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Lahore content with Heera Mandi: The Asian Age
Lahore, Aug 22: The sound of drums and accordion music rings out through the narrow, winding streets of Lahore`s old town. Girls peer out from tiny rooms waiting for the next man who will pay to watch them dance, and then for sex.
Lahore, Aug 22: The sound of drums and accordion music rings out through the narrow, winding streets of Lahore’s old town. Girls peer out from tiny rooms waiting for the next man who will pay to watch them dance, and then for sex.
This is Heera Mandi, Lahore’s Diamond Market, Pakistan’s most famous redlight area and a throwback to the ancient traditions of the harems of South and Central Asia.
Yet these days the dancing girls of Heera Mandi have fallen on hard times, and the centuries-old traditions of music and dance are dying out.
Decades of repression by successive governments wanting to prove their Islamic credentials have seen the girls of Heera Mandi scattered throughout Lahore. The collapse of foreign visitors after September 11, 2001 has only made matters worse.
"The girls are totally isolated now and in a very bad condition," said Iqbal Hussain, who escaped the mean streets of Heera Mandi to become a painter and professor at Lahore’s elite National College of Arts.
"The traditions are totally dying out. It’s a tragedy."
Like many other redlight districts in the subcontinent, Heera Mandi in Lahore sprawls in the shadow of a 16th century fort built by the Mughal emperors.
From these brothels came the dancers to entertain great emperors like Akbar or Jehangir, and here too lived the eunuchs whose political influence became the stuff of legend.
For centuries the dancing girls claimed many an important patron, but today they have lost their political clout. Eunuchs have become male prostitutes and have fallen to the very bottom of Pakistani society.
But the dancers’ fortunes really began to wane under the Islamic dictatorship of Gen. Zia-ul Haq. In 1975 Heera Mandi was surrounded by the police and closed for the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan, as it has been every year since.
The stigma that Gen. Zia’s regime attached to prostitution forced the trade underground, kept the middle classes out of Heera Mandi and forced the girls to scatter throughout the city.
It is legal to dance in Heera Mandi from the hours of 11 pm to 1 am, but prostitution is officially against the law. The police surrounds the district in the evening — their main role seems to be to demand bribes from visitors and dancers alike. "Nobody wants to come here any more and deal with the police," said Hussain, the son of a dancing girl who escaped the gangs of Heera Mandi through his art, mostly paintings of the girls themselves.
In a small room in the heart of the old city, two plump girls with rows of bells strapped to their ankles give a Reuters team a demonstration of their dance steps. Their enthusiasm is charming, but their moves are little more than amateur copies of what they have seen in Indian movies.
Heera Mandi spawned some of Pakistan’s greatest singers and dancers. These days many girls just mime to compact discs of Indian music, and no one learns classical dance, mourn locals.
"This was part of our culture and our heritage, and now it’s gone," said Yusuf Salahuddin, a businessman and patron of the arts, with a house on the edge of the redlight district.
Despite Hussain’s evocative paintings, there is little to romanticise these days in the redlight district, where girls trade favours for as little as 500 Pakistani rupees and older women for as little as 20 rupees.
The streets are full of sad stories. There are women finding it increasingly difficult to survive, like 36-year-old Shigufta Parvez, whose single room, its walls dirty and peeling, is scarcely big enough for a bed, plastic chair and toilet.
"Twenty years ago, I fell in love and got married, but three years later my husband brought me here and sold me for a lot of money," she said. "Women in Pakistan are not allowed to marry with their heart, and after my marriage all doors were closed."
There are women too whose sad story is just beginning, like 18-year-old Shahzadi, whose parents accompanied her here five years ago from the small town of Kasur. Her room is decorated like any teenage girl’s, with dolls, furry chicks and a teddy bear bearing the words "I love you."
"I was never taught to dance, I just learned," she said, smiling shyly. "We came because my family was in financial trouble, but I miss my friends in Kasur."
Ten years ago there were 16,000 female sex workers in Heera Mandi, local health workers say. Today, there are just 2,000 working here, many of whom live outside the area and make only occasional visits for dance parties.
