20 Hours In Lahore of 2091
Hormoz was in his last semester, and he was late to his class. He ran through the courtyard and through the corridors to reach his classroom. The door opened with a bang, and everyone in the room looked towards the door, and thus, Hormoz made his entry. No one, including the teacher, was shocked. It was common for Hormoz to arrive late in class. He took the leftover seat and tried to match it with the pace of the class. Between the words of his lecturer, Hormoz’s mind dashed back to his last night’s study session. He studied about the changing world order back in 2020–30. Hormoz’s attention returned to the class, and then again it went to what he studied in his session.
“If you study some events back in history, in the twentieth and nineteenth century, you would come to know the wars and the old man’s dictation changed the world order. But that is not the case in the early twenty-first century. It was climate change, injustice, and multipolarism that led to the world of the twenty-first century. I mean, we had a cultural heritage city, and we lost it due to bad air quality.”
He then closed Shabnam, a name given to his journal, and went back to his class. He passed his day in the superiority complex like many others. A superiority complex that stemmed from his strong grip on history. Many of the teenagers like his age were confused about either their gender or were retarded because they did not grow up in a fully-functional family.
Hormoz was in the United Islamic States. A new country formed after the amalgamation of Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and southern Uzbekistan with semi-autonomous rule to individual states or provinces. Hormoz lived in what was the Potohar region comprising many cities of central Punjab, KPK, and Kashmir. Due to climate change and poor air quality, many cities were abandoned and people started living in multi-storey apartment buildings. It came after the shortage of land and reserving land for agricultural purposes. Real estate was banned in the early 2050s. 7th Generation HVAC systems were employed in buildings, outside the cities, and in the centre of cities to purify the air. In some regions, the air quality is extremely bad and they have to use built-in HVAC systems in houses and M-789 masks outside the residential places. The world order had completely changed in the time of Hormoz. Hormoz’s world was multipolar. Regional superpowers and the once hegemony of the Western civilisation were completely buried in the mid-century. Hormoz’s major interest was in studying the cities that were abandoned and how life was there before their abandonment. Karachi, Lahore, Delhi, Kolkata, New York, and many more were among them. When the indigenous people migrated and settled in other areas they tried to change the names of old cities to the names of their native cities. Many regional wars broke out due to this issue. Hormoz was recently studying in Lahore. It was the cultural capital of Pakistan. The city was abandoned due to the overpopulation of people from southern Punjab and a radical fight between the indigenous population and the settlers. Besides the fight and competition, the air quality worsened due to the pollution and the last days of the city saw the public hangings and murders of the government officials. It was later the intervention of the Russia-Iran-China-led coalition that ended it and combined almost 6 countries’ states to form a new country. The new country had an inclusive, secular government to oversee the diplomatic relations and to present themselves in the multipolaristic world, economic matters, and climate defence. Other matters were handled by the semi-autonomous states. The UIS had 32 semi-autonomous regions. Hormoz belonged to the Potohar. The southern Punjab was an abandoned area. The population left it and isolation took over it. According to the new international rule, no indigenous, expatriate population had the right to establish a new state. The new world order was using the abandoned cities as dumps of their wastes and was directing bad air to them with advanced technology. In the new world order, Hormoz wanted to know about the lives of previous generations.
Once he had accumulated enough knowledge on the matters and abandonment of Lahore, he resolved to visit the city. Many internationally accredited organisations had licences to take people to the once-inhabited-now-abandoned cities. But no one dared to visit Lahore. Its air quality was one of the worst, and no one dared to visit it. Jon Herbot once made a visit, but he later suffered from oxygen insufficiency and spent his remaining life on Individualised-HVACs. Some expeditions were made to other cities like New York, Tokyo, and Delhi, and they had recordings with them. But no one ever dared to visit Tel Aviv, New York, and Bombay. Jon Herbot visited Lahore in 2071 and in the past 20 years, no expedition was made to Lahore. Lahore was abandoned in 2045 and since then only 5 expeditions have been made.
