In the hushed, golden hour before the Lahore sun relinquishes its grip, Park View City transforms. The manicured lawns, still damp from the evening sprinklers, glisten like emerald carpets. The wide, silent roads, free from the day’s traffic, become ribbons of perfect black asphalt. And in this pristine, almost surreal stillness, the escorts make their rounds.
They are not the escorts one might first imagine. They are not of chrome and fleeting desire. They are the silent guardians of this ordered paradise: the security guards.
Their beat is the perimeter of a dream. They escort not people, but an idea—the idea of safety, of exclusivity, of a life perfectly curated behind high walls and stricter bylaws. Ali, on the graveyard shift, knows this better than anyone. His father guarded fields of sugarcane on the outskirts of the city; now Ali guards fields of imported Bermuda grass and rose bushes worth more than his monthly salary.
He escorts the night itself. His flashlight beam is a loyal companion, cutting a swath through the darkness, checking the locks on vacant mansions whose owners are in London or Dubai for the summer. He is the lone witness to the secrets of the sleeping colony: the cat that always slips through the fence at 2:17 AM, the distant, mournful melody of a train whistle carried on the cool air, the single light that stays on in the architect’s house, where a man is forever hunched over blueprints for another, even more perfect, community.
Sometimes, his escort duty is more literal. A BMW with tinted windows will glide up to the barrier at 3 AM. The window will slide down to reveal the weary, party-dulled eyes of a young man from a famous family. No words are exchanged. A slight nod from Ali, a raised barrier, and the car is escorted, by his silent permission, into the sanctum of home.
Then there is Mrs. Habib, the most diurnal of escorts. Her domain is the community park at the society’s heart. Every morning, as the aazan fades, she arrives. Her charges are a flock of sprightly, expensive-looking dogs—a Pomeranian named Polo, a Siberian Husky that panted in a language of ice and snow, and two meticulously groomed poodles. She doesn’t just walk them; she orchestrates their passage. She is their mediator, their bodyguard, their diplomat in the complex social ecosystem of the park. She escorts them from one sniffing-post to the next, ensuring their safety, cleaning up their transgressions with a practiced efficiency, all while the actual owners discuss vacations and stock markets on a nearby bench.
And finally, there is the boy, Faisal, on his father’s old bicycle. His escort service is the most cherished. As the sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in strokes of orange and purple, he becomes the courier of joy. He weaves through the streets, a basket laden with boxes of pizza, bags of chaat from the outside world, and sometimes, a single, precious cake with a glowing candle carefully steadied by his hand. He escorts these small parcels of indulgence from the main gate to the heavy, carved doors of the houses. He is the awaited herald of a family’s Friday night, a birthday surprise, a lazy dinner. The ting-ting of his bicycle bell is a more welcome sound than any door chime.
Park View City, Lahore, is a map of aspirations. But its real life, its pulse, is not found in the marble lobbies or the designer showrooms. It is found in the quiet, dutiful journeys of its unseen escorts. They are the ones who shepherd the darkness into light, who guide the precious pets and the more precious packages, who grant silent permission to return home.
They escort the residents through the mundane moments of their privileged lives, a constant, watchful presence ensuring the dream never flickers. And in doing so, they become the unshakable, human foundation upon which the entire, beautiful illusion rests.
