same worn doorstep; a sadistically unfriendly dog; and a bony, smiling youth always sitting nervously in an agent’s office under a harsh battery of fluorescent lights. I know I’m nearing home when I see the barbeque stall run by a jolly man who splatters more oil over his belly than his chicken pieces.
I stop at an open door. It’s an embroidery workshop specializing in heavily worked bridal shalwaar kameez. Boys of 9 or 10 sit on the floor threading beads and golden sequins onto rich red fabric stretched tightly over wooden frames. It’s meticulous work and their little fingers work slowly and carefully. They knit their eyebrows together with deep concentration and the fluorescent light blanches their skins. One looks up and gives me an impish smile. “Hello. You America?” he shouts.
I never like the last part of the walk where I have to pass the men sitting on the charpoys in the courtyard. I know some of them and often they call out to me. I recognize some despite the darkness, pimps or drug pushers like Mushtaq. Others are unfamiliar faces: friends or clients of the pimps. Tonight the courtyard is unusually empty, and as I enter the gali, a volley of bullets is fired from Mushtaq’s door, peppering the walls of the houses. The hierarchy of the pimps and the pushers is being challenged. The music in the courtyard has stopped. The popcorn walla has switched off his chimes and abandoned his cart. For once there’s nothing but silence from Maha’s home.
Thirty-six hours later the odd spent bullet is still rolling around the courtyard, kicked by the boys and collected by the younger children. The rest have been brushed up by the sweepers on their morning duty. Mushtaq stands, tall and shirtless, in the midst of a group of men. There’s no question who won the battle.
Dog Woman
Maha is incensed. Laila, the silken-clad promoter, is, in Maha’s opinion, a “fraud, a bitch, a kusi, and a gandi woman.” Maha and Nena visited her in Garden Town yesterday to make arrangements for the advance on Nena’s earnings. Nothing was arranged. Maha screws up her face and breathes out fast and heavily through bared teeth, “She steals girls and sells them in England.” Maha thinks this is why she has a lovely home with air-conditioning in Garden Town. This is why she has a great big television, a DVD player, nice clean carpets, a car, and a husband who drives an even bigger car.
Laila has promised that Nena will be married in London. She knows a man ready to do the deed. He’s young and handsome, and runs a hotel. Maha has seen a picture of him. He was wearing shorts so he must be a healthy, modern, and exciting sort of boy. But there will be no big one-off payment for the privilege of deflowering Nena. Laila makes it sound like she and the man in shorts will be doing Nena and her mother a favor. All the promoter is offering is a flat rate of one and a half lakh for three months’ work plus half of the fee for any extra services Nena provides.
“Dog woman,” Maha seethes. I’m tempted to agree. Laila is offering Maha so little because she knows she’s desperate.
“My daughter is a sharif girl. She won’t go to England for her marriage and get no money. She’ll go to Dubai instead.” Maha is adamant. And she adds, “She has an ashik here too now.” A lover—Maha means a man who wants to have sex with Nena, a man they will later describe as her shohar—her husband. There are many words for men like this in Heera Mandi: ashik, mehbub, sanam—lover, beloved.
Maha shakes my arm to stress the point, and she has a very powerful grip. “We met him at Laila’s house. He’s a friend of Laila’s husband.” She’s working herself into a fit of indignation. “Does she think my daughter has no honor? Does she think I have no honor?” She nods her head furiously, and a man who is sitting quietly in the corner smiles politely.
“Who is he?” I whisper.
“He’s a good man. He’s the muezzim. He calls the azan in the mosque.”
The man adjusts his crocheted orange topi and smiles some more. He has a big black beard and a humble manner. I wonder what he thinks of the conversation and if he’s uncomfortable about being in the home of a kanjri. I expect he’s too poor to be fussy: he’s looking for work as a Quran teacher and needs to humor potential patrons. He is given a plate of rice and chicken and Maha asks him to run a few errands. He’s sent to buy sita—roasted corn cobs, lots of them, that he brings back in two bulging shopping bags. There’s one for each of the children, one for him, and two for Maha. She rummages through the bag, inspecting the corn and choosing three of the tenderest and juiciest for me. “Why three?” I ask and she replies that she knows how much I like them. And then she adds that I’m looking thin and that it’s not a good state to be in because how will I ever find a decent husband?
An Impatient Landlord
I’m sitting on a charpoy near the pimp’s den, drinking Coke with one of Maha’s cousins. It’s early evening and a drama unfolding in the corner of the courtyard is generating an enthralled audience. Maha’s sister is being taken to hospital. Six people are squeezing into the taxi. Most of them are obese, and all I can see through the windows of the car are squashed bodies and contorted faces. Someone says Maha’s sister is dying and a rumor of her imminent death begins to spread.
The charpoy is a good vantage point and the courtyard looks different from this angle. It’s still hot and humid, but the sun has disappeared behind the houses and we’re in shade. Only a few of the pimps are around. Maha is watching me from her balcony, gesturing angrily and questioning why I’m sitting here in the open. Five minutes later she’s rushing toward me. She’s changed into one of her best outfits. It’s a cream chiffon creation with a gold-sequined neckline. It’s entirely inappropriate for sitting on a dirty charpoy, but Maha likes to make an impressive public appearance.
Maha’s cousin is a pimp. He works as a minder for groups going to the Gulf and he has dozens of photographs to show us. Some are of groups from Mumbai and Heera Mandi. A few of the Indian girls look emaciated, and a woman peering over my shoulder says that one must be an AIDS case. Others are very overweight. One of Maha’s fat cousins is a singer in a group and she features prominently in most of the shots.
A girl from Heera Mandi is gorgeous. She has a delicate face and I point her out several times and remark on her beauty. Maha laughs and says I’m a mental case. The girl isn’t nice. There’s nothing nice about her. She looks like a dog.
The clubs in which the women are working are poor and low-class, furnished with white Formica tables and metal-framed chairs with plastic, leather-look seats. The curtains are cheap and badly hung and the carpets are fraying around the edges and creeping up the walls. These women are not entertaining rich Arab sheikhs when they go to Dubai. They’re servicing the Gulf ’s migrant workers: men from their own country, many of whom will be lonely and frustrated and who will have saved to enjoy the pleasure these women offer.
The cousin had lots of family photos taken in Heera Mandi around twenty years ago. Maha is photographed as a teenager, looking very pretty alongside Fouzia, her equally pretty sister. And then there are her cousins, who were blessed with none of the pretty genes. A black-and-white snapshot was taken of Maha when she was about 8, and I’m struck by her similarity to Ariba.
“Sofiya looks like I did, doesn’t she?” Maha comments. She does in a vague kind of way, but Maha cannot—or will not—see that her least favorite child is the one who looks most like her. And then, finally, there are photos of me. Some were taken at a party and others at a wedding. I’m shocked and have to go through them again. I look so out of place—I hadn’t realized how badly until I saw these pictures. I always thought I fitted in and merged with the surroundings—as if a dupatta made me look like all the people I see around me. But I don’t. I look so weirdly, disturbingly white.
Maha stirs nervously on the charpoy. The mallik has arrived for the rent again and she hasn’t any money. He rides up on his motorbike to humiliate Maha publicly for nonpayment. He must treasure his bike because he’s taped layers of bubble wrap around the suspension and gas tank. Brown synthetic fur is tied along the long arms of the handlebar mirrors. They look like antlers. I can’t decide whether this is for protection or ornament.
We dance in the evening to forget the mallik and his threats to turf the family out. Even Ariba is dancing. She’s never done it before, even in play. She’s a bit wild and full of energy, but Maha promises that she will pay Master Jee to tame her and channel her exuberance. When she stamps her feet she will learn to do so with grace. We practice with the music so loud that they will be able to hear it in the bazaar, and when Maha throws open her shutters, the restaurant customers on Iqbal’s roof terrace gather to watch the dancing girls of Heera Mandi perform for free.
