Shakeel is fifteen years old. His father, Mr. Haneef, is the chowkidar [caretaker] at the hostel I stay in.
In any case they live together in a small flat at the back of the complex with their mother, two brothers, Shan and Adeel, age 7 and 12, and sister Rabia, who is 10. All the children are at school. Adeel and Shakeel speak quite good English, but Shan is too shy to say much even in Urdu. When I sit in the garden drawing the impossible tangles of giant bamboo he comes to watch, but always from a step behind.
Shakeel has been preparing all weekend for an English exam. We practice together sometimes. There is a familiarity in the lines of questions - do you have brothers, sisters, children? What music do you like? How do you find Pakistan?
I return the questions, and his replies are filled with the names of movie and pop stars beamed in via satellite and cable from across the border. India is only 30km away, and if not for Partition Amritsar/ Lahore would probably be now one vast and sprawling city. Certainly Lahore stretches all the way to the frontier, following the old canal.
In the evenings Shakeel drives a rickshaw, in the days a motorbike or one of the heavy Chinese made bicycles that fill the streets here. He asks me if I ride or drive. I tell him yes, to the former, but only in Australia. The traffic here is insane and wildly unpredictable, and the relative impunity of a full size bus seems the only sensible way to get around.
Shakeel and his family are in the small minority who are Christian, and so do not fast during Ramadan. It is not as hot as three weeks ago, but still it must be hard on the locals who fast between sunrise and sunset, but otherwise seem to have normal days.
