This weekend was Eid, the holiday that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. And so 30 odd days of fasting, prayers, and early morning breakfasts ended for 2007 and Lahore, and its people, will slowly return to normal.
In the meantime it is quiet out there, quiet in an early morning Christmas, or a 230pm Grand Final sort of way. The few cars there are drive with impunity on the wrong side of streets that were previously snarled with traffic and noise.
There are still people about, and the children are in new clothes and smiling from presents and family and days off school. Mehr tells me as a child she would be unable to sleep the night before in anticipation. I slept well, though not past the 4am prayers which continued until mid morning.
I sat and drew the Hafees Centre, the local electronics bazaar, mid morning. Inside it is a tumble of computer stores and mobile phone shops, all bathed in the peculiar green light of the tinted ceiling. Much of the stuff, while not exactly contraband, is grey, and Pathan porters continue the march of merchandise up stairs from origins in the markets of Hong Kong and Afghanistan.
It is the future in a way – the endless and enduring past collapsed against the artifacts of high technology, and with only the thinnest of wedges for the present, dollars and desire.
From the outside the building swarms with signs in English and Urdu, wires and ducts and the ever present shapes of split system A/C's.
By night it was busy again, and the local café was full of men escaping family and catching up with friends. Mehr and I sat until late, drinking tea, gossiping, and working on my vocabulary of obscene Urdu.
