Urban Bystander
At 8:59 in an Islamabad Markaz, a metal shutter came down with the finality of a border closing. Behind it were groceries. About twelve feet away, a pharmacy door remained open. The government had successfully separated the two activities. The building had not.
Under the September 17 timings, shops, markets, malls and grocery stores close by nine. Restaurants and food outlets have until eleven. Takeaway and home delivery are exempt. Pharmacies, medical stores, standalone bakeries, tandoors and milk shops are among the businesses exempt from the closing-time restrictions. Nine o’clock was not new. Islamabad had an eight o’clock closing hour in spring. By June, ordinary markets had moved to nine. When the wider austerity restrictions ended later that month, market timings remained. September did not create a new closing hour. It gave fresh urgency to one the city already knew. At 9:01, those distinctions became physical.
The grocery frontage of one large chemist was dark. Its shutter was down. The pharmacy side remained open. Customers entered through medicine. They used the pharmacy entrance to reach the adjoining grocery section and continued buying groceries after its own frontage had closed.
A grocery only shop has no second route available to it. The larger establishment has departments. The merchandise had not changed. Its doorway had.
There was history in the arrangement. During Covid, larger chemists expanded into groceries and household goods while pharmacies enjoyed greater freedom to operate. The emergency ended. The mixed premises remained.
Islamabad had retained a memory of Covid in its floor plan. At 9:07, a well-known sweet shop was dark. Its frontage was closed. A boy stood outside.
People waited there rather than trying the shutter. One customer gave him an order. The boy disappeared and returned carrying a box. Nobody went inside.
Food outlets are allowed later hours and takeaway remains exempt, so what looked like an after hours sale may simply have been the regulation working exactly as written. The customer had no particular interest in settling the matter.
He wanted sweets. He received sweets. By 9:15, the Markaz was darker. It was not emptier.
People remained on the pavement. Some sat over tea. Others waited for food, finished errands or stood around with no evident urgency to leave. Nobody appeared to regard nine as an instruction to go home.
A Markaz after dark is not merely a collection of cash registers. It is dinner, chai, errands after work, children out with their parents and people with nowhere particular to be yet. Whatever closes at nine, that habit does not.
The after-nine arrangements required remarkably little explanation. The pharmacy knew which door remained legal. Customers knew which entrance still worked. At the dark sweet shop, people simply waited where one apparently waited.
Nobody had circulated a procedure. Nobody seemed to need one. Almost every after nine transaction could point to a clause.
The pharmacy was exempt. The sweet shop order could be takeaway. This was not quite mass disobedience. It was more peculiar.
At the markets observed, police did try to move customers along and ensure shops subject to the nine o’clock order were shut. But people remained around food businesses allowed to operate later, while darkened shops continued handing out orders.
What exactly is the officer meant to close? The shop? The transaction? Or the evening around it?
The question sounds comic until somebody has to enforce the answer. The government says the timings are intended to conserve fuel and energy. A business leader writing this week argued that earlier closure redirects rather than eliminates some evening demand and questioned how much the earlier hour actually saves. That remains the business side argument, not a settled finding.
The Markaz cannot settle that argument. It can show what happens when the argument reaches the pavement. Later that evening, the sweet shop remained dark. The boy returned with another box. The shutter did not move.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
