Note: All names have been anonymised to maintain the informants’ privacy.

If one glances into the historical memory of the city of Lahore, the figure of the prostitute remains arcane and unarchived. Often, its association is with the infamous Heera Mandi - the legendary neighbourhood once known for its vibrant atmosphere where Mughal-era courtesans entertained nobles who showered them with gifts. And yet, little more than this is known about the dancing girls whose place in the historical archive is laden with tensions and misrepresentations. To counter this erasure, we conducted research to delve into the professional and personal lives of sex workers, not merely to understand the expansion and evolution of the sex work market, but to understand how such marginalised individuals negotiate personal identity and relationships, conflicting value systems, life circumstances and desires and the pressure of stereotypical myths around their existence.

What did we learn about their ways of living and making meaning? While not unexpected, it became easily apparent that living in constant insecurity and being pushed to provide not just for themselves, but their families as the sole breadwinner, is what drove women to a line of work they would not turn to otherwise. Paternal abandonment, cheating and abusive husbands, the loss of a reliable partner - women’s decisions were often motivated by the failure of men in their lives to fulfil their societally enforced responsibilities and take care of their family’s essential needs. As women turned to sex work as a consequence, they gained a sense of financial independence - they could provide for their children’s education, they could hope to move into better and safer neighbourhoods and they could hope for a source of income far greater than the meagre-paying grocery store jobs they previously had.

For this study, we took an ethnographic approach – our research was conducted through field visits, unstructured interviews and observations. Most significantly, it flowed freely and evolved based on input from our interlocutors. This approach allowed us to understand not just the larger trends of sex work in Lahore, but more significantly, shed light on how sex workers imbued their everyday lives with meaning and value.

Amidst the precarity and danger that characterised their existence, the women found solace and support in the community they created with each other - a form of intimacy which solely relied on the emotional instead of the physical. Their shared experiences and struggles were essential to them coming together; no one would understand the depth of their desperation and pain if they had not lived it. And so, they came together and shared themselves - their meals, their problems and their stories. The development of such bonds was greatly aided by the geographical proximity of the sex workers, often living together in the tight knit mohallah of Heera Mandi or the closeness of a shared two storey house. Living alone seemed to be infrequent, a phenomenon we barely encountered. This was in part likely due to concerns of personal safety, as well as the nature of the work itself – it was perhaps not feasible to be conducted individually as opposed to on a group basis.

Conversation with Raina, a young ‘dancer’* revealed how it was her new colleagues in another city that helped her to recover from the trauma of her lover’s cheating. She had felt like there was no way to lift herself up after “losing in love” again, having previously left an abusive husband in the hopes of starting a new life with security. Despite her trust issues, the women she worked and lived with put in the effort to gain her trust and friendship. They talked to her, included her in their plans, cracked jokes with her and always checked up on her - it was simple and sincere. “Tum hanstay kheltay ziada achi lagti hou (You look better laughing and playing),” they had told her, and they were determined to keep her that way. This kind of consistency and reliability in the relationship they formed with Raina was primarily possible due to their close living quarters. Had Raina not moved in with them as was expected of her by the “manager sahab”, it would have been far too easy her to reject their friendly advances. Thus, whilst their proximity was a function of their work, it offered the women a chance to form friendships and support networks to rely on in the absence of conventional kinship structures. This newfound community of colleagues-turned-friends was distinct; it was not just that it allowed for friendship to flourish but for the women to finally share their struggles and experiences with those like them who would truly understand. When another dancer was roofied and almost overdosed after a party, she had been unable to report the act or seek medical help – she feared the authorities would have blamed her. Instead, Raina and the other dancers helped her in the only way they could, staying up all night to make her dance the drug out of her system.

Moreover, during our fieldwork, it also become painfully clear how many failed attempts had been made to document the history of Heera Mandi. Our participants criticised the sensationalised stories of the “media walay” who objectified the women of the neighbourhood, showing them dressed in revealing attire and performing the role of seductresses. They clearly felt frustrated at how the image of their community in Old Lahore was being tarnished, insisting that activities of sex were no longer occurring within Taxali but had spilt over to the supposedly reputable neighbourhoods of Lahore, be it Model Town or DHA. Despite this, it was the locale of Heera Mandi that was always misrepresented, whether in entertainment or news, as the hub of sexual deviance and prostitution. The fear of being misunderstood was perpetual, and it was this fear that caused them to be wary while speaking with us - they did not care for the stories we wanted to tell the outside world about them, lest we fail to do justice. Their response was thus to reveal only as much as they desired, a metric that often left us uncertain and inquisitive but one we chose to respect – they led the conversation and we simply followed.

However, to generalise this feeling of caution would paint a superficial picture. It was within the same neighbourhood of Taxali that we encountered Aasiya Api who spoke freely and at length about her twenty years as a sex worker. She had but one simple wish: “Mujhe aapse kuch nahi chahye, bas bahar ke logo ko bataden ke yaha bhi insaan rehte hain” (“I don’t want anything from you, just tell the people outside that those who live here are humans too”). For her, sharing her story and perhaps utilising it to humanise the exploited, demonised women in the eyes of outsiders was worth the risk of vulnerability. In many ways, this research was an effort to stay true to her request of shedding light on the experiences of women like her.

Moreover, even when our participants were not always expressive with their words, there was much they revealed about themselves through their actions. For all the women we talked to, religion held great importance albeit in distinct ways. The pervasiveness of religiosity should not have come as a shock in a context like Pakistan, but it was the way it manifested that was surprising. For Raina the dancer, the month of Ramazan was a time of repentance and nurturing her faith - she chose not to work at all during this time to be able to sincerely fast and pray. The income loss affected her severely; she had to seek donations to pay the gas and electricity bills for her seven-person household. At no point, however, did she consider going back to sex work during Ramazan, even as she explicitly stated that she would need to do so as soon as the month was over, and Eid rolled around. For some, this balance between “sin” and sacrality may seem contradictory. The ordinary person too easily would condemn the prostitute, accusing them of moral failure and undeserving of the label of a “good” Muslim. Raina, and the faiths of others like her, challenged such inflexible and dominant interpretations through their own personal relationships with God. Necessity coerced them into acts they would not have committed otherwise - none wanted to engage in sex work. But this only guided them further towards religion as they hoped to find consolation within it. This applied especially if they conformed to its ideal of modesty in other spheres of their life - this was the principle Mariam Api, another middle aged sex worker, seemed to prefer to live by. Regardless of which beliefs they chose to prioritise in their practice, faith in God was the avenue through which they softened the blow of the hand life had dealt them.

Thus, with each question we raised and discovery we made, we realised that the exoticised figure of the sex worker was as far from the truth as we could imagine. Entrapped in the fringes of society, sex work had been the last resort for the women to gain a shot at survival. Sheer necessity and the desire to gain as well as provide a better life for their families drove them to this field of work. As they navigated this profession, women turned to similar safety nets, be it the omnipresence of religion or the closeness of their colleagues. Above all, what became clear was that amidst the turbulent and varied nature of the women’s lives was the universality of their motivations, beliefs and desires. Their modes of making and finding meaning in their lives were no different at the margins, albeit laden with far more urgency and risk.

Hira Nadeem – an Anthropology and Sociology senior. Hubba Shahzad – an Anthropology and Sociology major with an interest in gender studies and social policy.

Notes

*Although technically engaged in sex work, she preferred to refer to herself as a dancer, especially given that her form of work involved going to parties.