Supply and demand: Karachi's 'call girls'
Satish Kumar
brothels try to cater Johns (Muhammads?) of all taste. The 63-year old
pimp Muhammad Javed Ekball, for example, will not only provide call
girls and call boys on demand, but even call donkeys and call pigs for
the Johns (Muhammads?) who seek thrill in bestiality.
23-4-2003
Supply and demand: Karachi's 'call girls'
Written by Massoud Ansari
Britain's colonial legacy in Pakistan left a thriving but dark
commercial sector in the country's capital, Karachi. Massoud Ansari
investigates the city's desperate marketplace that trades in young
women…
“Could you deflower a girl?" Madam Rabia asks one of her regular
clients. "She has been rotting at my place for the last couple of
weeks, with no potential customers…”
She wants to put the 14-year-old girl to work in Karachi's commercial
sex market as soon as possible.
Rabia, popularly known as "Bhabi" in the Karachi circuit, demands
20,000 rupees for a night with her new recruit and guarantees the
girl’s virginity personally.
http://greatreporter.com/mambo/content/view/78/14/
“The market is down these days, otherwise she is worth at least 50,000
rupees,” she laments.
Rabai describes the girl as a “tithli" (fairy) and gives details of
her age, figure, features and complexion. After some haggling, a deal
is struck at 15,000 rupees, with an additional two thousand rupees
thrown in as a “mithai for nath utrai” (tip for deflowering). The next
day, the girl is delivered.
Far from being an exception, this is the typical manner in which
hundreds of young girls enter the profession of commercial sex in the
city to become "call girls."
Over the years, Karachi, the economic jugular of the country, has
become one of the major "mandis" (markets) for commercial sex in
Pakistan, where girls as young as 14 can be purchased from 300 rupees
upwards, depending upon the client, the service demanded, the
location, and the girl’s physical attributes.
As economic recession in the country deepens, many girls from
different parts of Pakistan are thronging to Karachi where the market
is comparatively better than in other nearby regions.
Salma, an 18-year old call girl, says: “In Lahore we can scarcely find
enough business, but if we work only four weekends a month in Karachi,
it fetches us twice the amount we would normally earn, despite working
day and night…”
A wide variety of girls can be found in Karachi’s commercial sex
market. They belong not only to local communities originating from
different parts of the country, but also comprise women of foreign
nationalities. According to the Society for Protection of the Rights
of the Child (SPARC), some 200,000 Bangladeshi women have been
trafficked into Pakistan in the last 10 years alone.
“Many of these girls are minors who are forced into the sex trade from
surrounding countries; the majority of them end up in Karachi,” says
the report.
Besides Bengali girls, women from the Central Asian States, Bosnia,
Afghanistan and Burma can also be found marketing themselves in the
capital.
Prostitution was formalised for the first time in the Indian
subcontinent by the British government in the mid-18th century. The
British colonialists enacted special laws, created "red light" areas
and assigned the task of protecting women sex workers to law-enforcing
agencies. Municipalities overlooking the sex districts were given the
responsibility of collecting taxes and providing health and sanitation
services to the brothels.
As an independent Muslim state, Pakistan does not officially allow
prostitution. Unofficially, however, the practice is prevalent all
over the country, with the majority of the clientele ironically
comprised of politicians, bureaucrats, police officials and army
personnel; in short, the very people who are supposed to legislate and
implement laws against the sex trade.
Until the late 1970s - when General Zia-ul-Haq embarked upon a drive
to "Islamise" Pakistani society, closing down brothels to the public,
red light areas - as a legacy of British rule - continued to be
institutionalised.
A local sociologist explains: “With the closure of brothels to the
public, the prostitutes - whose profession is often passed from
generation to generation - dispersed to the cities’ residential areas
to earn their livelihoods. With the passage of time, girls from
impoverished families also came to join them.”
The motivating factor for most call girls in Karachi today is the
considerable amount of money they can earn in the profession. Some
maintain they were compelled to enter prostitution because their
families had no breadwinner left after the death or remarriage of the
household father, while others cite poverty resulting from divorce.
