In the heart of Lahore, just behind the ancient fort and its mosque is a restaurant where respectable families stop by for a feast in the shadow of sacred things.They whisper by the high walls of the fort, tip-toe up the many narrow stairs of CooCoo’s restaurant and look over the minarets as they relish their kabobs and their naan by candlelight.
It is romantic and graceful floating above the red light district of Heera Mandi. Below them is a world very different than theirs, so they think. The dancing girls and the hijras with their complicated lives, their misery and their squalor have nothing to do with the well to-do.
Which brings us to the ever-amusing tale of one Silvio Berlusconi, the current Prime Minister of Italy. A Napoleonic complex in its finest form, Mr. Berlusconi (all 5’6″ of him, as he famously boasted when a journalist stated that he was shorter than France’s Nicholas Sarkozy) built himself an empire from dust, made billions in media and real estate and, like many of his ilk, sought more than what money could offer and thus made his way into politics.
And today, in the midst of perhaps his most damaging political scandal ever, as his throne crumbles like a pile of bricks, the foundations of Mr. Berlusconi have been revealed as well: a man, like any other with wealth, power and influence, with needs. The sort of needs that can be met in a place like Heera Mandi.
It turns out that Mr. Berlusconis now estranged wife Veronica Lario wasn’t kidding last year when she bluntly announced that he “consorts with minors” not long after he all 73 years of him troubled himself to attend a young underwear models 18th birthday party. Quite an effort, considering his wife says that he never attended his own childrens 18th birthday parties.
This time, its a 17 year old showgirl that has him in the news. Karima Keyek is the daughter of Moroccan immigrants living in Italy. Italian newspapers are reporting that during a recent stint in jail, Miss Keyek received a most curious and powerful plea on her behalf. Silvio himself placed a call to the prison to order her release on charges of several thousand dollars worth of theft. Some papers are even reporting that he told officers that she is the granddaughter of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. (It seems Berlusconi was rather nonchalantly following an inward logic that powerful people and their families are exempt from the law.)
Journalists, having gotten wind of these facts have incredibly, considering that Mr. Berlusconi himself runs most of the media in the country taken issue with the matter, filling front pages with the latest underage fiasco of an aged pervert. His response? He hasnt denied knowing Miss Keyek, he simply states that he is a person of the heart, and I take action whenever there is someone in need of help.
The details of this story are salacious and recall scene after scene from Louise Browns famous study, The Dancing Girls of Lahore. There, too, are tales of old men, wealthy men, married men, who entertain young girls even in their homes in Defense, Cantt and Model Town. Miss Keyek says she was once paid by Mr. Berlusconi to the tune of nearly 9 thousand American dollars simply to attend one of his private bunga-bunga parties (venture a guess for what that means) but never went farther than a bunga, it seems, as, to quote Miss Keyek in her own well paid words, Mr. Berlusconi is a gentleman.
In Dancing Girls, we learned the gritty details of the lives of these young girls. How their bodies are sold for profit and pleasure. How their exploiters are always much older and more powerful men who often abuse their little bodies so much that they must spend days or longer recovering from their jobs. How they are discarded when they reach a certain age and will be penniless if they dont have daughters or other little girls to exploit once they have retired. And perhaps worst of all: how there is no escape from this life. A Heera Mandi girl is punished at birth to live a life of use and abuse, without a chance to be educated or respected.
Miss Keyeks star is rising at the moment. She is being interviewed like a celebrity on television shows and has a book coming out an autobiography of her long and varied life with a full chapter on Berlusconi. But someday soon she will fade back into a life in the shadows while Berlusconi continues to bask in the glow of his empire.
The writer is US-based political analyst and a fomer Producer for BBC and Al-Jazeera. Follow her on Twitter @ShirinSadeghi
