No Romancing the Mohallah

As a friend recently commented, only the myopic or the most dedicated could still romanticize shahi mohallah aka Heera Mandi and its most terrible oppression of women. They dance and service sex to the lower and middle class if they are poor and recent migrants to Heera Mandi. They go to elite parties in Lahore to dance and service sex, and fly to Dubai as part of dance troupes if they are lucky or are descendents of the old courtesans of Lahore ( the Kanjar family). Agents and pimps exploit. There is virtually no organizing or safety net amongst them and a watch out for yourself and corrupt dalals mentality exists. Getting human rights community involved is tantamount to poisoning your source of livelihood. Illegal abortions, TB, and malnutrition are rampant. HIV and Aids lurk around the corner and are hardly the fear of the very filthy as the myth goes. There is a great demand for 13 to 14 year olds and you’re finished by the time you’re 30. Rape is commonplace and condoned miserably as an occupational hazard. And generally conditions are exploitative as the women negotiate with characters around them to get to Dubai or get gigs at New Year eve parties of the ultra rich of Lahore.

Recently, I declined an offer to watch a mujrah by someone who claims to value the arts and culture -- not because I am prudish, but because there was something disturbing about watching a video taped mujrah in the comfort of American suburbia. The girl probably got a pretty raw deal, had not seen a doctor in months, and after the mujrah, was pawed by a fat, ugly, pedophile industrialist from Defence or Gulberg. How exactly were we supporting the arts?

Although none of it will be new news or surprising in the least for most Pakistanis, Louise Brown’s book "Dancing Girls of Lahore" (2005) is still a good account and will place any ambivalence you may have about the profession in perspective. It is certainly not the first written about the tawaifs of Shahi Mohollah, but vividly highlights the transition of the area in the last five to ten years with globalization, and even in the last 30 years and more. (Pran Neville, Fouzia Saaed, Faryal Gauhar have written about Heera Mandi and transvestite sex workers of Tibbi Gali) A far cry from the courtesans of the Mughul days who spoke Persianized Urdu, knew how to read, write, sing and dance, few in Heera Mandi have the time and resources to learn even Khattak. The girls gyrate to Bollywood music, and tabaljis, harmonium, and dholak walas are not hired as often. Persianized Urdu and recitals of Meer and Ghalib are not so much in demand as are other services from the very young.

Heera Mandi has switched gears over the last 30 years when urban intellectuals and industrialists, and the landlord class frequented the mohallah. They don’t come any more and brothels and mujrah dancing have shifted to affluent neighborhoods and international brothels. The changes though have been happening since 1858. The British criminalized prostitution, lumping the courtesans with the common prostitutes because they found little eroticism in complex, classical dance moves (and could barely appreciate Meer). More changes have happened since, first during Ayub’s time who placed severe time and place restrictions on the performance of mujrahs, and then of course during Zia’s bankrupt, so called Islamization campaign, the repercussions of which we will be undoing for generations. The king Akbar memorialized for his Deen-i-Ellahi that brought Hindus and Muslims closer together had a harem of 5,000 women serving his needs. And even though the Mughals, including Akbar, exercised a form of slavery (and courtesans of Mughul times were in no way liberated women), the Mughal courtesans of latter day were among the few women of their times who learned to read and write, and were educated in the arts. No more. There are laments about 25 years ago when the elite visited the area, but even that does not seem like a rosy scenario in the slow socio-economic disintegration of Heera Mandi.

Now, there is an active and exploitative trade to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and even London. Pimps and agents send girls to dance for migrant South Asian workers, and then provide sexual services (sometimes for month long "marriages" before they can return to Lahore), and even for the occasional Arab Sheikh who likes to "open" virgins, which he believes will keep him young. In a heart wrenching scene, a 14 year old is taken by a female pimp of Pakistani origin (who now lives in Dubai) to a dai who checks her to make sure she is good and then gives her a muscle relaxant on her way to the airport so the Dubai sheikh (and she?) can have an easier time. The episode does not want to make you clutch your daughters in safety, or say "tch tch, these poor women," but marvel instead at the immense privilege some of us live in.

