KARACHI: They may look like common rocks at first glance but underneath the dirt and grime are hues of green, brown, pink and grey along with seamless flowing textures. We are surrounded by these rocks piled atop of each other on either side of the road. No, we haven’t reached Tora Bora, well not yet anyway.

We are on Manghopir Road, an area of Karachi that boasts many big warehouses and grounds for storing marble and cutting the rock into slabs, bricks, cubes from big to small with an assortment of saws.

A huge rock is placed on a trolley with the help of a crane and pushed into a chamber with huge electric saws slicing it into slabs. The water shower from the sprinklers, besides cooling the blades of the saw, also wash off the dirt to reveal beautiful green marble. “This is the first stop for the stone on its way to becoming a slab for someone’s kitchen counter, tiles for the floors or walls or maybe a decoration piece,” says Musa Khan at one such marble-cutting factory on Manghopir Road.

The employees at the factory wear gumboots with steel plates. “What if some big piece of rock drops on our feet?” says Musa Khan.

At a marble display centre in Old Golimar, former chairman of the All Pakistan Marble Industries Association Mohammad Jamal categorises the slabs and tiles he deals in. “There’s limestone, sandstone, granite and of course marble, the most popular. Real marble is calcium carbonate and it is mined from Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and even Afghanistan. Marble industries, on the other hand, are found in Loralai, Chagai, Hub, Swat, Mardan, Peshawar and Karachi, though Karachi has the biggest marble industry,” he says.

About marble exports, Jamal says that Pakistan exports to China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Europe and America. “China only buys raw material when it comes to marble from here. Semi-finished marble goods go to Saudi Arabia and the UAE while Europe and America is a market for marble products especially handicrafts and tiles,” he says. “Locally, the favourite sellers are white and beige marble or onyx as it is called,” he adds.

Light green onyx is the most expensive. Around Rs1,500 per square foot. In comparison, beige marble is around Rs200 to Rs250 per square foot. There are also deep green marble slabs leaning on the wall in his display centre. Jamal says it is from India.

Paradise Market in Saddar is a popular market for marble decoration pieces and ornaments. Mohammad Hamdan at a souvenir shop here says that not just foreigners, locals, too, come to buy marble decoration pieces from him. There is a choice of souvenirs from marble goblets, chess sets, vases, clocks, lamps to pillars. And starting from Rs250 they go up to over Rs100,000. “Well, we have buyers for all,” Hamdan says with a smile.

Asked if the sales and exports of marble products is picking up, the shopkeeper shakes his head sadly. “No, it has gone down, especially after Pakistan decided to export marble raw material to China. Now buyers and Europe and America buy the finished products from China and not us,” he says.

Published in Dawn, October 11th , 2015

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