A night with her

Two university students had gone off in search of adventure.

“We must tell her story!” Taimur*, my partner-in-crime, whispered to me as we looked helplessly at her. That was exactly what I was thinking, but I wasn’t sure how good an idea that would be.

It was June 4, 2012. Our exams were finally over and we had nothing to do apart from hatching bird-brained schemes to kill time.

After much thinking, if that’s the correct term here, we decided to spend a night with a prostitute. Before you get the wrong impression, we did not want to indulge our carnal desires. All we wanted was to talk to her and try to get her side of the story.

In our 21 years on this earth, we had done a lot of crazy and potentially dangerous things. Some of them were also incredibly stupid. But this latest ‘adventure’ really takes the cake.

I never thought it would be this easy though. It barely took us 15 minutes to find a dalaal’s (pimp) number from one of the shops in Lahore’s Heera Mandi, opposite the resplendent Badshahi Mosque. We eagerly called up the number and were instructed to drive to a specific street in Model Colony and blink our car’s headlights  thrice, so that they could identify us. It all seemed right out of an adventure novel to me, but a part of me was petrified. I wondered what my dad would do to me if I got caught.

Suddenly, three cars approached and stopped close by. One of the passengers came over to us and told us ‘to have a look at the girls’. “Do you have a place or should we take you to ours?” he inquired. I nervously blurted out that my friend will be looking at the girls and we will take her to our place. I pinched Taimur, who by now was frozen in fear, and pushed him out of the car. He got out, quickly peeked into the three cars and pointed towards one of the girls.

She calmly walked over and sat in our car as the man approached us again. “Sir ji bachi achi hai, khubsoorat hai, rang bhi saaf hai aur umar ki choti hai, iska Rs5,000 munasib hai,” he said to us.

We quietly agreed, more so because we were at a loss to say much. After all, who wants to haggle with a pimp in the middle of a dark alley? Certainly not us. Seating her in the backseat, we drove towards Taimur’s apartment.

I was suddenly ashamed. Should I be doing this? I convinced myself that it was just an adventure but throughout the drive to Taimur’s apartment, I was not able to gather up the courage to turn around and look at her.

It was only when we reached our destination that I finally saw the girl. She had big brown eyes and her hair was speckled with golden highlights. She looked just like any other girl that we saw around our university campus.

Taimur’s apartment was empty as his parents were out of town. We led her to the drawing room and sat down. After some small talk, she told us that her name was Rubina.

“Aap log yahin karogey ya bedroom mein?” she asked us. Right down to business, I thought, slightly taken aback. We explained to her that all we wanted was to know about her life. At first she was a little uncertain of our intentions, or perhaps thought we had some kind of a strange fetish, but we eventually managed to convince her that that was really all we wanted from her.

We began by taking a picture of her but she stopped us with a flutter of her eyelids. I explained to her that we needed her photograph to accompany a newspaper article we intended to write about her. “Actually, my family members read the newspaper and I don’t want them to know what I do,” she told me, hesitantly. We then asked her if we should change her name also so that she doesn’t get into trouble but she explained, as if to a child, that Rubina was not her real name.

She then warmed up to us, almost as if she had been waiting for someone to bother to ask her about herself. “I am 19 years old and I started working as a prostitute when I was 17. I was raped by my own uncle at the age of 17 and then he sold me to Shamim aunty two years ago,” she said.

Shamim aunty is the “madam”. She rents houses in different areas of the city and keeps her girls there. She is also the one who makes contacts, finds “customers” and then delivers the girls to them.

“She charges for girls based on their looks. Beautiful girls can get up to Rs20,000 per night, while average looking girls can get up to Rs2,000. Sometimes, rich customers give us extra money but the bad ones hurt us physically,” she said, as she showed us cigarette burns on her shoulder. I asked her if I could take pictures of them, but she refused.

But in their world where money seems to rule, there are some things that are more sacred. “Shamim aunty is very nice and takes care of us. We live like a family and we care for each other, sharing our happiness and sadness,” Rubina told us.

Since her family is unaware of her “profession”, we ask her what she has told them. “My family thinks I work at a bank and sometimes when I am out at nights, like today, I tell my mother that I am staying at my uncle’s house,” she said.

This is the same uncle, her tormentor, she told us. “He is married but he’s a really bad man. He beats his wife and even me if I refuse to go to customers. He works with Shamim aunty,” she said. “He always takes a cut from the money I earn. Shamim aunty fights with him for taking my money, but he doesn’t listen to anyone.”

Almost naïvely, we asked her why she doesn’t just run away or inform the police about all this. In a moment of courage, we even offered our help by reporting her uncle to the police. “I wish I could,” she replied wistfully, “but my father has cancer and I have six siblings to look after. My mother is a maid and she can only make 2,000 to 3,000 rupees per month. I do this because I have to feed them, I don’t have another choice.”

As we digested this information, she added as an afterthought: “It’s not like the police would help me either. Some of them are customers and all of them take a commission [from the brothels].”

She felt, however, that there may be a way out once her younger siblings begin to earn. “All I want is my little brothers to grow up soon and become doctors or engineers, and I pray for them daily. What really kills me is that whenever I go home, my father puts his hand on my head and says he’s proud of me,” she said, as she broke down.

I am still not completely sure if she told us the truth or simply gave us a printable story. But what I do know is that under different circumstances, she could have been my classmate or even my friend. Instead, she’s forced to sell her body to provide for her family by fulfilling the desires of men. And, as a man, I hang my head in shame at my inability to help her improve her lot in life.

* Name has been changed to protect identities

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, September 30^th, 2012.

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