The brothels of Heera Mandi used to give these girls a support network and a sort of family. Today a lucky few have escaped to set up home in middle-class neighbourhoods, using mobile phones to meet clients. Tens of thousands more, the unlucky ones, trawl the streets of Lahore for business and return to lonely rooms.
This is Heera Mandi, Lahore’s Diamond Market, Pakistan’s most famous redlight area and a throwback to the ancient traditions of the harems of South and Central Asia.
Yet these days the dancing girls of Heera Mandi have fallen on hard times, and the centuries-old traditions of music and dance are dying out.
Decades of repression by successive governments wanting to prove their Islamic credentials have seen the girls of Heera Mandi scattered throughout Lahore. The collapse of foreign visitors after September 11, 2001 has only made matters worse.
"The girls are totally isolated now and in a very bad condition," said Iqbal Hussain, who escaped the mean streets of Heera Mandi to become a painter and professor at Lahore’s elite National College of Arts.
"The traditions are totally dying out. It’s a tragedy."
Like many other redlight districts in the subcontinent, Heera Mandi in Lahore sprawls in the shadow of a 16th century fort built by the Mughal emperors.
From these brothels came the dancers to entertain great emperors like Akbar or Jehangir, and here too lived the eunuchs whose political influence became the stuff of legend.
For centuries the dancing girls claimed many an important patron, but today they have lost their political clout. Eunuchs have become male prostitutes and have fallen to the very bottom of Pakistani society.
But the dancers’ fortunes really began to wane under the Islamic dictatorship of Gen. Zia-ul Haq. In 1975 Heera Mandi was surrounded by the police and closed for the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan, as it has been every year since.
The stigma that Gen. Zia’s regime attached to prostitution forced the trade underground, kept the middle classes out of Heera Mandi and forced the girls to scatter throughout the city.
It is legal to dance in Heera Mandi from the hours of 11 pm to 1 am, but prostitution is officially against the law. The police surrounds the district in the evening — their main role seems to be to demand bribes from visitors and dancers alike. "Nobody wants to come here any more and deal with the police," said Hussain, the son of a dancing girl who escaped the gangs of Heera Mandi through his art, mostly paintings of the girls themselves.
In a small room in the heart of the old city, two plump girls with rows of bells strapped to their ankles give a Reuters team a demonstration of their dance steps. Their enthusiasm is charming, but their moves are little more than amateur copies of what they have seen in Indian movies.
Heera Mandi spawned some of Pakistan’s greatest singers and dancers. These days many girls just mime to compact discs of Indian music, and no one learns classical dance, mourn locals.
"This was part of our culture and our heritage, and now it’s gone," said Yusuf Salahuddin, a businessman and patron of the arts, with a house on the edge of the redlight district.
Despite Hussain’s evocative paintings, there is little to romanticise these days in the redlight district, where girls trade favours for as little as 500 Pakistani rupees and older women for as little as 20 rupees.
The streets are full of sad stories. There are women finding it increasingly difficult to survive, like 36-year-old Shigufta Parvez, whose single room, its walls dirty and peeling, is scarcely big enough for a bed, plastic chair and toilet.
"Twenty years ago, I fell in love and got married, but three years later my husband brought me here and sold me for a lot of money," she said. "Women in Pakistan are not allowed to marry with their heart, and after my marriage all doors were closed."
There are women too whose sad story is just beginning, like 18-year-old Shahzadi, whose parents accompanied her here five years ago from the small town of Kasur. Her room is decorated like any teenage girl’s, with dolls, furry chicks and a teddy bear bearing the words "I love you."
"I was never taught to dance, I just learned," she said, smiling shyly. "We came because my family was in financial trouble, but I miss my friends in Kasur."
Ten years ago there were 16,000 female sex workers in Heera Mandi, local health workers say. Today, there are just 2,000 working here, many of whom live outside the area and make only occasional visits for dance parties.
The brothels of Heera Mandi used to give these girls a support network and a sort of family. Today a lucky few have escaped to set up home in middle-class neighbourhoods, using mobile phones to meet clients. Tens of thousands more, the unlucky ones, trawl the streets of Lahore for business and return to lonely rooms.