One call girl in Karachi claims: “My entire family depends on my
income. My father died and I have to give at least 10,000 rupees every
month to support my mother and the rest of my family. I’m divorced and
have only a high school education. One of my friends told me about the
money I could earn from prostitution and introduced me to "Auntie
Shamim.” The girl shares 40 per cent of her income with her "business
auntie" in return for her contacts, shelter and protection.
While some of the girls start out on their own, the majority of them
enter after coming into contact with a pimp. When a new girl enters
any den, the incumbent workers show her the ropes and how to behave
with the house clients.
Each girl, however, is responsible for striking their own deal with
the pimps. While some share 40 to 50 per cent of their income with
these touts, others prefer to work under a fixed monthly amount.
In return, pimps provide police protection, shelter, and bear their
day-to-day expenses, including food and cigarettes.
A young call girl from Sahiwal, said: “My parents have "rented" me out
for three months to Goga Bhai (a high-profile pimp in Karachi) for one
lakh rupees (100,000).”
However, she says has no complaints about living with the man because
she is treated well. “I don’t have to have sex with him, which is
normal at other places. He treats me like a brother!”
Once a girl is employed, she cannot refuse to oblige her pimp who will
sell her on to as many clients as he wants. Pimps more often than not
retain all the money the girls earn in tips, which are particularly
forthcoming during dance performances or "mujras."
The majority of call girls learn to dance because they can earn more
money.
Annie Noureen, a sex worker in Karachi, says: “The ones who don’t know
dancing hardly get any tips, but if we do, our clients, when they get
drunk, shower us with all the money they have in their wallets…”
The optimum period in a call girl’s life is a short one, and usually
only lasts until they have crossed their teens.
A pimp said: “When the girl is young, she is like a cheque that one
can cash even on Sundays, but when she begins to age, she is akin to
rotten fish. It becomes hard for her to meet even her monthly
expenses. Those with dancing skills, however, have some bonus years in
which to attract customers in this marketplace."
The most astute call girls in Karachi work in tandem with their pimps
for between six to eight months, after which time they strike out on
their own to become suppliers.
A case in point is "Auntie" Shamim. A one time call girl, she is today
one of the best-known pimps in Karachi’s higher social strata.
In the initial years, Shamim had to work very hard not only for
herself but also in order to cultivate enough contacts to begin her
own operations with at least five girls in her employ.
Soon after she entered the world of commercial sex, Shamim bought
herself a mobile phone and circulated her number among her clients.
“It’s all a game of contacts; the more connected you are, the better
the business," Shamim says. "The day I realised I had enough contacts,
I started my own business…”
Now, Shamim boasts of having a select clientele among Karachi's high
and mighty. Her cell phone scarcely stops ringing in the evenings as
she cruises the city’s upmarket localities, dropping girls at various
given addresses.
The explosion in cell phones across the country have solved manifold
problems for pimps and prostitutes.
Shahid, a local pimp, explained how mobile phones are essential for
those in the business, chiefly because they ensure anonymity. “The
police lost 80 per cent of the amount they used to extract from us
through blackmail and extortion,” he says.
“Once our whereabouts are known, we can easily be trapped by the
police and they create lot of problems for us, including demanding
free services from these girls as well as regular
"bhatta" (extortion).”
Incidentally, many of the pimps switched to pagers during the
suspension of mobile phone operations in Karachi by Benazir Bhutto’s
government, which was directed at disrupting the communication network
of terrorists and anti-state elements.
In order to avoid detection by law-enforcing agencies, call girls
frequently shift apartments. A Karachi police official, says: “It’s
very difficult to track them down because they live for barely six
months at any one place before shifting on to another.”
Moreover, sex workers prefer to live in commercial areas where they
can blend into the crowd and escape detection.
In order to hire a call girl in Karachi one has to be personally known
to her or her tout. If this is not so, then acquaintance with someone
who has connections with a supplier is essential. When contact has
finally been made, rates are conveyed and the girl is supplied. Once
the pimp is familiar with the new contact however, acquiring services
becomes far less convoluted in future.
