18. House in construction

Fayaz’s house is not as ready as I thought it was, only the metallic structure is manufactured.

Mr. Agha has an army of workers under his orders, and he is like king Salomon with his army of Jeenis working for him to build the temple of Jerusalem. Because he is working wonders, Shigri calls him Jeeni, but I prefer to think of him as King Salomon, and on my mobile, his number is registered with the name Sulaiman.

He is the person to whom Shigri entrusted the construction of the prefab houses. He had provided him only with its designs and dimensions.

Building a house from a design is not easy, and what we are building for Fayaz is the first house of the project. All the technical problems are being solved at the moment they arise during the construction. This is why the work is slow.

Moreover, Mr. Agha and his team are building not just one but two houses simultaneously, because one will be sent up to Bagh for Fayaz, in pieces ready to assemble while the second one will be sent to the factory where 100 workers are ready to start producing about 100 houses a week from this model.

The model which we bought for Fayaz is the bigger one, when I entered the structure for the first time I was astonished. “This is a villa!” I exclaimed, “even I do not live in a house like this!”. It is very big and this is also why the work is so slow because it is more complicated to build a big house and there are many more problems to solve.

I went to Mr. Agha in order to see how the work was proceeding. The frame has been already cut into the pieces that will be assembled together, the pasting of the walls remains still, as well as the electric wiring and the water pipe fitting for the kitchen and the bathroom.

I understood that I would have to wait one or two weeks more because here everything goes slowly. I always say to my friends jokingly: “The good thing about Pakistan is that people don’t mind making you wait an hour or two.”

As I have so much free time, I decided to make a trip to Pakpattan to meet my Punjabi old friends (from the region of Punjab).