Drugs
In the winter it takes fifteen minutes to walk to Bhati Gate to buy my newspaper; in the summer heat it takes a slow twenty minutes. I like getting out of Heera Mandi. I like the bustle of the roads in the old city and the tobacco shops near the gate. I walk slowly here, savoring the smell of the ropes of tobacco stacked in tall piles and the smoke from the hookahs of the men who sit in their vests in the shade of the shops.
By contrast, the stench is so vile in the butchers’ section of the road that it’s enough to make me retch. A chicken is being killed in the correct Muslim way as I hurry by: its throat has been cut, and it will die in the butcher’s blood-encrusted, blue plastic shaking barrel as its heart pumps the blood and the life out of its body. Another butcher is slicing lungs. He has an unusual technique: he grips a knife between his toes so that his hands are free to maneuver the offal and to place it into neat mounds. In Tarranum Chowk the toes of today’s fresh corpse have also found a new use. Passers-by have been sticking ten-rupee (seventeen-cent) notes between them so that someone can organize a funeral. The notes flutter in the breeze like two tattered fans.
Two stigmatized communities live side by side in Heera Mandi: the prostitutes and the drug users. The addicts gravitate toward Heera Mandi because no one is going to get annoyed with them for lowering the tone of the area. Most of the addicts are from out of town. They began as unskilled laborers living in hostels or sharing small rooms, earning a pitiful living. Many must have been sad, isolated boys and men a long way from their homes. They still had enough money, though, to pay for some good times, and they bought drugs and enjoyed themselves with local women. They took hashish, and then heroin, until the addictions took over and they ended up on the streets, sleeping by the masjid or in the gardens or wherever they collapsed.
A few years ago, when I first came to Lahore, the drug of choice was heroin. The addicts smoked it on street corners, huddling together in little groups. Now they inject a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs—tranquilizers, painkillers, antihistamines, and anything else they can lay their hands on—and grow festering abscesses in their arms, legs, and groins. Injecting is cheaper and the supply is more regular because they can buy the drugs from pharmacies. No prescription is ever necessary. The addicts share needles and syringes, and it’s only a matter of time before HIV tears into this bedraggled group of men and the prostitutes who service the ones who have yet to topple into stupefaction.
It’s difficult for me to engage with the area’s visible drug culture, even if I wanted to. The women, by and large, don’t shoot up or smoke heroin. They’re like Maha: they take sleeping pills and drink cough medicine. Most women will also take hashish and booti when they can find it. But an entirely male-dominated supply network controls the harder drugs, like heroin and the injectable hospital-grade medicines. It’s nearly impossible for the women, confined to their houses, to access these networks without the help of a man. For a woman to be seen taking drugs—even a cigarette—proves that they are kharab and beysharam—spoiled and shameless. Sending someone to buy pills or cough syrup from the drugstore is a lot more respectable.
A supply depot operates from a shop at the corner of the road, only a few meters from Iqbal’s house. A couple of dealers hang around the pool table outside. I wouldn’t dare to investigate the underground room into which men disappear, or even to look in for too long as I walk by. It’s part of the men’s world from which I’m excluded. The person in charge of this drug dealership is the patron of the splendid sabil that’s erected in the street on every important religious holiday, but he’s only a small player in the drug business, a client of others who are much wealthier and more powerful. Like Maha’s madam, the lovely wife of the army major, they live in a far superior part of town.
Rats
More rats than people live in the old city. They are everywhere and I’ve grown accustomed to gray shapes scurrying along walls, slipping in and out of drains, and disappearing into cracks in the brick-work. As we eat lunch on Maha’s mattress, three small rats are watching us from on top of the curtains covering a couple of nailed-up doors. Maha laughs at them and treats them like pets, but she isn’t always so amused. She pulls down her kameez to show me a chest crisscrossed with encrusted scratches. A rat the size of a small cat ran over her a few nights ago and they got into a fight. When Adnan last visited, he woke up screaming, a giant rat gnawing at his toe. He’d drugged himself into unconsciousness and the rat must have thought that he’d died.
I take the dishes into the kitchen after the meal and my stomach turns: two rats are eating out of the pan from which Nisha has just served the vegetables. The leftovers will be reheated for this evening’s meal, and I make a mental note to refuse supper. They’re so bold that they return to sniff around my feet and snatch bits of food from the floor while I’m doing the washing up.
If I were a rat I’d move into Maha’s house. It’s ideal, with lots of lovely secret places to make a cosy nest—and friendly neighbors and a constant supply of food lying around. This is going to change. I’ve been investigating the housekeeping in detail, and Maha is persuaded: we are going to launch a cleanup operation.
The main stairwell of the house runs right through the center of the building. It’s been blocked off for years so that the house could be divided and sublet more easily. Only the rear, narrow, spiraling steps are in use. Old furniture, clothes, shoes, and bedding have accumulated on the main stairs and rubbish has been chucked on top and left to fester. I think there are several families of rats living among the debris because it stirs every so often; there’s a swiftly moving wrinkle in a piece of crumpled fabric and a sheet of paper rustles and quivers. A little room at the front of the house is off-limits to Maha. The mallik keeps it for furniture storage. It’s full of old mattresses and chairs. I prise open the door far enough to see inside, and two enormous rats dash into a hole in a large mildew-speckled sofa.
We are going to sort out the stench as well as the rats. One of Maha’s rooms is barely used. It’s stacked with useless bits of furniture, old burnt pans, and lots of plastic tubs containing water to see us through the periodic interruptions to the supply. A toilet was added to the room long after the house was originally built. It’s a bad design and gets blocked easily. Today it’s chock full of shit and hasn’t been cleaned for weeks.
“That’s Ariba’s toilet,” Maha explains. “She’s such a gandi girl.”
The Cleanup
Tariq, the sweeper, has agreed to get the cleaning off to a speedy start. This morning he and a gangly youth came over to Maha’s after they’d finished the street sweeping. They’ve left their cart in the gali and are standing in Maha’s best room assessing the task ahead. They’ve brought brushes, buckets, and a bottle of acid that Tariq promises will shift anything.
Ariba’s toilet needs something awesomely powerful. The shit has been fermenting in the heat and threatens to bubble over on to the floor. Tariq is hardened to vile odors and other people’s filth, but even he looks alarmed. I can hear Maha explaining that she never uses that toilet, she uses the one in the best room. The mess isn’t hers, it’s Ariba’s. She’s the dirty one of the family.
Tariq pours the acid into the brown froth and sprinkles more over the floor. A lot of loud fizzing and a steamy cloud of sulfurous gas fills the bathroom. The toilet’s contents are boiling and then gradually draining away. In the other room we are all choked with the gas, and Tariq is coughing loudly and fighting for breath as he wields his brush and whips a volatile mix of acid, urine, and feces around the toilet floor.
Tariq’s acid is good stuff. It strips the toilet bowl and the floor of its topmost layers and the place looks passably clean. It has probably scorched his lungs too, but he doesn’t complain. You don’t if you’re a sweeper.
The gangly youth is in charge of moving rubbish down the stairs and into the cart. He’s already been on two runs to the dump at the end of Fort Road, and he’ll be making several more journeys. Debris is everywhere: bits of roti and naan bread, mango stones so old they are black, a pair of Sofiya’s underpants still containing a smelly accident, wet shoes left to rot. Tariq is cleaning the floors, tipping buckets of water onto the concrete and brushing with vigor. Maha and children are crowding around to watch the performance. They have never seen anything quite as efficient.