In a way the sex workers of Shahi Mohallah are horribly oppressed on account of class and income, caste or family ki chap (kanjiri), sexuality and health status; but they are also constantly reinventing themselves, adapting to changing globes, and negotiating with the characters and forces around them to improve their lives. One of the protagonists, Maha, is devastated when she misplaces her cellphone and jokingly calls it her "big Dalal."

Take a woman trying to bargain for her teenage daughter’s virginity to a man in London for a two day marriage. Arguably, this girl is hardly more a victim than girls in many regular marriages. Arguably, many first world Pakistanis who pick 20 year old brides from Karachi or Multan on the eve of their 40th birthday are complicit in a form of gender oppression, cousin only to the overt sexploitation of Diamond Market.

But the point is not to preach. But perhaps it is to make a preachy point. I remember reading Tehmina Durrani’s book, “My Feudal Lord” in the 80s. I somehow finagled a copy from the Karachi Gymkhana library because it became a sensation. I was horrified later to read Anwar Maqsood’s notion of what a dream vacation would be and he said -- "On a deserted island with Tehmina Durrani [her book]" Funny Guy. It’s amazing his decrepit form is still plastered on cable tv. Reading accounts of gender-based oppression is titillating and voyeuristic for many of us. Maybe it is for you as well. This is not a morality test. But, besides being voyeuristically or intellectually stimulated by the Dancing Girls book, question the working conditions of people in general. Join a movement or something.

Think beyond the occasional charity or the status quo maintaining NGO. If anything needs attention in Pakistan, it is more attention to labor, including sex workers. Everyone works for a living and this is the primary site of oppression, whether it is the bricklayers, factor workers, or women toiling in unrecognized piece-work in their homes and dealing with their own versions of dalals and pimping middle men who give them pennies. A Christian sweeper in the book has become blind because of chemical fumes from a cleaning job. No disability benefits or worker’s comp for the bhangi. The labor movement does exist in Pakistan, and that is what needs our thoughtful financial and political support. And more than trying to savor the arts and jumping down a pit to save a drowning Urdu culture, let’s get real.

For those who are prosecution oriented, question the criminalization of sex workers. If you yearn to punish someone, then make it be the sheikhs of Dubai, the impeccably dressed, top notch pimps and pimpresses of Lahore, the traffickers of Dubai and London.

Louise Brown’s story is a full-bodied read. And if you’re familiar with these lives, and wonder what a white girl can tell you -- I don’t know. White girl narratives can be problematic. Louise visited Heera Mandi regularly for month or so long trips between 2000 and 2005. She thinks she fits in with her dupatta, but is later shocked to see pictures of herself amongst the locals looking horribly white and misplaced. She traverses the bazaars with hijra sex workers, becomes one’s sister after being gifted a purple shalwar kameez, chaperones a dancer to a party, wears black for Muharram, and briefly wishes for Karachi (that dump of a city) over the chaos of Sewan Sharif with a native’s (or a wannabe’s) cleverness. But somehow, I shed my knee jerk need to see her as an orientalist with a white man’s burden 50 pages into the book. Her narrative can make you cringe at times, her translations for English readers a bit annoying, but I’ll leave that critique for an academic. She intervenes with the characters lives sometimes, but then how much can she? Or how much would seem ok? I am reminded of the most definitely modern day orientalist film "The Constant Gardener" where a character in Africa is told that "we can’t save them all" and she responds presenting a false moral conundrum: "Yes, but we can save this one." Something like that. What with all the problems of neo-liberalism and corporate imperialism.

Louise leaves you on an upbeat note keeping your desire for fictional integrity and happy endings intact. Smiling, the characters discuss Louise’s book-to-be and choose fake names common in the rich upper classes; Ariba and Maha. Nisha and Nena. Mutazar and Sofiya. Wicked! Clearly, the villain is the high class pimp, Laila, clad in a black top and pants, and trading in teenage virginity. She invites all your wrath for the morally vacuous rich, the consumers of flesh in their Land Cruisers. The whore of Heera Mandi, on the other hand, is not the victim. She is, indeed, the heroine of the plot.

And to think I thought that Kanjar was a gali reserved exclusively by my father for Pathan drivers in Karachi who drove while high. You learn something new everyday.