Where Labour Laws Don’t Reach, Backs Break

Asem Mustafa Awan

Islamabad: He does not count in kilograms. He counts trips. Thirty bricks are stacked with practiced precision, balanced on a strip of cloth that separates skin from weight. The load rests on his head, but it travels through his spine, settles into his knees, and eventually into a kind of quiet endurance that no law measures.

Around him, the day moves as it always does—traffic passes, shutters half-open, a city in motion. For him, motion is work, and work is repetition.

There are no gloves, no boots, no helmet—only familiarity.

The hands know where to grip, the neck knows how to tilt, the body knows how far it can bend without giving way. This is not skill taught in classrooms; it is inherited through necessity. Each step is careful, not out of caution, but because imbalance carries a cost he cannot afford.

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The bricks themselves are unremarkable—stacked, scattered, waiting to become part of someone else’s structure. Walls will rise from them, roofs will take shape, spaces will be called secure.

But the man who carries them remains outside that promise. He builds permanence while living in uncertainty.

Somewhere beyond this street, there are frameworks—rules written, protections outlined, rights acknowledged. They exist in documents, in offices, in conversations far removed from the weight of thirty bricks pressing down on a single body.

Here, they are less visible. Not absent, perhaps, but distant enough to feel theoretical.

His wages will likely be counted at the end of the day, modest and exact. Enough to continue, not enough to change. There is no margin in this equation—only continuation. Rest is brief, relief is temporary, and tomorrow arrives with the same arithmetic.

What stands out is not just the burden, but the normalcy of it. No one stops. No one looks twice. The extraordinary has long been absorbed into the ordinary, and the line between the two has quietly disappeared.

In this frame, the weight is visible. What isn’t visible is how long it has been carried—and how little it has shifted.

Photo: APP

Asem Mustafa Awan has extensive reporting experience with leading national and international media organizations. He has also contributed to reference books such as the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal, among other international publications.