The worst of the stench has gone by evening. Tariq and the youth have hauled five cartloads of rubbish to the dump. They’ve also wrapped two giant rats in shoppers and taken them outside, wriggling and bucking, so that they could crush their heads with a shovel. The other rats have abandoned the kitchen and Maha’s best room for a while. They’re retrenching and have taken refuge in the mallik’s furniture store: I peeped through the door and saw them carrying on the party in there.
Ariba is cooking something special. She’s been sitting by the pot for hours, stirring and watching, adding bits of ingredients or a cup of water. She’s intent on what she’s doing and has been into the family room only two or three times. I know when she does without looking up because I catch a whiff of stale urine and dirty clothes as she passes the air cooler. Her yellow satin shalwaar kameez is filthy and she’s worn it for days.
Two days later Maha’s rats have seized the initiative. They have regained all their old confidence and are rushing in and out of the mallik’s furniture store. But we are not beaten yet. We are launching a counteroffensive and the cleaning operation is entering phase two. I’ve been to the up-market Al Fateh supermarket in Gulberg and have bought imported cleaning solutions. The Pakistani variety are a lot cheaper, but I want to stick with the products I know. I don’t wish to encounter anything as potent as Tariq’s acid.
I’ve put on a pair of rubber gloves and am sorting out the brushes. I’m quite excited. I’ve started on the finer points of Ariba’s toilet and Maha is reeling from shock.
“My Louise, my Louise,” she gasps. “My sister is doing sweepers’ work.” She talks about shame, but we have no meeting of minds on this topic. There is an irreconcilable culture clash. I consider her shamed for not cleaning her home. Maha thinks I’m shaming myself by cleaning toilets, and in a bizarre and inexplicable twist, I’m happy to be doing so.
I have an audience. Some of the local women are hanging around the doorway trying to catch a glimpse of me in action. I can hear them discussing the spectacle and calling to others. “The woman from London is cleaning the toilet.”
A water shortage halts the washing of the clothes. Two giant buckets have been filled with soapy water and all the dirty clothes in the house are soaking. The niche walla—the man from downstairs—has turned off the supply. The landlord has given instructions to limit the supply to Maha and the Pathani woman upstairs. Water is scarce and it costs money.
Maha screeches from the balcony that we need water to rinse the clothes. The niche walla is grumpy; he saunters from his charpoy and switches the supply back on for a few minutes. Frantically we try to fill buckets and bowls, but it still isn’t enough and we have to call the mishar—the water carrier—as a last resort. He has a skin full of water slung across his shoulders, so heavy he walks bent into a right angle. Each skin fills four or five buckets and the charge for his service is ten rupees (seventeen cents). I’ve seen him many times this summer trudging steadily back and forth across the courtyard selling his water to households with shortages. Today, his tread is heavy and his feet scuff the floor as he climbs the stairs. He stops halfway up to catch his breath. He’s perspiring, his face creased with effort, and then, as he opens the skin and the water gushes into the buckets, he begins to uncurl. He will make three journeys to Maha’s tonight.
Mota: The Fat Lover
There’s only one subject to talk about this evening: Nena’s mehbub—her lover—the man they met at Laila’s. He’s rung Maha twice and wants to see Nena. They say he’s old, black, and ugly with a scrunched-up face that Maha mimics with a grotesque leer. They call him Mota—Fat—because he wobbles when he walks, and because he’s a great big fat catch.
The monetary compensations are attractive even if his body is not. “He owns factories and he’s rich,” says Maha, shaking my arm. “If Nena marries him she won’t have to go to Dubai. We can pay the dalals back for the passport and the visa. He’s so rich he carries a lakh of rupees in his pockets. We’ve seen it,” she explains. “Ask Nena.”
Nena confirms it. “It’s true. I saw a lakh.” She almost swoons.
“He’s got a big white car with air-conditioning. He wants to marry Nena and he’ll give us one and a half lakh,” Maha says and then pauses. “But I don’t know.”
“I want to get married to him,” Nena states, trying to encourage her mother to agree. She smiles bashfully, casts her eyes down, and covers her mouth. “I want to marry him. I want him to take us shopping.” She flops onto the mattress, buries her face in a cushion, and laughs. Her mother joins in. At last, they think, their luck is changing.
Mota has telephoned Maha. They chat while a radiant and smiling Nena sits on the mattress. The ashik wants to speak to Nena, and she skips over to take the phone, beaming at it and self-consciously smoothing her hair. Maha keeps whispering very loudly and giving her instructions on suitable things to say. “Tell him you like him. Tell him you want to see him.”
Nena does not need to be told. She laughs, she giggles, she tells Mota that she thinks he’s nice. As she does so, Maha keeps reminding me what a rich man he is. “He’s a good man. He’s ugly and old, but he’s good.”
Nena grows more animated. She covers the phone and says something about presents. Maha does a little dance and, taking the phone, rounds off the conversation with the ashik. He’s coming to the house in a couple of days to see Nena perform her classical pieces. A flushed Nena collapses on the bed.
“Louise Auntie, he’s bringing me a present, a CD player like Laila’s.” As she speaks, she holds her hand over her mouth and her eyes sparkle. The other girls look on admiringly. Nena is thrilled—and I’m confused. I thought I was coming to Heera Mandi to document a terrible trade, and yet Nena is seemingly not being dragged into prostitution: at 14 she’s embracing her family’s business with enthusiasm. She’s going to do what generations of girls in her family have done before her, and in twenty years’ time she will be like her mother—abandoned and dependent upon the sale of her own teenage daughters to survive. But, for now, she’s flattered that Mota wants to spend so much money on her. It’s a reflection of her status as a beautiful, high-class dancing girl. Probably for the first time in her life, Nena is exercising a form of power, and she’s enjoying it.
Monsoon Floods
I had planned to do some interviews in Tibbi Gali at lunchtime, but it was impossible to leave the house. Two hours of torrential rain kept me inside, watching the spectacle from my window. An addict lay on the wall running along one of the big old houses in the courtyard. Water from the roof coursed down on him in a powerful foaming chute, and he lay semiconscious in the torrent for half an hour before staggering off to find a drier spot to slumber. Young men in dhotis sat bare-chested on the charpoys and exhilarated boys fought and frolicked in the impromptu swimming pool, but after a while, even they grew tired of the rain and went inside.
After an hour the deluge began to drip through my ceiling. The courtyard was like a lake, and when the storm had passed, the roads of Heera Mandi were left in a stinking, muddy mess. Great puddles and ponds of rainwater, shit, rubbish, and sludge sent the pedestrians zigzagging up Fort Road. The storm had washed sewage up from the drains and into the streets, and a fearsome stench hung over the area as pedestrians hopped from one drier patch of earth to another. Near Roshnai Gate brown slurry spewed like a geyser from a manhole. I took a rickshaw to the post office on Mall Road in the center of town in order to send my children some letters, but I never managed to make it. The roads were several feet deep in water, and as the liquid sewage lapped around my sandals and the rickshaw engine died, I decided to leave the journey for another day.
Twenty-four hours later, Jamila’s room is still three inches deep in runny mud. A dozen wet, stringy kittens have taken refuge on the charpoy and on the piles of rubbish at the back of the room. Jamila is more wizened than ever and Mehmood’s festering leg is no better. It can’t improve in this environment. The couple are covered in beads of sweat and steaming gently under the low-slung plastic roof.
