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THE morning after we landed in London three weeks ago, my nine-year-old and I went out for a walk post-breakfast. Out of nowhere, she said “Baba, I can breathe here.” I looked at her: she had a big smile on her face.
She was not making a political or ideological statement; she was just making a statement of fact about the air. Living in Lahore, over the last two to three years we had gotten her used to wearing a mask all the time when outside. In London, I could see her face when we were walking that morning.
I checked the Air Quality Index for London right after her remark: it was 20. I checked what the AQI in Lahore was at the time: it was 140. As I write this article, the AQI in London is 55 and around 150 in Lahore. The average AQI for Lahore last year was around 170. We had many days when the AQI was in the 200-300 range. For London, it was 42 in 2024 and 45 in 2025.
Despite the fact that my daughter had to wear a mask whenever she was out in the open in Lahore, she still had to take medication containing montelukast sodium, which is commonly used for allergies and managing respiratory issues like asthma. It has been more of a friend to her over the last few years — a period in which she has been far sicker than in the first five to six years of her life — than any of her classmates. This was also the case with other children in her class and school. A paediatrician told me that children in Pakistan seemed to be living on this particular medicine — at least much more than on chocolates or other sweets. School absences on account of sickness have risen as well.
