When the call to prayer drifts over the minarets of Badshahi Mosque, the city of Lahore awakens with a chorus of colors, aromas, and stories. The streets pulse with the rhythm of rickshaws, street‑food vendors, and the relentless chatter of a metropolis that proudly wears its past like a jeweled mantle. Yet, beneath the bustling bazaars and historic forts, another pulse—quiet, discreet, and often ignored—keeps its own secret beat.
I arrived in Lahore on a monsoon‑laden afternoon, my notebook tucked under the elbow of my coat and my curiosity already humming like a shisha pipe left too long on the ember. I was not a tourist chasing the famed Lahore cuisine; I was a reporter, invited by an academic who had spent the last decade mapping the city’s informal economies. Our subject was the world of “escorts” in Lahore—a term that, in the local vernacular, is whispered behind the cloth of a teahouse awning, cloaked in euphemisms, and wrapped in layers of stigma.
The First Layer: Streetlights and Silhouettes
The first night I tried to understand this world, I walked the streets of Model Town, a leafy suburb where marble facades hide apartments that never lock their doors at 2 a.m. The neon signs of coffee shops glow like fireflies, and a soft jazz tune seeps from a basement bar, where the clientele is a mix of young professionals and expatriates. In a corner, a woman in a modest kurta sits alone, scrolling through a phone that illuminates her face with a pale, almost cinematic light.
She looked up as I approached, her eyes sharp but not unkind. “You’re not from here,” she said, a half‑smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “What do you want?”
I introduced myself, explained my purpose, and offered the safety of anonymity. She nodded, the way someone does when they’ve heard this narrative countless times. “People think we are just… what they call ‘prostitutes’. That’s the first mistake,” she said, her voice low, “We are… companions. We are listeners, we are confidantes. We are something that the world refuses to name, so they give us a name instead.”
She did not reveal her name; instead, she handed me a folded piece of paper with a single number and a caution: “Call only if you truly need to understand, not to judge.”
The Second Layer: The Economic Mosaic
The next day, I met Dr. Ayesha Malik, a sociologist at the University of the Punjab, whose research has lived in the margins of the city’s official statistics. “Escorts, in the context of Lahore, occupy an ambiguous legal space,” she explained, her eyes flickering to the window where the rain hammered the pane. “Prostitution is illegal under the Pakistan Penal Code, but the demand for companionship—whether for a dinner, a dance, or a conversation—does not vanish. It simply migrates into private arrangements, often facilitated through word‑of‑mouth, private clubs, or, increasingly, encrypted messaging apps.”
She spread out a diagram on the table: a web of connections linking families in the suburbs, drivers who act as couriers, small agencies that operate out of inconspicuous storefronts, and the clients—corporate men, businessmen, and, occasionally, tourists—who seek a temporary reprieve from the pressures of their public lives.
“The economics are stark,” Dr. Malik continued, tapping a pen against her notebook. “Many of these women come from modest backgrounds. For some, it is a means of supporting aging parents; for others, it is a forced choice after being pushed out of the formal job market due to lack of education or family pressure. The money they earn can be substantial in the short term, but it comes with high emotional costs and legal risk.”
The Third Layer: Cultural Crosscurrents
Lahore is a city that loves its poetry, its music, and its stories of love—think of the verses of Ghalib or the haunting notes of the sitar. In that cultural backdrop, the existence of escort services feels like a paradox, a whispered line in a ghazal that never makes it to the final couplet.
I sat in a small café in the old city, sipping chai sweetened with a hint of cardamom, and listened as an elderly shopkeeper shared his view. “Our grandparents would have never imagined their daughters working this way,” he said, eyes distant. “But the world changes. The young people are more… open, perhaps. Yet, they also carry the weight of shame. It is as if they wear two veils—one to hide, one to show.”
He paused, looking at the bustling street outside where a wedding procession marched past, the drums beating in time with the city’s heart. “Love is everywhere in Lahore. It’s in the mangoes that fall from the trees, in the laughter of children, in the call of the nightbird. But love also has a market, and sometimes, that market is hidden.”
The Fourth Layer: Voices from the Inside
When I finally called the number the woman had given me, I was met with a gentle voice that belonged to a young woman named Saira (a pseudonym). She worked out of a modest apartment near the University of Lahore, where she spent her evenings tutoring schoolchildren in mathematics. When a client requested her services—typically a “companion” for a dinner or a cultural tour—she would adjust her schedule.
“I never thought I’d be doing this,” she confessed, her voice steady but tinged with melancholy. “When my mother fell ill, the hospital bills were more than our savings. I had a degree, but the job market is a maze for a single woman. The agency approached me—not with threats, but with an offer. They told me I could set my own limits, that I could decide what I could do and what I could not. It felt like a choice, even if it was a constrained one.” Escorts In Lahore
She described the paradoxical safety net of the arrangement: a fixed fee, a clear cut‑off time, and an unspoken code of discretion. Yet, she also recounted moments of vulnerability—being left in a hotel after a client’s intoxication, fearing police raids, or confronting the judgment of relatives who never knew about her double life.
“When I’m with a client, I’m not just a body,” Saira said, eyes shining. “I’m a listener. Some men come with stories they can’t share with their wives. I become the keeper of those secrets. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real.”
The Fifth Layer: The Unseen Threads
By the time I left Lahore, the city’s silhouette against the evening sky was a tapestry of minarets, smoke, and the faint glow of neon signs. The escort world, like many of Lahore’s hidden economies, is not an isolated phenomenon; it is interwoven with the city’s social fabric, its economic pressures, its cultural contradictions, and its legal strictures.
There is no single narrative, no tidy conclusion. The women who navigate this world do so with resilience, agency, and a constant balancing act between survival and societal judgment. The clients, often cloaked in prestige, seek moments of intimacy that the public sphere denies them. The law, rigid in its language, wrestles with realities that slip through its fingers.
