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LAHORE: Tucked away in a quiet lane in Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore, Hashim Ali’s studio feels less like a workspace and more like a time capsule from the Mughal era.

Large Persian rugs are spread out on the floors and ornate jharokhas overlook walls painted in beige and maroon and covered in wood panels and miniature paintings, creating a world suffused with nostalgia and opulence. Every corner of the studio reflects the vision of an art director who doesn’t just design sets but builds atmosphere. The space is both sanctuary and stage, where centuries-old aesthetics come vividly to life in the service of modern, visual storytelling.

One of Pakistan’s most renowned Pakistani visual artists and art directors, Ali is a Visual Communication Design graduate from the prestigious National College of Arts (NCA) institute in Lahore. Over the years, he has come to be known for his work in fashion, film, and music and is celebrated for his creative vision and attention to detail, particularly in creating visually stunning and intricate sets. His ability to blend historic grandeur with modern maximalism has won him several accolades over the years, including the Fashion Art Director award at the 2024 Hum Style Awards and the Pride of Performance Award in 2021.

In an interview with Arab News at his studio in Lahore’s posh Gulberg neighborhood, Ali, 34, said his passion for visual storytelling came from a history of childhood bullying.

“When you are bullied, you have to make [up] stories, you have to read stories, so I would get lost in fairytales,” he said.

“I would just start imagining what this world is, what these people are, what is this fantasy that exists out of this world? It started from there.”

The stories he read, full of mythology and folklore, led him to start thinking about his identity as a Pakistani and a South Asian.

“Then I was like, ‘Why can’t we rebuild these memories and these spaces and these places?’”

Ali’s own studio is a recreation of spaces of the past, a Mughal court in miniature — crafted not from marble and sandstone, but from cardboard, fabric, and imagination. With hand-painted arches, makeshift jalis, and richly colored drapes, the space evokes the grandeur of a bygone empire while laying bare its theatrical artifice. The illusion is deliberate: a paper palace blurring the line between history and performance and reflecting South Asia’s enduring nostalgia for lost splendor and the way identity in the region is often reconstructed through fragments — of memory, of myth, of art.

What one then sees is not just a recreation of the past but a reinterpretation, inviting a dialogue between heritage and reinvention:

“If Hollywood can create all of this [set design] and we think as Pakistanis that we can’t do any of this, then we’re at fault. Because we did create the Taj Mahal. We did create the Lahore Fort … If we could do it then, we can do it now.”

“COMBINED MEMORY”

One of Ali’s most cherished creations was the set for the song “Pasoori,” the first Coke Studio number to hit one billion views on YouTube Music and the most searched song globally on Google in 2022, the year of its release.

Ali, the production designer and art director of the set, crafted it as a communal space, with the bohemian aesthetic of the set, characterized by vibrant colors and eclectic elements, complementing the song’s fusion of reggaeton beats with classical South Asian instruments like the rubab.

Ali describes the aesthetic as “the Pakistani vibe,” exemplified by a new generation that had grown up in the era of globalization and social media and was reclaiming public spaces and dressing up and conducting themselves in ways that merged their cultural heritage with contemporary elements.

“It’s so interesting that now when I’m sitting and I’m scrolling on Instagram or TikTok and I see these reels of girls wearing either ‘saris’ and ‘ghagras’ and they’re dancing in Lahore, in old Lahore,” Ali said.

But the project closest to Ali’s heart is hidden away in the winding, narrow streets of Lahore’s historic Gali Surjan Singh near Delhi Gate. It is a concept store, Iqbal Begum, imagined as a tribute to his late dadi or grandmother, a mathematics teacher who passed away in 2014.

The store has been built in a centuries-old home that Ali rented from a woman who has lived there before the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan. The walls are adorned with framed pictures of Iqbal Begum and the shop strewn with things that belonged to her, including old table clocks and dial phones and a tub of Nivea cream, a bottle of Oil of Olay lotion, and a coin purse framed together.

Ali remembered growing up surrounded by the stories his grandmother told him, including about the violence of the partition.

“She told me a story about how she lost her favorite pen and our house was burned down in front of her eyes and the sense of belonging started happening,” Ali said.

“From that story, this thing of holding on to objects, holding on to people, holding on to stories became very important.”

The concept store is thus not only a way to tell the story of Iqbal Begum but also to create shared memories.

“So, for me, every time I tell a story, I’m passing on my memory to someone else, and when they go and tell someone, in a way, it’s almost like my dadi is still alive,” Ali added.

And the process is two-way, because people show up with their stories also and can connect with the items they see in the store: “Then it becomes like a combined memory.”

Ultimately, it all connects back to the idea of Pakistan for Ali and to preserving its national, personal and collective histories into tangible, emotionally resonant experience.

“I kind of equated it to the bigger grandparent or the larger mother, which is Pakistan, that slowly, slowly all these amazing things that Pakistanis and Pakistan has done, we’re slowly letting them fade away,” he said.

“The idea from this dadi telling stories to a child has become about this child telling those stories or trying to tell those stories to the world and saying, ‘Hey, we’re Pakistan and we’re a beautiful country and we do all these things apart from what you’re used to hearing about.’.”

DERA BAJWA, Pakistan: It was supposed to be the final leg of Amir Ali’s monthslong journey to Europe. But he was nowhere near his destination, with only death in sight.

The 21-year-old Pakistani had been promised a visa and a flight to Spain. Yet six months, four countries and $17,000 later, he found himself crammed in a fishing boat in the Atlantic Ocean alongside 85 others, screaming for their lives as seawater sloshed over the gunwales.

