Five new girls are staying in the thin pimp’s brothel. The bold ones come to the door, laughing and pulling their veils over their hair as they glance around the courtyard. The others stay in the shadows, edging closer only occasionally to peep around the shutters or lift the bamboo blinds. Like dozens of girls who have passed through this brothel, they will spend most of their day in the damp, windowless interior of the house.
The shrine looks as if it has always been in the corner of the courtyard: as if the devout have lit oil lamps and prayed beneath the Shia banners for centuries; as if the straggly tree and the bushes have always grown there and have always been strung with pretty lights on every religious occasion. Traditions must be swift to take root in Heera Mandi because, five years ago, there was no shrine; it was the place where the pimps relaxed on wood-framed, rope-strung beds when it was too hot and humid to sit inside their den.
Another family has moved into Maha’s rooms and a group of Afghans have set up a miniature refugee camp on the roof using bits of rope and ripped blankets that are permanently sodden with the winter rain. Her plants have gone from the balcony and a new collection of washing is drying slowly on the railings. The giant air cooler no longer juts precariously out of the window, threatening to crush the passers-by below. There’s no singing from the second floor of the big yellow house. Maha’s voice has stopped echoing round the courtyard as she practices her ghazals, and the musicians have ceased carrying their tablas and harmonium up the narrow spiral staircases to her rooms.
When I first came to the courtyard, things were very different. The cycle of life has spun quickly, occasionally with cruelty, usually with bitter inevitability, and sometimes with such fast-burning beauty and energy that a single moment of brilliance illuminates whole lives in the dark, hidden world of this ancient brothel quarter.
A rickshaw draws alongside me and a hand decorated with gold filigree rings beckons through the fractionally opened door. Inside, one of the passengers lifts her veil. My friend’s eyes are smiling at me from a girl’s face: Maha’s daughter has blossomed into a stunning young woman.
“Louise Auntie, chale, let’s go,” she requests with all the sweet charm she had as a child. “We’ve been waiting for you.”