ISLAMABAD: Muzaffar Hussain Shah bends down, picks up a brick from the rubble and cleans it with a hammer. Until a few weeks ago, the brick had been part of a home where Shah had lived for nearly five decades, since his birth.
The house in an informal settlement in Islamabad, which came to be known as Muslim Colony, was demolished in an anti-encroachment drive. Shah said he has spent past three weeks sleeping under the open sky and has been collecting the last remaining bricks to get by for a few more days.
Shah, 48, is one of nearly 15,000 people evicted by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) from the settlement, which was established in the 1960s to house laborers who built Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, during a drive that began in November.
The decades-old settlement, located near the prime minister’s official residence and the Diplomatic Enclave, a specially designated area within the city that houses foreign embassies, high commissions and international missions, has now been reduced to a 712-kanal (89-acre) stretch of dust and debris.
“It feels as if there is neither a sky over our heads nor anyone behind our backs,” Shah told Arab News on Tuesday, surrounded by the rubble of his demolished home. “Nor is there anything ahead of us. We cannot see anything at all.”