Three big lumps of masonry block the road a little way down from Jamila’s room, and a tanga is having trouble finding a way through. A couple of emaciated workmen are staring into a shop not knowing where to start. They face a considerable challenge: the interior is filled with rubble and the upper three storeys have collapsed, one on top of the other. “There was too much water,” someone explains looking up through the chasm to the light above. Yesterday’s rains were truly devastating throughout northern Pakistan. Rawalpindi had its heaviest rainfall for a century and hundreds are believed to have died. In Lahore we escaped lightly.
Preparing for Mota
Maha has slept off the worst of an overdose and is organizing the household. Mota is coming to visit tonight to present Nena with the much-trumpeted CD player. I arrive early to a flurry of kisses and am made to sit in the middle of the arrangements. The sheets are being changed and the mattress is now decked in red, black, and yellow geometric patterns. The kitchen looks equally frightening and a lot less clean.
Maha’s house is an unlikely scene for expensive romance. Mota will have to drive the big, white, air-conditioned car up the filth-choked, open-drained, potholed roads because men as rich and as fat as Mota never walk anywhere. After he negotiates the litter-strewn steps, the great ashik will climb through two floors of narrow, spiraling darkness. If he doesn’t turn back from exhaustion or fear, Mota will have to paddle through the corridor that serves as Maha’s kitchen because the floor is inch-deep in water. He’ll pick his way between the pots, pans, buckets, stoves, unwashed dishes, ladles, and the wire-mesh rack containing rotting onions, plates, and assorted dirty rags.
I can’t imagine that Mota will be impressed by the decor, but I’m sure he will be enchanted with Nena. She’s wearing a black silky shalwaar and a new red kameez embroidered around the neck and hem with gold thread. The outfit is too large for her and hangs loosely on her shoulders and gapes at the neck. It makes her look fragile and vulnerable and very, very young. He’ll love it.
She’s applied foundation, a lot of black eyeliner, and bright red lipstick that’s the same shade as her dress. She rummages through her mother’s jewelry bag and tries on everything twice, finally settling on some elaborate dangling earrings and a splendid artificial gold choker. Her hair is tied up and she spends twenty minutes curling the tendrils around her ears. She’s looked in the mirror so many times that, if I didn’t know better, I would believe she was preparing for a first, and longed-for, date with the man she loved.
Mota rings to say he will be delayed. He’s at an important meeting at the Pearl Continental Hotel and is discussing the purchase of some vital new machinery for his factories with a group of engineers and salespeople. Nena and Nisha use the delay to practice poses culled from Indian films. An hour later Mota rings to say that the meeting is dragging on but that he will be with us soon. The girls have given up modeling themselves on film stars and are lying on the mattress getting their clothes badly crumpled. Adnan calls to tell Maha that he’s dying and too ill to give her any money. She breathes deeply and controls the rising panic: she’s still hoping that Mota is coming to rescue them. Another hour passes and the fat lover promises that he’ll be here in fifteen minutes. We no longer believe him—and he doesn’t come.
By half past ten the excitement has died down. We eat the food lovingly prepared for Mota, and Maha says that he’s a sister-fucker like all the rest. Nena is feeling rejected and sits in a corner despondently hugging her knees. Picking up a little mirror, she pulls a face and sighs, “All my lovely makeup is spoiled.”
My guess is that Mota is interested in Nena but doesn’t want to come to Heera Mandi. It’s not just because of the pimps and the toughs and the equally worrying police, but because of the stigma. Rich men still buy girls from Heera Mandi, but they enjoy them in luxurious hotels, smart private apartments, and houses with gardens, indoor plumbing, and American-style kitchens. Like Laila’s house. Laila has heard that Mota wants Nena, and she wants a cut of the fee charged for Nena’s virginity. She’s suggested that she can keep Nena safe in her nice house for three or four days for Mota’s exclusive—and discreet—pleasure. For this service, Laila is demanding half the virginity fee. Maha refuses. Bringing Mota to Heera Mandi was Maha’s doomed attempt to cut out the agents and the pimps. She failed miserably and now Nena is looking for another rich ashik.
Badmash
Someone runs behind me as I walk down Fort Road, draws level with me, and pulls at my sleeve. It’s a man—and not anyone I know. I make to go into the bakery but he persists.
“Wait,” he cries. “It’s me. It’s me.”
I look, and then look again. It’s Tasneem, the khusra. It’s little wonder I didn’t recognize her: Tasneem has become a boy. He’s wearing men’s clothes and his hair is ragged and short—far too short. It’s been hacked off, and in places I can see his scalp and scabs from healing wounds.
“What happened?” I gasp.
He’s embarrassed and keeps touching his head. “It was a badmash. He said he loved me, then he put a gun to my head.” He reenacts the horror in the road, tangas and rickshaws veering around him, and then he grows calmer and we step into the shadow of a quiet gali.
“He said he would kill me and then he cut off my hair with a knife.” He’s crying and rubbing his eyes on his sleeve.
“Where are you living now?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Nowhere. Perhaps I’ll go back to White Flower.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“By the mosque.”
“And what happens when it rains?” I ask, stupidly.
“I get wet.”
Poor, poor Tasneem: his new love and his new life have come to nothing and now he’s back here in the very place that he was so desperate to escape from.
“Come to see me, please,” I ask. “You know where I live.”
He promises he will come, but I know he won’t. He kisses and hugs me, reminding me that I’m always his sister. Then he’s gone, running and skipping between the rickshaws, waving, smiling, and crying at the same time.
The Fat Lover Comes Courting
Maha and Nena are not at home, and those who are left are very excited. Nena has been summoned to Mota’s side: they are meeting now. A string of people turn up and sit with me while I wait for them to return. First there is Farrukh, the dhobi walla who also doubles as a dabana walla. Farrukh has been helping Maha around the house recently in return for meals. He gives me an exquisitely painful foot massage and Nisha says I shouldn’t have let him: it’s shameless. Then comes Master Jee, who smokes furiously and jumps from the chair and departs with a dramatic stage walk. The Pathani woman from upstairs calls in and strides about the room looking slightly aggressive while talking in a loud voice about her bad luck. Finally, I’m introduced to a middle-aged man. In a loud rasping whisper Nisha says he’s the biggest dalal in Heera Mandi. Word must be getting round that Nena is about to make a good marriage and that the fortunes of the family are on the way up.
The bride-to-be and her mother return in an upbeat mood: Mota will definitely visit this evening. They have just spent two hours with him at Laila’s house and then he dropped them at Babar Bakery near to Data Dabar, half a mile from Heera Mandi. Maha dumps a bag of shopping on the mattress.
“Idiot,” she cries at Nena half-jokingly. “Look at what you got us.” Maha tips out the contents of the bag. Mota had asked Nena what she would like from the bakery and food store. “You can have anything,” he said, getting out his lakh of rupees. Maha stands with her hands on her hips and looks at the purchases.
“Guess what the idiot said: ‘One bottle of Pepsi; two bottles of fresh water for Louise Auntie; and some jam.’ Nena is going to marry a rich man and she asks him to buy her water and thirty-five-rupee [fifty-nine-cent] jam. I have a totally stupid daughter.”
She’s too happy to be cross for long, and she laughs and tells Nena to be sensible next time and ask for a lot of expensive things. The whole family is happy. Sofiya has kissed me at least a hundred times, and even Mutazar is being good.
Mota arrives after night has fallen. He pulls into the courtyard in his big white car, a brand-new Land Cruiser. No one has seen anything as grand and as expensive around here for a very long time.
His nickname does him justice. He’s staggeringly unattractive and must be three times the size of Nena. The one thing they got wrong was his age: he’s only about 45.
