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Photos of
NWFP, Pakistan: Part 2
(William B. Plowman)
Posted: 26 November,
2002
 A
female heroin addict is as common on the Pakistani frontier as a
woman with a job. Or a woman without a burqa. She is an outcast
in a land of outcasts. This is Perveen's lot. "I'm not a boy,"
she insists as she raises her shirt to reveal that she is indeed
a woman.
 It's
a sign perhaps, that the region's heroin problem is getting worse.
A Pakistani study estimates there are 1.5 million heroin addicts
in the country. And even with the region's crushing poverty, addicts
are usually able to cobble together the 100 or so rupees to feed
their daily habit.
 Across
the railroad tracks, squatting on the shallow roadside graves of
dead users, a desperate group of heroin smokers gather. Up the road
a bit, further from the graves, a Tanzanian man named Kiota claims
he has lost his passport and has been here for ten years. Others
say he is a smuggler on the run from the law - an argument rendered
moot when, a day later, he falls asleep after a fix and never wakes
up.
 Most
of the users live on the street here - like Perveen. She shares
a pipe with a 17-year-old boy and is unfazed by Kalashnikov fire
at the other end of the street. But she cries when she tells me
her father, from Punjab, has disowned her.
 The
majority of the addicts on this dusty street are refugees from Afghanistan,
and many have been here for some time, having fled the country's
lingering drought and decades of war. Among them is Abdullah, a
60-year-old father of five who trekked her with his family from
Kabul last year. In the 1980s, I'm told, he helped the mujahideen
drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But Abdullah dies of an overdose
today. His body left in the sun while a hole is dug.
Ibarar, the 17-year-old
later fixes the headstone on the old man's grave. He crosses the
street and squats under a tree, swaying, looking for his matches.
William B. Plowman
http://www.williambplowman.com/
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