Life Without Address
Asem Mustafa Awan
Islamabad: On a busy road in Hyderabad, a home moves past without walls.
A line of donkeys pulls wooden carts stacked high with bedding, utensils, wooden poles, and tightly knotted bundles of cloth. Women sit upright among their belongings. Children perch on the edges, steadying themselves as the wheels turn. Everything they own is visible. Everything they are depends on what those wheels can carry.
There is no moving truck. No relocation notice. No ceremony of departure. Just a caravan advancing along Sabzi Mandi Road, absorbed into traffic as though this, too, were ordinary.
For the families on these carts, movement is not adventure. It is structure. It is survival.
Their homes do not stand; they travel. Their addresses are not written; they are remembered by route—under a flyover one month, near an open field the next, beside a market until asked to leave. Permanence is a privilege that requires land. Land requires money. Money requires stability. Stability requires an address. And so the circle closes before it begins.
The photograph captures no protest, no confrontation, no spectacle. It captures continuity. The bundles are secured with care. The harnesses are properly fastened. The carts are balanced with quiet precision. Poverty, when it becomes generational, learns order.
Children sit atop mattresses that will be unrolled wherever the caravan stops next. Their childhood unfolds between destinations. Schooling, if it happens at all, competes with distance. Healthcare competes with timing. Identity competes with invisibility.
Read More: https://thepenpk.com/when-a-car-has-no-name/
Cities rise upward—glass towers, gated enclaves, guarded entrances. Development is measured in height, in speed, in concrete poured and roads widened. Meanwhile, at ground level, other citizens move horizontally, always exposed to weather, to uncertainty, to negotiation.
Nomadic communities have long been part of this landscape. They follow seasonal rhythms, labour demands, and shifting spaces of tolerance. Their economy is daily. Their security is portable. Their future fits inside a cart.
There is dignity in the posture of the women seated among the belongings. They are not collapsed in despair. They are steady. One child looks toward the camera without smiling, without flinching—simply present. There is no performance here, only existence.
To live without an address is to live without many of the protections others take for granted. It is to be counted rarely, documented occasionally, represented almost never. It is to negotiate space rather than occupy it.
And yet, the caravan moves forward with quiet discipline. The donkeys step in rhythm. The wheels turn. The road opens.
For some, mobility is freedom—the ability to cross borders, board flights, relocate at will. For others, mobility is the absence of choice—the necessity to keep moving because stopping invites pressure, eviction, or hunger.
In this image, both realities share the same road.
The red-and-green divider marking the street organizes traffic into lanes. But there are no painted lines for people like these—no designated spaces, no long-term guarantees, no certainty beyond the next halt.
Life without an address is not chaos. It is a different form of order, one built on resilience rather than recognition.
The caravan will stop somewhere before nightfall. Bedding will be unrolled. A temporary shelter may rise from the wooden poles tied to the cart. A fire will be lit. Children will sleep under the same sky that towers overlook from behind glass.
By morning, the wheels may turn again.
In a country that debates progress in numbers and projects, this is another measure—how many live entire lifetimes in transit, visible yet unseen.
A home passes by without walls.
The road remains.
So do they.
Photo Credit: APP