But nothing stopped Hormoz. After graduation, he started a fundraiser and collected some money to accredit his organisation. He opened applications for an expedition and soon it was blocked by the High Court. The Iranian Bureau of Expedition took notice of it and contacted Potohar counterparts to ban the organisation. To do so, the bureau had to present an application in the biannual meetings on multipolarism. The meeting was due in January and Hormoz had only two months to make his expedition. Hormoz’s ancestors came from Lahore so it became a religious duty for him to visit his ancestral land. The applications were already blocked and he did not expect someone to come with him. He made his preparations and waited for 27th November. He departed for Lahore, but 70 km away from Lahore, the bus stopped. Hormoz had 70 km to travel. He had 5 home-made individualised HVACs. Since he had to walk in bad air quality, he utilised almost 2 of them. He had only 3 left when he reached the gates of Lahore. To give an idea, a single home-made individualised HVACs can help you survive a 500 AQI (the same as Lahore) for 10 hours. He was live-streaming his journey and almost 70 million were watching him. The views surged when he reached Lahore. He had 3 HVACs and a total of 30 hours in Lahore in 2091. He was in the northern-part of Lahore, where the once-old city resided.
The only thing Hormoz could see was smog. Smog everywhere and if not smog in some places, then it was a terrible and itching odour. Everything was covered in dirt and all he could see was smog and isolation. Hormoz saw a building there. It had a huge metallic gate at the front and a terrace on the second floor. From what he had read about the architecture of the ancient cities, it was a home. On the right side of the metal gate, there was a board. Something was written in the Nastaliq script. After the revolution of Urdu in the 2060s, people started using the English (Latin) alphabet for Urdu and replaced it with the old script. He walked into the house, it was dark everywhere and so he had to use another torch of his. He was in some room. On the left side, he saw a cupboard. Hormoz opened it to find a notebook in it. The notebook was in pretty bad shape and had something written in it. It was in English.
“My name is Sakina Abbas. I am 8 years old. I read in class one. Today we (will) leave Lahore. We (will) go somewhere. Papa (had found) find some home there.” Below was a picture of the girl with her parents and her home on the upper left corner. It reminded Hormoz how people who once lived here had a life before. They had to leave their city to go somewhere. All because of something they could not control; nature. All because their government could not find a solution to the rising problems of the city. All because of the human negligence that fellow human lives had to suffer. Hormoz’s next stop was at a ground. The structure implied that it was a park. Identifying the location and his knowledge, he knew where he was; Minar e Pakistan. The once legendary icon of the Pakistan resolution and the struggle for freedom from colonialism was standing in front of him. The top of Minar was already broken and was near the base of the structure. The dilapidated structure and once a must-visit place of Lahore was in front of him. The last massacre of people and government officials was carried out here, and then the republic lost its identity and was governed by various semi-autonomous republics. He could feel another gigantic structure near the Minar, the iconic Lahore Fort. It was the royal residential building of the Mughals and then became a tourist place and then a grand prison. While he romanticised the still preserved streets of Old Lahore and roamed there seeing the livelihood people of the city, back home, the multipolaristic coalition mediated by the call of Potohar sent a special mission to rescue this lunatic lad. While he roamed and met the people offering him Siri Paye, the forces were inside Lahore. He had already run out of food supplies. The sugared-water that he tasted in the covered jar at a place had already caused some troubles in his gut. It was presented moments before the person fled his home. He roamed and roamed, the forces searched and searched. Finally, the reunion happened. Hormoz was unconscious at that time, there was no mask on his face, it was believed that he took out another from his bag, but the filter had a hole in it. The few moments in the air caused him to lose consciousness.
The biannual meeting that was due in January banned his organisation. The UIS chapter of Courts of Multipolarism labelled him a lunatic and banned him from opening any organisations. He spent the next year for supplementary mental support in an asylum. On the positive side, Hormoz’s efforts and a support from the civil society compelled the coalition to preserve some part of the city and allow regular expeditions to it. He was happy that he visited Lahore, and he gave another life to it. The city thanked him for his efforts!
