The seed for When the Fireflies Dance was planted a long time before I wrote a single word. Many years ago, I visited a brick kiln on the outskirts of Lahore.
The stark, barren landscape, the patient people resting after a long day’s work on their charpais, the brick-red dust that shrouded everything.
That visit stayed with me long after I’d returned home.
Many years after that, I read a news article about an elderly man who worked at a brick kiln where his son had been killed.
The man held a thick folder of papers which he carried from police station to police station, seeking justice for his son. He was poor and disadvantaged, and couldn’t get anybody to take notice.
The accompanying photo showed an elderly man wiping away tears with worn hands as he held a passport-sized photograph of his dead son. That photo was the second seed.
Inspiration for the Story
Brick-makers have buried clay underground to bake for millennia – archaeologists have found evidence dating back 5,000 years.
Yet still in South Asia today, people working these jobs are kept in generational slavery, without access to adequate safety equipment or health care.
Much has been written about this exploitation, affecting the poorest and most voiceless. The city expands; bricks are needed; houses and shopping centres get built. Meanwhile, the rich live in cities, unaware.
Nobody questions where the bricks come from – whether the man, woman or child who moulded those bricks by hand had enough to eat that day.
When I came to write, my story emerged from these initial inspirations. I hadn’t known they were lurking inside my head, waiting to surface.
This is a story about injustice, about people standing by silently complicit, about social and class inequality, and freedom after great personal sacrifice.
But most of all, it is a story about hope, strength, and resilience – how people find their way through adversity, even when few choices are open to them.
Despite the occasionally difficult subject matter, I’ve deeply enjoyed writing this story. I hope you enjoy reading it.
The outskirts of many major cities in Pakistan are dotted with brickyards, noticeable by their tall, red chimneys. Here, millions of people live their lives in virtual slavery making bricks.
Bonded to work until their ‘peshgi’ – loan – is repaid, entire families of men, women and children end up working for generations at the kilns while their loans keep accruing phenomenal rates of interest.
An estimated 4.5 million people, including one million children, work in slave-like conditions at around 20,000 brick kilns across the country.
Families indebted and working at the brickyards are often desperate, poor and illiterate, and have no idea how to calculate their loan amounts or how much of the loan is being paid off.
They earn below the minimum weekly wage and are forced to borrow more for life’s eventualities.
Many children are born into bondage and remain so for the rest of their lives with little opportunity to either gain an education or their freedom.
The practice of bonded labour has been illegal in Pakistan since 1992; regardless, millions of people live their lives in sheer misery under intolerable conditions and there is no economic incentive or political will to solve the problem.
Brickyards in Pakistan
Settled on the bank of the River Ravi, in the fertile Punjab, Lahore has been a populated settlement since somewhere between the first and seventh centuries.
During the Mughal Empire, Lahore was favoured by its emperors especially Akbar, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, and the many buildings of that era pay testament to this.
Masjid Wazir Khan, the Fort and the Badshahi Mosque are some of the more famous ones.
Lahore was the capital under the Sikh empire, with many historically important Sikh sites still existing today including the Samadhi of Maharaja Rangit Singh.
Punjab is home to many of the regions Sufis, saints and mystics, and a love for art, literature, poetry and music is deeply imbedded in the city.
Food plays a huge part in this culture, with traditional cuisine available today especially in the walled city, prepared much like it has been for centuries.
It is one of the oldest cities in the world with a rich architectural, cultural and gastronomic history, and today is also one of the fastest growing cities in the world.
Lahore
