The
Dancing Girls
of Lahore
SELLING LOVE AND SAVING DREAMS
IN PAKISTAN'S ANCIENT
PLEASURE DISTRICT



Louise Brown


For Maha

Prologue


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."

"We Were Artists...Not Gandi Kanjri"

(HOT SEASON: APRIL-JUNE 2000)


Lahore is a wonderful city with rich character
and a worn charm. The Mughal Empire
has bequeathed some glories to the modern
city: the awe-inspiring Badshahi Masjid;
the imposing Shahi Quila, or Royal Fort;
the pretty Shalamar Gardens; and the now
dilapidated tombs of Emperor Jahangir and
his empress, Nur Jahan. Grand buildings
inherited from the British raj sit in stately,
shabby order on the broad, leafy Mall
Road running through the center of town.
New suburbs have grown-some affluent
and some not. The streets and markets bustle
and hum with life and the mosques and
mausoleums are always busy. Best of all,
though, is this ancient place-the Walled
City-a quarter of a million people squeezed
into a square mile of congested tenements
and shops. It is the heart of Lahore and it
carries the city's soul.


Old Lahore can't have changed much for centuries. The moat
was filled in long ago and the defensive walls have gone, but the residents,
constrained by ancient land boundaries and historical memory,
continue to build their houses as if the walls still exist: an ageless
and invisible presence. The thirteen gates into the city remain too,
channeling pedestrians and traffic from the wide roads of contemporary
Lahore into the narrow lanes and alleys of the Walled City.
Rickshaws, horse-drawn carts called tangas, motorbikes, and small
vans compete with pedestrians for space inside the walls. No vehicles
of any kind enter the narrowest alleys. Neither does the sun.
Only in the wider lanes and the bazaars does the sun shine directly
on the ground. Most of the small passages running through the city
lie in perpetual, dusty gloom.

Early morning is the best time to see the old city. During the hot