We are being introduced when Sofiya, who is supposed to be corralled in another room, dances in, twirling with excitement. She gasps and presses her hands to her cheeks and shouts, “Mota came. Mota is here. Mota. Mota. Mota.” She’s not being rude: she’s simply saying what she understands to be his name. Ariba catches hold of her hair and drags her out. There’s a look of absolute astonishment on the little girl’s face. She wants to join in the party and drink Pepsi out of glasses that have their sticky labels left on to show how new and clean they are and how special the occasion really is. She doesn’t know what she has done wrong. If Mota has noticed the insult, he doesn’t show any sign. Perhaps he’s too obtuse to see the link. Perhaps he doesn’t care.
Nena charms Mota with an elaborate performance of hair-brushing. She has long slightly wavy black hair that reaches well below her waist and she swings it about, half-hiding her face. Maha has gone to get some snacks, and I’m left alone with Mota and Nena as a kind of chaperone. There’s an uncomfortable silence, and Nena smiles continuously while fidgeting with her hair. Mota plays with his mobile phone, and I marvel at how such fat fingers can operate such a tiny device. It’s a relief when Maha comes back in. She jokes, laughs, and flatters Mota who insists on calling her Mother while she coos and calls him Son.
Maha performs her social role perfectly. Like other successful prostitutes she’s learned how to be an accomplished socializer who knows how to entertain men outside, as well as inside, the bedroom. Their livelihood—and sometimes their life—depends on the ability to read people and assess their mood. I’ve often wondered if this is why the prostitutes I have met have usually been friendlier and more approachable than most other women I know.
Mota doesn’t stay long—which is good because there’s always at least one power cut in the evening. It wouldn’t have been wise to have Mota sitting in the dark, without a fan to cool him, while the rats run their familiar circuit around the room. Some of them are so big you can hear the thud of their feet.
Maha and Nena accompany him to the car. I watch from the balcony with the other children and the recently returned Master Jee as Mota maneuvers the Land Cruiser out of the courtyard, reversing and negotiating a path between the piles of rubbish. Everyone is doing wild dances, hugging each other and repeating over and over again that the car is so expensive and that Mota must be incredibly rich.
Nena is glowing and Maha is triumphant: Mota wants the marriage to go ahead soon, and it won’t be just a three-day event. He wants Maha to keep Nena for his exclusive enjoyment whenever he visits Lahore. She’s to entertain no other men—and she will be paid handsomely for her faithfulness. Maha sighs and looks at me and Master Jee. “My life is going to be good. We will have a new house, and we won’t have to worry about the rent and the electricity. Maybe we will have a car. I am still alone: Adnan has gone, but, so what? My daughter is going to have a rich husband. Nothing else matters.”
“We will go shopping soon for my wedding dress,” Nena says proudly. “Everyone will have a new dress. Louise Auntie, you will have a new dress too.” I say that I have many dresses and don’t need any more. “No,” Nena replies softly but firmly. “It will be my gift to you for my wedding. I will ask my husband to buy you a dress. Please, it will be my gift.”
She is sitting right next to me. I expected her to be appalled or frightened or resentful at the prospect of a marriage to Mota, but she’s not: she’s thrilled. She’s giggling and embarrassed and slightly shocked, and she has something important she wants to tell me. She whispers so that no one else can hear.
“Louise Auntie, he kissed me—on the stairs, in the dark part. He went like this.” She bends close to me and kisses me on the cheek. “And he held my hand and put it like this,” she takes my hand and places it on her chest. “And he said, ‘Give me your heart.’ ” It sounds beautifully sweet. If Mota was 15 rather than 45, and if he wasn’t paying to buy Nena, the scene might have been endearingly romantic. Nena is certainly impressed by it. She repeats the same little story and actions five times in half an hour. Perhaps it’s to make sure I’ve understood or maybe she wants to relive the exciting experience over and over again. Even so, a few doubts remain to mar her pleasure, and when her mother is carrying on about how honorable and good and rich Mota is, Nena grows sad for a moment and then suddenly leans toward me and whispers, “He’s got tiny eyes.”
Mota’s wife is happy and today, a day after her husband’s visit to Heera Mandi, she telephones Nena. The two of them are having a good chat. The wife asks how Nena is feeling. Nena replies that she’s fine but a little nervous. The wife says not to worry: Mota is a nice man and everything will work out well. Nena asks after the health of Mota’s beautiful children and smiles when she hears that they too are fine. Maha is sitting close by, nodding in satisfaction. There’s no spoken hatred or jealousy: nothing except a formalized friendship between the fat lover’s wife and his teenage girlfriend.
“Why isn’t Mota’s wife angry?” I ask. “Why does she want to talk to Nena and be her friend?”
“Look, Louise, Mota is a rich man,” Maha says in surprise. “He can do what he wants. His wife has to keep him happy; otherwise he’ll divorce her. If he’s happy, she’ll have a good life. If Mota is happy, we’ll all be happy.”
Mota is pleased that his wife and new girlfriend have established a good rapport, and he’s rung to say a few nice words to Nena. She tries to sound relaxed, but she can’t help squeaking: she’s lying in her mother’s lap having her eyebrows plucked. Maha has stretched the skin so tightly over her brow that the girl can barely move. Even in this agonizing position Nena looks beautiful. Two tiny new faces are looking down at the beauty treatment from the top of the curtain rail. A large family must be breeding in the mallik’s old sofa.
Lessons in Seduction
A few nights after Mota’s visit, Nena is having a lesson in seduction. She’s practicing her routines and Maha is adding a few new moves or encouraging her to exaggerate existing ones. “That’s it, bend over a bit further. Now, move your hands like this.” Maha demonstrates. Then they practice exactly how Nena should look at a man from behind her fingers and how she should reveal her cleavage as if by accident. Maha is teaching Nena how to be provocative. In a Western context these little glances, the direct eye contact, the shake of the breasts, and the sway of the buttocks would hardly register as sexual displays. Here in Heera Mandi it’s the Pakistani equivalent of lap dancing.
“Master Jee can’t teach her this,” Maha laughs. She watches her daughter fall to the floor as if exhausted from intense but thwarted desire and adds in satisfaction, “Mota will die of a heart attack.”
Nisha wants to dance too. She puts on a dress that Nena says is her own and the girls begin screeching at each other. Nisha does a jerky dance and Nena sits looking petulant. “This is my song,” she announces. “You can’t dance to my song.” It’s not like her to be so petty and mean. Maha tells her not to be stupid and Nena turns on us.
“You are all jealous of me because I’m marrying a rich man,” she declares and flounces out of the room. She curls up in the corner of the bedroom. Ariba says she’s crying. I’ve tried to talk to her, but she remains wrapped in a tight little ball and refuses to speak.
Sofiya has lightened the atmosphere. She wants to dance like her big sister. Even at 3 years old she’s remarkably good. She has picked up more than the basics. She twirls, she raises her hands, she peeps through her fingers, and she sings along to tunes about her mehbub and her broken heart.
Everyone is enchanted by the performance. They are laughing and cheering and shouting, “Bund chalo, bund chalo,”—“Move your bum”—over and over again. Sofiya complies with perfect, wonderfully timed gyrations of her hips. If she continues to make this kind of progress and can maintain her style, she’s going to grow into the kind of dancing girl of whom legends are made.
Black Magic
Maha is at her mother’s house. She’s high on something, swaying to and fro, struggling to speak. Her sister has returned from hospital. High blood pressure caused her recent health scare, so she’s taking it easy, lying on the floor in a heavy, rosy-cheeked heap next to the husband of Maha’s dead sister. They’ve been having a relationship ever since Fouzia died in childbirth. Maha doesn’t approve. She thinks it’s an insult to the cherished memory of her beloved Fouzia. The man is a gem dealer and he has a good look at my ring. He doesn’t comment: he just sniffs.