“Pimps have no problem dropping girls off at your place, but they
avoid obliging people without references for fear that they may be
walking into a police trap” says a regular client.
The modus operandi states a pimp will arrive at a client’s door after
the initial contact has ben made, accompanied by a few well-groomed
young women. The client offers them tea or cold drinks in order to
take his time and choose the one he wants for the night. Questions are
asked of them, and at times they are even physically harassed during
the course of selection. However, because it is their bread and
butter, the women usually make no protest. After the choice has
finally been made, the client pays the pimp in advance. The pimp then
leaves the house with the rest of the women and returns in the morning
to collect the remaining girl.
A call girls’ clientele is varied and includes both young and old men,
serving and retired bureaucrats, politicians, feudals and businessmen.
Most of the women consider an invitation by Sindhi feudals the most
lucrative assignment as they are said to be the most generous
paymasters of all. A source discloses: “Sometimes feudals even call
these girls on "udhar" (deferred payment) and pay them later when
their crop is sold.”
Entertaining young men meanwhile, is usually deemed the least
desirable job. Samia, a young girl in her teens recalls a particularly
harrowing encounter: “Once when I went on call, there were six young
men drinking alcohol in the drawing room. When they became drunk, one
of them took me inside the room. After he was finished, the next
wanted to sleep with me. I co-operated. To my utter dismay, the third
demanded his turn. When I refused, they abused me verbally and pushed
me around. I was weeping and begging them to stop but they showed me
no mercy and came at me like animals. They said that as they had
purchased my body for the night they could do with me whatever they
wanted. By the time I returned home in the morning, I was such a wreck
that I was unable to work for at least a week…”
The sociologist implores the feelings of the girls to be considered
and "how they sleep with people of different age groups, all with
different temperaments, the fat and the slim; the educated and the
uneducated; some of them violent, others nice; the black, wheatish and
the whitish; the experienced and the inexperienced.
“It's like a mercenary killer or a thief who finds it difficult to
commit the crime in the beginning, but becomes hardened after the
second and third times,” argues Manzoor Kohiyar, a Sindhi short story
writer.
Most call girls, however, drink alcohol or smoke hashish on the job
and say that when they finally sleep with their clients, they are
devoid of feeling and offer only their bodies to them.
Suraya Parveen, who is known as "Gurya," speaks from seven-years
experience as a call girl. She says: “Initially, the work used to
really upset me but when I accepted the bitter reality that I had to
do this, I just tuned my mind accordingly. Now there is no question of
being happy or sad because normally I don’t think about what they do
with me…”
However, one regular customer maintains: “I normally pay these girls
extra money and request them to pretend as though they have an
emotional connection with me. I cannot enjoy sex until then.”
Some men bluntly claim they prefer call girls to girlfriends. A senior
bureaucrat known as “Rangeela Badshah” in his circle says: “If you
have a girlfriend, you spend a lot of money taking her out for meals
or for shopping. She will start demanding that you marry her and if
you refuse, she is quite liable to blackmail you, claiming pregnancy
or other such shenanigans.”
According to sources however, many businessmen and even some
bureaucrats have a somewhat different modus operandi for buying sex.
They purchase or rent ‘offices’ and place advertisements in newspapers
along the lines of “lady secretary needed” and attract many girls from
impoverished families who, if willing, are hired solely for sexual
services.
One businessman, who discreetly rented an office in Karachi’s Saddar
area for his trysts, said: “In sleeping with call girls, one runs the
risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV,
Hepatitis B and C among others. But when you're hiring a girl solely
for yourself, there is less risk of getting infected.” His ‘secretary’
however, lasts only as long as his desire for her after which she is
unceremoniously fired and an advertisement for a new one placed. “I
have been doing this for over a decade and have so far had no
difficulty in picking up women this way,” he adds.
Other than the girls ferried around by pimps from place to place and
those who pose as ‘secretaries,’ women offering sex for sale can also
be found at certain boutiques and beauty parlours in the city. As in
the case of regular call girls, potential customers initially need a
reference to avail their services. A visitor to one such beauty
parlour on Tariq Road discloses: “I went there for the first time with
a friend of mine who was a frequent client and as I’m known to them
now, I have no problem going there any time.”
