When the call to prayer fades into the early evening, Lahore’s historic grandeur—its minarets, bustling bazaars, and the fragrant whirl of street food—takes on a softer, almost cinematic glow. The city’s old walls, once witnesses to imperial processions, now listen to a different kind of conversation: whispers exchanged behind the flickering neon of a modest café, a message sent from a phone that never seems to sleep, and the quiet footsteps of women who move through the night with a practiced calm.
Mira—her name a blend of Persian poetry and everyday resilience—knows these streets better than many of the men who claim to own them. She grew up in a narrow lane off Anarkali, where the call to prayer mingled with the clatter of rickshaws and the squeal of children chasing one another. Her father, a carpenter with a talent for carving intricate jali screens, died when she was sixteen, leaving behind a modest debt that seemed impossible to settle. The world, as it often does, offered a quick answer: a phone number scribbled on a torn piece of newspaper, a promise of a client who would pay in cash and forget the rest.
For Mira, the world of “call girls” in Lahore is not a glamorous fantasy painted in glossy magazines. It is a dimly lit room above a shop that sells spices, a shared apartment on a cracked third‑floor balcony, and a calendar marked with appointments that are as much about survival as they are about secrecy. The term “call girl” itself is a paradox—a euphemism that tries to sanitize, to hide the raw economics that drive a woman into a profession that society simultaneously condemns and silently tolerates.
The city’s legal landscape is a maze of contradictions. While prostitution is officially illegal under Pakistan’s penal code, the reality on the ground bends under the weight of poverty, migration, and the pull of modernity. In some upscale neighborhoods, discreet agencies—often masquerading as “entertainment services”—operate like any other small business, their signs hidden behind glossy logos that speak of “companionship” rather than anything more explicit. In the old quarters, the same services are discussed in hushed tones over chai, the word “hijra” sometimes slipping in as a coded warning.
Mira’s stories are not about the “thrill” of the city’s nightlife; they are about the quiet negotiations that happen at the margins of it. A client may be a business executive seeking an escape from boardroom pressures, a foreign tourist drawn to the exotic allure of Lahore, or a local man whose own marriage has dissolved under the weight of expectations he cannot meet. Each encounter is a transaction, but it also carries a weight of humanity—a moment when two strangers sit across from each other, the clink of tea cups echoing a fleeting connection that is both intimate and commercial.
What makes this world particularly complex is the way it overlays Lahore’s cultural tapestry. The city, celebrated for its literary salons and Sufi shrines, also harbors a silent struggle: the battle between traditional family expectations and the harsh economic realities faced by its women. Mira’s younger sister, Ayesha, still attends school, clutching textbooks that smell of fresh ink and hope. Mira’s earnings, however modest, sometimes make the difference between Ayesha completing her degree or dropping out to help at the family’s small stall.
There is, too, an undercurrent of resilience that defies the stigma. A network of women—some former call girls, others mothers of girls in the trade—have begun meeting in the backroom of a small tea house off Shahrah-e-Quaid-e-Azam. They share information about safe practices, legal loopholes, and, most importantly, emotional support. They discuss the idea of collective savings, a way to eventually step out of the shadows and into a different life, perhaps as a tailor, a teacher, or a small business owner. Their conversations are laden with the hope that one day, the city’s glittering facade will no longer hide the lived realities of women like Mira. Call Girls In Lahore
In the evenings, when the traffic slows and the city’s lights begin to twinkle like a constellation of stories, Mira often stands on the balcony of her tiny room, looking out over the rooftops. The scent of jasmine drifts from a neighbor’s garden, mingling with the distant sound of a sitar. She thinks of the ancient poets who sang of love and loss, of the Sufi mystics who sought union with the divine, and she wonders where her own verses fit into the sprawling epic of Lahore.
The narrative of “call girls” in Lahore is not a single thread but a tapestry woven from necessity, choice, oppression, and agency. It is a reminder that every city, no matter how historic or celebrated, holds corners where the sunlight doesn’t quite reach, and where the lives of its inhabitants are written in margins that many prefer to ignore. By peering into those shadows with empathy rather than judgement, we begin to understand the full story of a city that, like its people, is constantly negotiating between the past and the promise of a different tomorrow.