Maha’s stepfather is there too. He has his back to us. He’s sulking and I can feel the anger radiating from him. They’re talking about Nena—about what to do with her. Should she go to London or Dubai? Or should she stay in Lahore and hope the marriage with Mota will materialize? No one is sure and opinion is divided. Maha doesn’t have an opinion on anything and I have to maneuver her back home so that she can collapse into her own bed. Maha’s mother looks at her daughter slumped on my arm as we stagger out of the door. She shakes her head, turns away, and lights another cigarette.
I’m fed up with Maha and I can’t tolerate her insistent belief in black magic. Nisha danced this evening. She put a massive effort into it, but it was a brittle, staccato performance. We were all watching: Maha, me, the children, Master Jee, and one of Maha’s cousins. Nisha bent backward and we all clapped. Then she flung herself forward. We would have cheered except that she kept falling toward the floor until her forehead made contact with the rug and she collapsed with a piercing scream. The family crowded round and Maha cradled her head and kissed her.
“She’s too hot,” I said fetching some water from the fridge. The air cooler wasn’t switched on and it was a close, humid evening.
“It’s not the weather,” Maha retorted. “It’s black magic. It’s her,” she shouted, nodding her head in the direction of her mother’s house. “She’s jealous.” Jealous, she means, because Nena is to be married and will bring money into the house.
I said I thought that Nisha collapsed because she’s in poor health and because she became overheated and exhausted. Nobody thought it was a sensible explanation. I was corrected by Maha, Master Jee, and the cousin, who all affirmed that an evil spell was at work. Nisha corroborated the black magic story and supplemented it by claiming that a man in black had entered the room and had asked her to go with him.
I thought to myself that I’d like to leave with the man in black so that I could escape this idiocy. Nisha was crying, the cooler still wasn’t switched on, and Maha was working herself into a panic, bewailing the many spells placed upon her family. I won’t go back tomorrow; we’ll only argue.
The Bride
I’ve decided to relent and go to see Maha. I’ve bought a big bag of sita, corn cobs, from the man by Roshnai Gate who cooks them in a pan of rough salt over a fire. He buries them in what looks like gray grit and then stirs the cobs around so they become crispy on the edges and encrusted with salt. I have a dozen of them sweating in a shopper. They smell delicious.
A red-eyed Nena throws the door open and begins to cry.
“Louise Auntie,” she croaks, “I’m going to be married tonight.”
I hug her and ask if she’s happy, and she shakes her head. “I’m happy for my family.”
There are some people in the best room and I ask if one is Mota, the lucky bridegroom.
“It’s not Mota. I’m not marrying Mota. I’m marrying Sheikh Khasib. I’m going to the Gulf,” she sobs.
I sit with Maha and Nena in the other room. Nena is crying and doesn’t look as if she’ll make a very happy bride.
“She’s too young,” I argue. “And it’s too dangerous. Anything can happen to her.”
Maha has twenty thousand rupees ($337) rolled into a tight tube in her hand. It’s an advance on the one and a half lakh ($2,529) that Nena will receive for having sex.
“I’ll give it back to the dalal,” Maha promises.
“No, Mum. I want to go. I do want to go. Then we’ll have some money.”
Nothing has prepared me for the reality of this event. I don’t know how far I should oppose the decision. I’m here to document life in Heera Mandi, not to intervene in it. In the social codes of Heera Mandi, Nena is not doing anything unusual. By the standards of the mohalla she’s not a child: she’s ready for “marriage” and she’s ready to become a kanjri. I know this on an intellectual level, but it doesn’t lessen my unease. I’ve become too deeply involved in the lives of the people I’m supposed to be researching; I’m no longer an objective observer but a participant in their world. I can’t walk away from this situation without losing my integrity, but I can’t stay and keep it either.
I could stop her going. I could create a scene, but even if I oppose her marriage in Dubai it will only postpone it for a short while. If I go to the police Nena won’t be protected: she might even lose her virginity in the thanna. I could contact a charity, in which case she might be removed from the family she loves and placed in a government home or a shelter. And, even then, her future wouldn’t be secure because marriage is the only future for a Pakistani woman of her class. And the homes themselves are unsanitary and draconian—more like prisons than refuges. I don’t know what is best for Nena, or for Maha, nor do I know how I can protect the child without betraying her mother, my friend.
The people in the best room are the dalals—agents, or procurers. The principal dalal is a woman; she is with a man who is a kind of minder. She calls us and says we have to hurry up. We must leave the house in two hours and first we need to go shopping.
“Ring Laila. Ring Mota,” I suggest. “Maybe she can still be married here.”
Maha shakes her head. “Mota hasn’t called for days. He’s not interested.”
The dalal takes my arm. She speaks impeccable English and tells me that she’s Pakistani. She grew up in Dubai and still has family there. She wants me to help calm Maha. “I know the mother is worried,” she says, “but there’s nothing to be concerned about. She’s only going for one man: for Sheikh Khasib. No one else will place a finger on her.” Perhaps this is supposed to comfort us. This woman thinks I’m a dalal too. She believes that I take girls to England. She speaks about the trade as if we are business executives sharing notes.
“You know Sheikh Khasib, don’t you?”
I say I know of him—he belongs to the inner circle of royal dynasties and is one of the most powerful men in the Gulf states.
The dalal fills in some the details. “He likes virgin girls. Not for sex—he has lots of girlfriends from all over the world for sex—but he likes to open virgins. It only takes a few minutes. The girls come from all over: from India, Pakistan, Iran. He doesn’t even take off his clothes for most of them. It’s like a habit for him. Someone told him that opening virgins makes a man young.”
“Opening virgins” is a common way of describing defloration, and I’ve heard this stupid myth plenty of times before. It makes Nena sound like a vitamin tablet.
I ask her some questions about the travel arrangements.
“The passport, the visa, and her identity card have all been arranged.” She hands the documents to me. They look real enough. “If there’s a problem with them it’ll be a problem for me. I have to think about my reputation and my business. This isn’t the first time we have done this and it won’t be the last. I’ve taken ten or more girls from Heera Mandi and it’s easy. There’s no problem. She’ll be met in the Gulf by my sister and she’ll stay with my family. She’ll be sent to Sheikh Khasib tomorrow night, and afterward she’ll come home.”
This woman is part of a well-established network that supplies girls to rich Arab men. Her reputation depends on her ability to procure beautiful virgin teenagers. She knows what her clients like. “She has to have a nice dress, something that shows off her figure. He likes to see the shape of their bodies. And no embroidery and fancywork. He doesn’t like the feel of it. Just something simple and very, very sexy.”
Maha still has the money in her hand. Some of this advance is going to be spent on purchasing the sexy outfit. Maha agrees to be back at the house with the special dress in an hour and a half. The agents say that they’ll return with the plane ticket and we’ll all go to the airport.
I don’t relish the prospect of helping to choose a dress for Sheikh Khasib to savor, so Maha and Nena go shopping without me. They return from Babar Market with lots of bags. Nena has a new leather suitcase for the journey. She has two pairs of fake gold-and-diamond earrings that would never pass for the real thing. She has lots of little sachets of shampoo and a pot of cream bleach for lightening facial hair. And she has a new outfit—one that the sheikh will not like. The dalal’s instructions have fallen on deaf ears. The dress is baggy, a woman’s dress, but Nena has the body of an adolescent. The dress isn’t simple either: it’s black and heavily embroidered with silver thread and silver and glass beading. The shoes are worse: three-inch platforms and six-inch heels covered in thick silver glitter. They look like a poor girl’s party clothes. The agent sighs heavily and says that she’ll arrange for a tailor to do something with the dress in Dubai. Maha and Nisha bring out all the clothes in the house in the hope that one item will be suitable for a palace. All are variations on the same theme: day dresses in cheap cotton or polyester party wear with embroidered panels and sparkly bits. A pile of items is shoved into the suitcase in the expectation that something will be right.
