As you enter the mammoth solid doors of Fort Kot Diji, carefully so the iron arrow-like nails protruding do not touch you, you cannot help but recall that they were once laced with a lethal poison. At least that’s how the story goes! What if the shiny metal was still potent, you wonder as you bend to enter through the mini gate. Imagination runs amok as you walk past the fort built over 25 years.

Past the entrance, you come upon a courtyard and on your right find a well, still not dry that the old guide tells us is several thousand feet deep and is the habit, littered with plastic soda bottles and candy wrappers.

And then much to your horror you suddenly find yourself snaking up a concrete stairway. The railing and the wide shallow steps make your way up easier but look rather out of place inside this old brick fort. Looking back you realise why entranceways were supposed to be wide - just enough to let supplies to be brought in, yet be able to provide a solid wall to the enemy.

The fort was built between 1785 to 1795 by Mir Sohrab Khan Talpur, the ruler of Khairpur (1783-1830) in Rohri taluka, of Khairpur district, in Sindh province. It is about 40 km east of River Indus at the border of Nara-Rajisthan desert. The eighth sovereign of Khairpur, Mir Ali Murad Khan Talpur II, acceded to Pakistan on October 3, 1947.

Once invincible, the lime and mortar plaster has fallen off the walls leaving the kiln-baked bricks exposed to the vagaries of climate. Like the fort, the history and heritage of the Talpurs is left at the mercy of nature to be erased. - Text and photos by Zofeen T. Ebrahim