Living rough: There goes the neighbourhood

With roads around Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine dug up, street-dwellers have moved onto Sharae Attar.

KARACHI:

Some rickshaws stand silently at the side of the road. A bearded vendor pushes his cart, hawking juices. Hens squawk and flutter. Half-naked men and children sprawl idly on the footpath.

With construction on a traffic project in Clifton grinding to a halt and leaving the roads around Abdullah Shah Ghazi’s shrine dug up, visitors, wanderers and vendors have made Sharae Attar their temporary home, irking the residents and threatening the law and order situation in the area.

“People used to just occupy the footpaths right in front of the ‘mazaar’ (shrine), but with the whole area dug up, they are making inroads into the residential side,” grumbled a resident of the Falcon Terrace apartments in Clifton’s Block 4.

Street-dwellers occupy the footpaths on Sharae Attar near the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi. PHOTO: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS

“Brawls break out amongst those living on these streets,” complained Dr Kazi Shafi Mohammad, an elderly resident. “Most of them are drug addicts, and we no longer feel safe leaving our homes at night.”

Mohammad, who has been living in the area for 22 years, said that the last couple of months have been painful. With the construction work suspended indefinitely, the temporary encroachments are leading to unhygienic conditions as people bathe and relieve themselves out in the open.

“The potholes have become public toilets. And look at the trash!” he exclaimed, pointing to the plastic bags and wrappers scattered all around. “Who will clean up this mess?”

Sharae-Attar is home to large houses, high-end restaurants, chic cafés and important buildings such as the Russian consulate.

Employees of the eateries here claim that the incidence of petty crimes has leaped in recent months. “Young boys steal side-mirrors from the cars of our customers,” asserted the manager of the Arizona Grill, adding that their customers were turning away from them as a result. “We keep complaining to the police, but they have taken no action.”

Meanwhile, those occupying the footpaths claim that poverty has forced them to dwell on the streets.

Mohammad Rafiq, resting on a mat next to a makeshift stove on one such sidewalk, moved here from Korangi with his wife and four children a month ago. “We get free food and water from devotees visiting the mazaar,” he said, as two of his children wandered away to beg for alms. “Back home, I couldn’t give my family one meal a day. I don’t know how long we will be here.”

In front of the Sattar Buksh café, Ayesha stands in line as a woman distributes biryani. “We are not allowed to stay inside the mazaar, so we have no choice but to stay here,” she said. “But this doesn’t mean we are criminals!”

Cantonment Board Clifton vice president Aziz Suharwardy has only one solution for the residents’ and businesses’ complaints — the immediate restoration of the broken-down roads, allowing the street-dwellers to shift back to the footpaths being overlooked by the shrine.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2014.