Nena has a new outfit for the journey. It’s black cotton with a peach dupatta and embroidered flowers around the neckline. She looks so pretty. She’s wearing eyeliner and a little lipstick. “Keep it light,” the agent says. Nena doesn’t need to attract attention by looking like a prostitute on the move.
“Will I be the only person on the plane?” Nena asks.
Nisha, Ariba, and Sofiya aren’t going to the airport with us. Nisha is terribly agitated. She’s moving round in the other room with strange twitching movements. The minder takes Nena’s bag and the two girls stare at each other and then they hug. Nisha is crying and her thin arms are locked around Nena. She won’t let her little sister go and the dalal has to pry them apart. We can hear Nisha shouting for Nena as we go down the stairs. She’s hysterical. Ariba and Sofiya are waving goodbye to Nena from the balcony, and a crowd is assembling to see us leave in a taxi.
Nena sits between Maha and me in the back of the car. The dalal is in the front and the minder rides alongside on a motorbike, with Mutazar sitting on the gas tank. Nena is resting her head against her mother. She’s not making a sound, but she’s crying and her eyeliner is running down her cheeks. Maha wipes away the tears, one by one, and kisses her daughter’s hair. Neither of them want this marriage to happen, but the money is good, and Nena’s reputation and the family’s honor will be enhanced if she is known as the virgin bride of Sheikh Khasib.
I’m confused about the direction we are taking to the airport. We stop in a poor neighborhood and the dalal tells us that Nena is going to the doctor’s for a checkup.
We pass some women sitting on a wall. Their body language and direct eye contact make me think that they’re prostitutes.
Maha is seething and muttering curses. “Such an insult. That sister-fucker woman.”
I ask her what’s going on, but she’s too angry to reply.
The doctor’s surgery is a small dark room in a large dark building. There’s no evidence of its medical function except for an ancient heavily stained mattress and a plastic tub containing a few bottles of liquid, some gauze, and a couple of syringes. The surgery makes Dr. Qazi’s practice look like cutting-edge medical science. The doctor is female, in her midthirties, and heavily pregnant. She says she needs to give Nena an internal examination to make sure everything is in good order.
Nena is terrified, but the dalal clucks around her and persuades her to lie down. She squeaks and cries, holding onto her mother’s hand. The doctor tells the dalal that the sheikh is going to have difficulty because Nena is so choti—so little, so young—but that the girl is definitely a virgin.
“We have to do this,” the dalal explains. “It’s protection for us and for the girls. We don’t want to take them all the way to Dubai and then have complaints that they’re not virgins.”
This doctor is a dai, a traditional midwife who specializes in treating women in the sex business. She also deals in abortions and in verifying virginity for fussy clients. She prepares a syringe, explaining that Nena has a problem and needs medicine.
I ask what the problem is.
“She has too much water on her uterus. She’s been eating too much meat and hot foods.”
It sounds bizarre and I ask Maha what it means.
“She’s weak. There’s too much water.” She speaks to me as if I can’t understand the Urdu, when what I can’t understand is the medical condition.
“Louise,” she repeats. “Nena is weak.”
“It’s the Pakistani diet,” the dalal adds.
I think this sounds like good news. Maybe she won’t have to go if she’s ill. The dai gives Nena an injection in her buttock. She uses some solution from one of the bottles in the plastic tub. Lots of other girls must have this water problem too. She tips some white powder onto a piece of paper and tells Nena to eat it. It can’t taste nice because Nena is pulling a face. The dai pours more powder onto another piece of paper and folds it up. Nena has to take half tonight and the rest tomorrow morning. She’s told that it will make her feel a lot better. The dai is right—Nena doesn’t cry any more.
The airport is busy. Hundreds of people are clogging up the entrance and travelers are fighting to get through the doors with mountains of heavy luggage on carts. We can’t go into the building without a ticket, so we stand by the refreshment stall. The dalal is tutoring Nena on what to say—the name of her husband and the reason for her trip to Dubai: She’s 18 and she has been married for a couple of months. Her husband works in Dubai and has asked her to visit. She’s told not to worry: it’s going to be easy.
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I speak quietly to Nena. “You don’t have to go. Please stay. It’s possible.” She smiles and says she’s fine. She’s calm and very dignified and Maha and I are the ones who are crying.
We watch through the windows as Nena checks in. She grips her suitcase and turns around to wave and blow kisses. We stand here for an hour, hanging over the barriers waiting to see if she gets through immigration. It’s oppressively hot. And then the dalals tell us that everything is okay—she’s on her way and we can go home.
Maha’s house is unusually quiet. Maha is talking about their future life—about putting a deposit on a house with Nena’s “kusi money.” She pulls the roll of notes from her bra and spreads them on the mattress. Part of the advance has already been spent on Nena’s new clothes. “This will pay for the rent,” she says putting a pile of notes on one side. “And this is the electricity money.”
Farrukh, the helper, has bought some special food from a restaurant on the main road. It’s delicious: freshly barbecued chicken with green chilies and the thinnest roti. Maha pulls a face and waves a piece under the children’s noses. “We’re eating your sister’s kusi money.” And then she turns to me and adds, “In Heera Mandi your kusi is your gold. Nena has a golden kusi.”
She stops eating. “Louise, were Nena’s clothes all right? Was her bag all right? It was a nice bag, wasn’t it? And the shampoo, was it good?” There’s a note of panic in her voice. I nod and Maha crumples and cries. The others carry on eating in silence.
Adnan has arrived. I haven’t seen him for months, and neither has Maha. He’s been in the hospital. His legs blew up like balloons and they thought he was going to die.
He’s drugged up and vacant, and there are three syringes sticking out of the pocket of his kameez. Maha isn’t pleased to see him.
“You’ve been taking those injections, haven’t you? While you’ve been sticking those injection in your ass, my daughter has had to go to Dubai.”
There’s disbelief on Adnan’s face and he sits with his head in his hands. He’s known Nena since she was 8 years old.
Maha is shouting at him. “We didn’t have any money. No money for the rent. No money for food or electricity. You gave us nothing. When you’re in hospital, or at home with your wife and your drugs, we still need to eat.”
The phone rings and she screams into it. It’s Mota, the reluctant bridegroom. “My daughter wanted to marry you, but you didn’t come,” she shrieks. “She loved you and now she’s had to go to Dubai.”
Adnan is swaying to and fro. He staggers to his feet, swearing at Maha. “You kanjri, you taxi, you ghashti. You’re a rotten mother for sending your little girl to Dubai.”
“She didn’t go because of me. She went because of you. You weren’t here and we were hungry.”
Adnan leaves the door wide open and staggers down the stairs. He says he’ll never come back.
“Good,” Maha shouts after him. “Go and die, sister-fucker.”
Mota arrives at midnight with a friend. He doesn’t believe that Nena has gone to the Gulf. Perhaps he thinks it’s part of Maha’s negotiating strategy. He rings the airport to see if a plane had been scheduled to leave for Dubai at eight o’clock. He lies on the mattress with his head resting on his hands. He isn’t convinced.
He’s wearing a rather nice Western outfit—a beige polo shirt and extralarge cream jeans that are fastened underneath his belly so that we have frequent and generous views of a squashy, hairy stomach. He refuses food and drink, and after reviewing the situation for half an hour he hauls himself up so he can sit on the edge of the mattress with his back to us. He’s wondering how he’s going to get up without groaning. He rocks slightly to get some momentum going and then he stands. As he does, his jeans slip down revealing giant buttocks. The jeans would have fallen to the floor, but they’re caught on his penis. Mota wriggles back into the jeans with a little exclamation of surprise, and he and the friend leave.
