The city of Lahore breathes in two distinct rhythms. There is the Lahore of the sun, a city of unparalleled grace. It’s the scent of fried samosas and rich cardamom chai wafting through the bazaars of Anarkali, the echo of children’s laughter in the shadow of the Badshahi Mosque, the silent, stoic beauty of the Shalamar Gardens at dawn. This Lahore is written in poetry, celebrated in song, and presented with pride. It is a public performance.
Then there is the other Lahore. It does not breathe; it holds its breath. It exists in the spaces between, in the hushed tones of a late-night phone call, in the tinted windows of a car gliding down a quiet, leafy street in Gulberg. This is the Lahore of the neon sign bleeding onto wet asphalt, of air thick with expensive perfume and the unspoken weight of transaction. It is a private secret.
She lives in the second Lahore.
From the balcony of a rented apartment on the seventh floor, she can see both. To the left, the minaret of a nearby mosque punctures the sky, a slender finger of faith. To the right, the glittering promise of a high-end shopping mall, a temple to modern desire. She exists in the liminal space between them.
She has many names, none of them her own. They are borrowed for a few hours, like jewels, and returned with the cash. Tonight, she is “Sara,” a name that feels smooth and foreign on her tongue. Sara is confident, witty, and dangerously charming. Sara is a fiction. The girl on the balcony, the one who watches the flicker of a television in a distant apartment and wonders if they are happy, has no name that she answers to anymore.
Her clients are men from the first Lahore. They are businessmen, landlords, bureaucrats, and sometimes, the very pious men who publicly decry the moral decay of society. They come to her not just for her body, but for the silence she offers. In her presence, they can unburden themselves of their titles, their responsibilities, their wives, and their prayers. They come with their loneliness wrapped in arrogance, their desperation disguised as power. She learns to read them instantly—the twitch of a hand, the way their eyes avoid hers in the soft light of the hotel room. She is a confessional box they don’t have to repent in. She sees their souls, not as a priest would, but as a survivor does. She sees their weaknesses.
The work is a performance, a carefully choreographed dance of illusion. Laughter is timed, compliments are measured, and intimacy is a currency. But in the quiet moments—when she is back in the seventh-floor apartment, scrubbing the scent of someone else’s cologne from her skin, counting the crumpled notes that will pay for her sister’s tuition and her father’s medicine—she is just herself. A girl from a small village who once dreamt of being a teacher. A girl who still finds solace in the verses of a poet who died a century ago.
She does not hate these men. Hate is a luxury, an emotion that requires too much energy. Pity is easier. They are trapped in their gilded cages of expectation, just as she is trapped in her room with the two-way view. They seek moments of fabricated connection because they lack the courage for the real thing. She provides it for a price.
She pulls a shawl around her shoulders as the night air grows cooler. The city is winding down. The cacophony of traffic has softened to a low hum. The call for the Fajr prayer will soon echo from the minaret. It is her signal to sleep, to fold away the persona of “Sara” and retreat into the anonymity of her dreams.
She knows people would judge her, call her a stain on the fabric of this noble city. But she knows a truth they don’t. She is not the stain; she is the seam. She is the invisible thread that holds together the two Lahores. She is the price paid for their hypocrisy, the secret they keep to protect their public image. She is a part of the city’s breath, the one it holds in secret, the one it exhales in the dark. Call Girls In Lahore
And as the first light of dawn touches the edge of the minaret, she whispers a name to the empty air—a name she hasn’t used in years. Her own name. It is a small act of rebellion, a quiet claim to a self that exists beyond the shadows, in the heart of the Lahore of the sun, if only for a fleeting moment before the sleep comes.