A Weekend in Gwadar

Look at a map of Gwadar and you’ll see two generous crescents side-by-side, each cradling its own bay. Both are anchored to a neglected, conflict-ridden province, but where they meet in the sea, they’re clipped together by a cliff. Crowning it, now, is a five-star hotel with a glass lift fitted with golden mirrors. Float up in it, and you’ll see cranes swinging against the sky, transforming this ancient fishing village into what will become one of the biggest deepwater ports in Asia — this is the work of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Gwadar's population numbers around 80,000. If the new developments snag even 5% of the projected 2 million people they hope to draw over the next 20 years, the natives who have lived here for generations will become minorities in their own heartland. They've already been sidelined to a smaller jetty, built, I feel, to cordon them off. At dusk swarms of boys perch on its unpaved edge, nestled between the jags, laughing. It seems the entire village comes out to bid the sun farewell, as if it's going away for a while and not just another night. 

We had dinner after at Shinwari, a dhaba-style restaurant, where I had the best naan I have ever tasted in my life. Our server knew this, because as he brought them over, fresh and piping hot, he ripped a piece for himself and chewed, demonstrating. Then he would disappear and return again with more platefuls. 

Upon waking, we walked down to the fishing jetty, threading around and under the unfinished boats lining the shore: they sat mid-air with ladders dangling from their hulls, their bodies just skeletons hinged together. The sand below was covered with scraps of wood and hammers and the footprints of men who have been in this trade for generations. Beyond them, on the horizon, bobbed the boats that they spend months at a time building: flecks of colour in the endless blue, mini-fortresses soldiering through the tide.

I stopped to ask questions of the men crouched beneath the hulls, hammers in hand. What will stay with me, always, is how these men believe they have the most important job in all the world. If even one sliver of wood is hammered out of line, they told me, water could someday seep through and sink everyone aboard.

Gwadar is surrounded by sleepy fishing villages, each with its own character and pulse. My favourites were Pasni and Jiwani. Driving between them, we came across children that had just been let off school, making their way home, their arms laden with books, their commute long and lonely and tedious under the relentless sun. 

Pasni was tiny but brimming. The jetty was heaped with pastel nets still tangled around their rusted anchors; fishermen sat eating samosas from a cart; and in the nearby market, a bull crunched into an abandoned juice box. In this tiny village only a couple lanes big, children rode tricycles by the water, whizzing past boats clustered so tight together that they made up their own, hidden metropolis.

Squeezing through lanes where the locals put up their markets, or alleys between their one-room houses, I was struck by how frozen in time these communities are. I remember seeing an ancient iron, with a compartment heated by burning pieces of coal. The man it belonged to had laid his clothes out on the concrete porch extending from his storefront; his children pattered behind him, tossing a tennis ball between their tiny hands.

Jiwani was the laziest, happiest place on the entire coast. My sister and I hopped from one jagged rock to another, making our way down to the shore. A single boat was out in the water, it’s four-wheeled dolly waiting for it on the sand. We filled our arms with fat pink shells as if they were jewels worth millions. A colony of gulls waddled along the water, tentatively sticking their feet into the surf; a pack of puppies rolled languidly in the dunes.