Everyone explodes into laughter the moment they walk through the door. “What an ass,” howls Maha.
“We saw Mota’s ass,” Sofiya gasps.
We’re crying because the scene is so hilarious—the great, rich ashik exposed. Ariba performs a reconstruction of the event and the place falls apart.
“It was this big.” Nisha spreads her arms wide.
“No, it was bigger than that.”
“And it was really black.”
“Mota’s big black ass.” “So black. So big!”
I hope Mota can hear us as he levers his ass into his Land Cruiser.
Trafficked in Dubai
There’s been no word from Nena all day. She was supposed to telephone: the dalal promised us. Maha is waiting for her call. I can see her from my window. She’s staring into the courtyard, heavy-eyed and leaning on the air cooler that juts out onto the balcony.
I think about Nena and feel so guilty. When I write about prostitution and the trafficking of women in my office at the university, the issues seem clear, and yet here I am, in this dreadful place, witnessing a girl whom I am deeply fond of being trafficked to another country so she can be sold to a man who collects virgins. I’ve spoken to a doctor about the visit to the dai. He’s never heard of the water-on-the-uterus condition and says it’s nonsense. The injection was probably a muscle relaxant—something to help a child cope with sex with a man. And the powder was probably an opiate to keep her calm. I’m unable to analyze this and be objective: I’ve lost my professional moorings.
It’s night in Heera Mandi and it will be night in Dubai. Nena will be going to her husband. Maha is lying on the floor clutching her stomach, and all the members of her family have gathered around. They think she might die.
“I have a pain in my belly,” she groans. “It’s like a delivery pain. It’s so bad. Like cancer.”
She doesn’t die and, when the relatives have gone, she crawls to lie on the mattress with me. She wants to talk about Nena, but it’s a mixed-up story and I struggle to follow. It’s a story about a handsome young man who told a girl that she was beautiful and sexy and kept her in his gold bed for a month. It’s about pain and blood all over the bed and about the drugs that make her remember only half of what happened when the man took her to the big golden bed shortly after she had married Sheikh Zayed, her first husband. It’s a story about Sheikh Khasib who, more than twenty years ago, enjoyed a 12-year-old girl from Heera Mandi. That girl was Maha.
Nena’s marriage to the sheikh didn’t happen. She telephoned us today and said the sheikh didn’t want her. The dalal says something different. Nena was presented to her husband but was so ill with stomach pains that she vomited and had to be taken away. They’ll try again tonight.
I’ve contacted a friend who is a leading Pakistani human rights lawyer, and he says we can launch a search for Nena. No one in Heera Mandi thinks this is a good idea. In fact they think it’s an atrocious idea. They don’t want the authorities involved. They say it’ll only cause them more problems and they forbid me to take any action.
Twenty-four hours later, the dalal is angry and Maha is shouting back into the phone. The dalal says that Nena is refusing to cooperate. She is sick again. The girl is hysterical, and she has to stop the stupid behavior and earn some money. Until then she won’t be allowed home. Maha replies with a stream of abuse.
Nena is distraught. She’s screaming down the phone. I can hear her from the other side of the room. She hates her mother, she hates Dubai, and she never wants to come back to Lahore. I can hear her shouting, “You’re a horrible mother. You want me to die.”
Maha is shaken by the call but is trying to be positive. She says we’ll have a party when Nena comes home. We’ll have wonderful food and Nena will have a beautiful wedding dress because, after all, she will have been a bride.
Nisha fumes, “You never got me a wedding dress.”
Maha and Nisha start to argue. Maha grabs Nisha and shakes her. Nisha is screaming and garbling, “Give me back my lakh of rupees. Give me back my lakh of rupees.”
I am startled: Nisha was married too, in the days when she was well—two years ago, when she was 14.
Another two days have gone by and Maha’s younger brother is giving instructions to Nena on the phone. He tells her to be calm. Once she’s gone through with the marriage, she can come home. He won’t let me talk to her. He says she’ll only get more upset.
Maha has taken an overdose of sleeping tablets and can’t talk. Nisha is speaking for her mother. She whispers that they went to a “deck function” last night. The clients had a smart bungalow with a swimming pool in Defence. Her uncle—the one who is speaking on the phone—acted as the agent. He’d been asked to organize the entertainment for the party. He rounded up women from the area: Maha, Nisha, the daughter of the Pathani upar walli, and three others. He told them it was an “open-price event.” The women would have to work hard and earn money from the clients without any fee being fixed in advance. He brought Nisha a sexy dress to wear. It was sleeveless and backless: she must have looked shocking with her sticks of arms and every vertebrae in her back poking through her skin.
The men were drunk when the women arrived at midnight. There were lots of them and the function was out of control. They locked the doors and the women were stripped, kissed, touched—and more. Nisha can’t say. When they left, Maha and Nisha were given one thousand rupees ($17) between them. It had been a fixed-price function after all and Maha’s brother had pocketed the rest of the fee.
The Pir and a Message for Nena
A pir has been in Heera Mandi for a couple of days. He travels with a drummer and a man who has a very loud voice. They announce his arrival and ask for donations from the locals. He’s taken up residence in the dalal’s hut and Maha and I are going to pay our respects. Farrukh, the servant, is sent to buy some sweets from the bakery and we join the holy man in the pimps’ den.
The scruffy pir is sitting cross-legged on the charpoy. He’s in his late fifties, with long hair in a confusion of untidy dreadlocks. A big silver panja hangs around his neck and he has lots of rings and a couple of massive ankle bracelets. He has kind, laughing eyes in a thin face and a big gold tooth set in among his other long yellow ones. He speaks nicely to Maha.
Farrukh brings in the sweets and the pir blesses them and hands them around. We sit for two hours drinking tea and eating the sweets. Maha explains her problems, and the pir listens patiently and responds with kindness. I don’t know if he’s holy, but he seems like a nice guy who has a lot of time on his hands and who is willing to talk to people about their problems and offer some sensible advice. He tells Maha to forget the black magic and to pray. He says that she should stop entertaining the tamash been because none of them are any good. “They use a woman: they pick a flower and they throw it away.” Maha nods as if enlightened.
Mushtaq, the pimp, marches into the hut and we fall silent. He’s radiating power and authority. He stands in front of a broken piece of mirror balanced on top of an old cupboard and combs his hair for five minutes. Then he marches out, taking his aura with him. The pir suppresses a smile: he doesn’t like Mushtaq. Not many people do.
Maha hangs on the pir’s words. She reminds me three or four times that he’s a sayeed, from Iran. He’s so gentle and patient with her, so nonjudgmental. He knows she’s a kanjri. There’s a softness in his eyes as she tumbles over her words. She explains about Nena, her little daughter lost in Dubai, and Adnan and his injections and how her children’s luck is turning bad, just like her own. He suggests that they should move. They should concentrate on keeping the house clean and living simply. He makes jokes so that Maha laughs in between her tears. I came into this hut prepared to be cynical, but I will leave impressed by a man who has given genuine comfort. He’s a psychologist and a therapist and he has given Maha real hope.
He promises Maha that he’ll help Nena: he’ll pray and ask God to put love and gentleness into the soul of her dalal. He himself will also speak to the woman’s heart so that she will soften and send Nena home. And because Maha wants to do something more, so that she can feel she’s helping her child, we buy a pure white dove. The pir holds it in his hands and blesses it and Maha makes a prayer, and as the bird is released and flies high into the air, she blows it kisses to take along with her love and the pir’s blessing to Nena in Dubai.