Basti Yaqoob Shah

It was a humid morning. It took us over forty five minutes to reach the other side of Karachi. A long road led us to dry, sulphur colored, small hill. My colleague told me that behind the hills is Balochistan.

I didn’t know actually that any part of the city touches the other province also. The end of road turned into a narrower half constructed road which gave us a rather bumpy ride. We drove on for another 20 odd minutes.

A blind turn on the road unfolded into a long, unsystematic array of small houses giving the look of a slum. During this uneven drive, I over heard my colleague speaking about a leprosy rehabilitation center nearby established in 1960s.

In another ten minutes we reached the community and stopped the car in a small market. “Whom are we meeting here?” I asked. “Ameer Ali,” a simple answer came. Getting hold of my writing pad I got off the car. I followed my colleagues to a tailor's shop right across the street where they were shaking hands with a guy who looked from the neighboring province.

I shook hands with him also. In the meanwhile I noticed that his face was full of small scars and he virtually didn’t have a nose. Inside the shop we also met his younger brother who also had the same, stronger scars on his face and his one hand was completely missing.

“Must be some deficiency by birth,” I thought. “They are our clients,” my colleagues said. “They got these Juki machines leased from us, all three of these and now they are running the shop with a couple of workers and three apprentices”. I nodded. “The next door vegetable vendor is also our client but he got a working capital loan”. The shop was pretty impressive with large variety of seasonal vegetables beautifully arranged.

He had the same scars too and his leg seems to be affected as well, I thought, shaking hands with him.

Suddenly it hit me! Most of people around us, whether the shop keepers or their customers, shared the same scars and missing limbs. Everyone around us was the same except for the kids either coming back from school or playing cricket in the streets. They were all cured leprosy patients. It was their community.

They all lived together. The answer to my why was dreadful even to me. They were rejected by us. We, the normal, rejected them to live among us in the city so they settled here. Each on of them had a certificate of being fully cured issued by that rehabilitation center. They had every thing there. Colleges, schools, hospital, market, electricity, water etc.

Ameer Ali was a man of honour and had real brains. He had his first loan of Rs. 80,000 as working capital and since the last three years, his 80,000 have been converted into over Rs. 400,000. He had amazing business sense. He had complete insight into the market behaviour of the burqa’s or abba’s he made at his home with 5 Juki machines and with the help of his elder brother who had twisted deformed hands.

Ameer Ali, with his wife upgrades the design of his product. He gets the ideas from different magazines imported from Middle East. His brother supervises three workers and even number of students who work for half a day for in the morning before they go to school. Interestingly going to school for half day is part of employment terms made by Ameer Ali. He plans to segregate his production, marketing and distribution function with next tranche of the loan.

My colleague from Karachi told me that the trend of these burqas and abbas originated from Basti Yaqoob Shah and is not getting hold of our only metropolitan city. Ameer Ali came back from some disease which left its remains in shape of visible ugly scars and missing parts of body.

The only difference between him and us is the fact that his scars are less ugly and visible.

I left with a rather embarrassed and heavy heart. I wanted to express my sadness for the very existence of Basti Yaqoob Shah but his self esteem didn’t allow me to.