Drinking a glass of ice-cold lassi on Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Road in Lyari at midnight, it was hard to believe where I was. A decade ago, walking down the streets in this neighbourhood or in Ali Mohammad Mohalla (also part of Lyari) was impossible. Similarly, in other parts of Lyari, people from the Kutchi community would migrate across Mauripur Road to Macchar Colony when they knew the violence would escalate.

And it did. The news would be filled with photos of police raids, gangsters under arrest and so on. Who can forget the image of SP Chaudhry Aslam, an encounter specialist, lighting a cigar at the police station at the entrance of Lyari? When the gang war was at its peak, Ali Mohammad Mohalla became the home of notorious gangster Ghaffar Zikri, who was allegedly killed in an encounter last year (like many other casualties of the gang war that has been going on since the early 2000s).

Today, this mohalla is full of life again. People don’t go to bed until the early hours. Men, women and children sit on the streets, drinking lassi and tea at midnight. During the day, the men go to work, while the women clean and send their children to school. Every day, twice a day, between four and nine in the mornings and six and nine in the evenings, people congregate at Haji Sahib’s to enjoy a plate of daal makhni and goli paratha. The chai and paratha here is at par with any of the chai dhabas in Chota and Bara Bukhari. The paratha is light and flakey and comes with a stick of butter which melts in the middle.

Haji Sahib’s is one of the oldest Malbari cafés in Karachi, set up before Partition. Regular customers say this was the only place that could have survived Partition and the gang war. Another local favourite and survivor of the gang war is Dua Restaurant on Mauripur Road. Known for its dumba karhai, young men sit here late at night catching up with friends.

As Lyari emerges form an era on gang warfare, Tooba Masood sees a community forging ahead.

Residents confirm that things have improved. “We have seen Rehman Baba, Baba Ladla, Arshad Pappu and Uzair Baloch roam these streets. We once feared them but now, things are good,” says a man who grew up around the Joona Masjid area.

Despite the fact that the battle for Lyari left many casualties behind, people who were once afraid of living on the ground floor (many live on the mezzanine floors to avoid violence on the ground) have opened small schools and NGOs for women. A great example of this is the Lyari Girls Café and Sabina Khatri’s Kiran School.

Run by the Aas Research and Development Organisation (ARADO) the café is a space where girls as young as five can come to learn English, play and grow up in a safe environment. Routine activities include cycling, boxing and football. In the last three years, two boxing schools for women have opened in Lyari: Pak Shaheen Boxing Club and Young Lyari Boxers Club.

After several operations led by the late Chaudhry Aslam, the police and the rangers, the on-ground situation has improved. Women are stepping out and reclaiming their space. According to locals, the gang war ruined lives of the Kutchi and Baloch youth for generations. “It had scared our women. They did not want to step out of their homes; they couldn’t even if they wanted to because of the violence but now they are taking baby steps.”

The women have really stepped up in the last couple of years. Not only are they attending local academies in pursuit of education, taking part in football and boxing championships, they are also starting their own businesses. Nazia’s father ran a catering business which he inherited from his father and his grandfather. Due to inflation, she says her father was having a tough time keeping up. By using Facebook and other social media sites, Nazia came up with a unique idea – wedding cakes.

“I noticed that people had started to ask for wedding cakes at their receptions. It had become a trend. It was very expensive to outsource them, so I learned how to bake through YouTube videos.”

The young men are using the internet to achieve their goals. For example, Lyari Underground, a group of rappers who were picked up by Patari (the music platform) two years ago, first met in a chat room; they bonded over their mutual respect for Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls before they started recording together.

Although the security situation has improved, locals still face ongoing issues with electricity and water. As they do not get water directly at home, it has become a regular activity for the women to get together every day, take their dishes to a spot to wash them and fill up on water for the following day. These women say there was a time they couldn’t step out of the house to buy groceries or clothes. They depended on the men for everything. Now they frequently go to Lea Market or Jhatpat to buy cooking dishes, utensils, Balochi dresses, jewellery and toys for their children. While unemployment is rife, many shopkeepers keep running tabs for those families they have known for years. A sign of straitened economic times is the fact that whereas before women used to buy groceries for a month at a go, they now buy according to their weekly needs.

For clothes, women prefer Balochi embroidery in bright colours on silk and satin. Mohammad Sohail Khan, a shopkeeper, says he has to bring in new stocks every few weeks. “Baloch women only like clothes or gold. Even if a man pushes a cart all day, he wants to buy his wife a nice set of clothes. They come here with their sisters, daughters and sometimes theirs husbands to buy dresses with typical Balochi embroidery. These dresses range from Rs 1,500 to Rs 4,000. It is hard to say how many women come to my shop every day. In a week, I have about 200 customers. The women don’t like wearing lawn. You won’t see them in a Sana Safinaz copy.” Khan adds that for bridals (above Rs 20,000), women prefer banarasi cloth and for daily wear chiffon, silk, satin and georgette.

Jhatpat market which is located in Chakiwara was a bustling place until an attack in 2014. It took time for the women of the area to go back to the market. The security situation made it difficult to go there to buy everyday items. Today, the market looks like any other mall on Tariq Road. The shops sell a variety of clothes (some imported from Dubai), tea, a locally produced milk powder, bedsheets and blankets, utensils and Iranian products. The bestseller for most shopkeepers in Jhatpat are feminine hygiene products and whitening creams.

Street art and graffiti have also found a home in Lyari. In December 2015, four murals were painted on houses in the Khadda Market area as part of the Fearless Collective, a movement started by Indian artist Shilo Shiv Suleman. During the last FIFA World Cup, the streets were painted in the colours of the Brazilian flag.

Recently, a bunch of powerful ground-breaking murals advocating non-violence as well as women empowerment were defaced. Boys from the community stepped up and repainted the murals. According to instagrammer Bilal Hasan, who went to have a look at the defaced murals, there were a few unhappy folks lurking in the background, secretly recording while making veiled threats to the people supporting the muralists.

“Honestly, I felt like I was a part of a film. For a brief second, I caught myself looking around for snipers. This is Pakistan after all and people have perished for far lesser offenses. By the end of the afternoon, the community had repainted all the defaced murals. Later I ask a local community leader if he was afraid; he replies that this is Lyari and they have seen far worse and that this is child’s play. He adds if the murals are defaced 100 times, they will repaint them a 100 times.”

Lyari may not change through its elected officials and politicians, but it will do so because of the hard work and resilience of its local resident population as they continue to fight for change against all odds.

Tooba Masood is a subeditor/reporter at DAWN. masoodtooba@gmail.com