LAHORE: It took him seven years to pay off the installments for his car; and yet he could not rescue it from the mob that smashed it to bits: Fahad Ahmed, a small-time banker is depressed beyond measure.

“All that hard-earned money went down the drain,” he says not lifting his eyes off the ground, not daring to even look at what is left of his vehicle. “What will I do now?” Fahad had bought the car because he had to travel a long way to work, but now a drastic change awaits him. “It will be back to buses for a long time – waiting endlessly in the sun and rain.”

In the last two days, several people have faced what Fahad has gone through – losing their cars to angry protesters. In fact the mob did not stop at just cars, they also took over larger vehicles including buses and trucks. On both days, horrifying videos of burning automobiles went viral on social media, and the mob could be seen beating them with rods and sticks.

“I was scared to death as I was travelling down one of the main roads of the city, and a group of young men stopped me,” recounts Amjad Khan, a doctor. “I was taking my son to the hospital. But these people did not stop at anything. They damaged my car’s bonnet but thankfully my windscreen and the rest remained untouched. I turned around as fast as I could and sped away.”

But the worst hit were those blue-collar workers who work on daily wages.

It had taken Rehmat two years to see that his business of selling street food had finally become profitable.

“Two days is a big stretch to lose business,” he said. In fact being in the sensitive Mall Road area, Rehmat was badly affected even a day before.

“The problem had begun on Wednesday night and I had to shut shop and leave,” he said.

Even the worse affected were vendors and hawkers.

“I just eke out Rs300 a day,” says Maryam Bibi, who sells hair accessories. “That makes for the day’s meals, but these past two days our supplies have been running short.”

Corn seller Naseebullah says he has suffered a great loss.

“We are poor people, what have we done wrong? Why attack us, or not allow us to operate our business,” he remembers the incident of the young boy whose fruit was being stolen by agitators.

Now that he has come back on the street to sell corn again, he is still not earning much as traffic is thin and people are not stopping to buy snacks, unless they are on foot.

Saba, who goes from home to home offering grooming services to women, has also faced terrible loss.

“For us who work on daily wages, it is very difficult to even take one day-off,” she says. “Even my Sundays are open to work. But an atmosphere like this, we don’t even find transport to travel, let alone work. Is the country only for these agitators?”

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2018