Sources reveal that the owner of the beauty parlour usually charges
1,000 rupees for a complete body massage lasting up to thirty or forty
minutes. Clients can select their masseur from six to eight young
women in their 20s. Co-operative ones give their customers more than a
massage. “Most of them let you fondle their bodies in order to make
tips at the end of the job,” says another visitor to beauty parlours.
However, if the customer also wants sex, the price tag can be
somewhere between two to three thousand rupees.
In an increasingly materialistic society, values have become skewed,
and practices once considered taboo avoid the censure that was once
their due. In many cases, politicians act as procurers in return for
political favours such as lucrative ministries while businessmen
resort to the practice to clinch business deals. A group of policemen
and bureaucrats in Sindh justify their habit of procuring call girls
in return for favours from important government officials as being in
sync with the “new world order.” According to a source, the logic
behind this is simple: “Market say lee, aur market main day dee” (Pick
it up from the market and hand it over in the market). Karachi’s
higher echelon localities are dotted with lavishly decorated houses
and apartments where these VIPs are entertained. The bedrooms in these
houses feature not only comfortable beds, sometimes waterbeds, but
often boast full-length mirrors along the walls as well as on the
ceiling.
According to sources, when a no-confidence move was launched against
Benazir Bhutto in 1989 during her first tenure, many PPP-backed MNAs
from Punjab and NWFP were shifted to Karachi. Playing host to them was
another MNA from Sindh, who was instructed to ensure that their stay
in the city was as comfortable as possible. One source said: "During
their sojourn, which lasted over two weeks, most of them were supplied
with a new girl and a bottle of scotch every day.”
At times, however, riotous parties replete with alcohol and call girls
have resulted in mayhem. Two years ago, in the famous "Babli case,"
the deputy commissioner of Mirpur Khas district threw a "mujra" to
which he invited a number of senior and junior bureaucrats. A scuffle
broke out when two senior bureaucrats wanted to sleep with the same
girl. When she escaped from their clutches and fled, one of them asked
the police to pursue her vehicle. In the course of their pursuit, the
police fired at the vehicle and the girl, Babli, a well-known dancer
from Hyderabad sustained serious bullet injuries. Subsequently, when
the incident was reported in the press, the DC, SDM and other
officials involved were suspended and an official inquiry was ordered
by the provincial government.
A considerable number of bureaucrats, politicians and others with
power and pelf have their “keeps” as well. A source says: “In return
for fixed monthly expenses, the “keep” is available on call to the man
in question.” There have been instances when clients have become
serious in their affections and married their regular call girls.
However, according to Sheereen, a local call girl: “Usually, the men
are dissuaded by pressure from family and friends who advise them
against it on the grounds that marrying such a girl would be a stain
on their family honour.” Sheereen herself has had two serious
liaisons, both of which came to naught.
Commercial sex was at its height until the late ’90s, but the severe
economic downturn in the country over the last few years has had a
negative impact on this business as well. Says a young sex worker
named Shazia: “In the good days, we were so busy we barely had time to
return or at times even answer our clients’ calls, but now we often
make calls to them ourselves to offer our services. It’s a hardly a
break even situation these days.”
Many pimps, meanwhile, have turned to peddling young girls to attract
otherwise reluctant customers. According to reports, 20 per cent of
the prostitutes in Pakistan are children under the age of 16. It is
estimated that in Asia, over one million children are involved in the
sex trade often under conditions no better than slavery.
Ms. Tahira, a ‘madam’ who has been operating in Karachi for the last
decade, said: “Every man who comes asks for younger and younger girls.
The demand for them means that the young ones fetch more money and get
more clients per day.”
Most analysts recognise poverty as a crucial factor in driving women
towards an occupation such as prostitution. This factor, compounded by
their low status in this society, results in a lethal combination that
marginalises women and ensures their continuous flow into this
profession. Caught in a vicious cycle from which few escape, it
renders them even more vulnerable to exploitation and victimisation.
One analyst commented: “In this institution, the body is that of the
women and the pleasure derived from it is totally that of men.”