Forty-four fellow Pakistani migrants perished during the 10-day failed crossing in January from Mauritania’s coast toward Spain’s Canary Islands.

The deadly journey cast a spotlight on how globalized and sophisticated smuggling networks on the West African coast — and specifically Mauritania — have become. Interviews with survivors and relatives of migrants who died revealed how smugglers have adapted to tighter border controls and anti-migration policies across the Mediterranean and North Africa, resorting to lengthier, more dangerous routes.

Ali’s odyssey began last July. After making an initial deposit of 600,000 Pakistani rupees ($2,127), he went to Karachi airport, where he was told to wait for a shift change before approaching the immigration counter.

“The smugglers had inside help,” he said. He and other migrants were swiftly put on a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

From there Ali boarded a second flight to Dakar, Senegal, where he was told someone would be waiting for him.

Instead, when he arrived he was told to go to the Senegal River bordering Mauritania, a seven-hour taxi ride north. He joined other Pakistanis traveling to the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott. In each country he passed through, bribes were demanded for visas, Ali said.

Imran Iqbal, 42, took a similar journey. Like Ali, he flew from Karachi to Senegal via Ethiopia before reaching Mauritania. Other Pakistanis Iqbal met, he said, traveled through Kenya or Zimbabwe enroute to Mauritania.

WAITING GAME

Once in Mauritania, the migrants were taken to cramped safe houses where smugglers took their belongings and deprived them of food. “Our passports, our money — everything,” Iqbal said. “I was essentially held captive,” Ali said.

During the six months Iqbal and Ali were in Mauritania, smugglers moved them repeatedly, beating them to extract more money.

While he managed to get some money sent from Pakistan, Iqbal did not tell his family of his dire situation.

“Our parents, children, siblings ... they would’ve been devastated,” he said.

Ali said the smugglers lied to their families in Pakistan, who asked about their whereabouts and questioned why they hadn’t called from Spain.

Finally, on Jan. 2, Iqbal, Ali and the other Pakistani migrants were transferred to an overcrowded boat that set course for Spain’s Canary Islands.

“On the day of departure, 64 Pakistanis from various safe houses were brought to the port,” Ali recalled. “The Mauritanian police and port officials, who were complicit, facilitated our transfer to the boats.”

“What followed were the hardest 15 days of my life,” Iqbal said.

Mauritanian authorities have launched several investigations into smuggling networks and, in the past two months, heightened surveillance at the country’s borders and ports, according to a Mauritanian embassy official in Madrid who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment publicly.

While migration to Europe has been falling steadily, the Atlantic Ocean crossing from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands has reemerged since 2020.

Nearly 47,000 people disembarked in the Canaries in 2024, an increase from the nearly 40,000 in 2023, according to Spanish Interior Ministry figures.

Until recently, the route was mostly used by migrants from West African nations fleeing poverty or violence. But since last year, migrants from far-flung countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan have increasingly embarked on the fishing boats used to reach the European archipelago.

Smugglers connect with migrants locally in Pakistan and elsewhere, as well as on social media. Migrants post videos of their voyages on TikTok. Although some warn of the dangers, they also share idyllic videos of life in Europe, from Canary Island beaches to the bustling streets of Barcelona and Madrid. For many, Spain is just an entry point for continuing to France, Italy and elsewhere.

Chris Borowski, spokesperson for the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex, believes smuggling networks bringing Pakistanis and other South Asian migrants through the Canaries are still “testing the waters” to see how profitable it is.

However, experts at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime warn the route is here to stay.

“With the conflict landscape showing no sign of improvement, movement on the Canary Islands route looks set to increase,” the group warned.

“Because it remains the deadliest migration route in the world, this has severe humanitarian implications.”

The Atlantic Ocean crossing can take days or weeks. Dozens of boats have vanished.

Exact figures don’t exist, but the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project recorded at least 1,142 deaths and disappearances last year, a number it calls a vast understatement. Spanish rights group Walking Borders reported nearly 9,800 victims on the Canaries route last year — which would make it the world’s deadliest migration route.

Only a tiny fraction of bodies are ever recovered. Some shipwrecked vessels have appeared hundreds of thousands of miles away, in the Caribbean and South America.

The boat Ali and Iqbal boarded had a 40-person capacity but was packed with more than double that. Immediately, there were fights between the Pakistanis and the Africans on board, they said.

The Associated Press wasn’t able to locate non-Pakistani survivors to verify the accusations, but reports of violence on the Canaries journey are frequent even among those of the same nationality and ethnicity. Dehydration can cause hallucinations, exacerbating tensions.

“The weather was terrible,” Ali said. “As water entered the boat, the crew threw our belongings and food into the sea to keep the boat afloat.”

On the fifth day, a man died of a heart attack, Ali and Iqbal said. More people perished every day, their bodies thrown overboard; while some died from hunger and thirst, the majority were killed.

“The crew attacked us with hammers, killing 15 in one night,” Ali said. Both men showed photos of injuries others sustained, although AP couldn’t verify what caused them.

“The beatings were mostly to the head — so brutal that people started losing their sanity,” Iqbal said. They prayed for a merciful death, convinced they had little chance of survival.

On the 10th night, after dozens had died, lights appeared on the horizon. They shouted for help. At daybreak, a fishing vessel approached, handing them food and water before eventually towing them to the West African coast two days later. Forty-four Pakistanis had died.

“Only twelve bodies returned to Pakistan,” Ali said. “The rest were lost at sea.”

BACK AT SQUARE ONE

News of the failed journey made international headlines, prompting a pledge by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to go after smugglers.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency has arrested dozens of people suspected of arranging the journey or connections to the smugglers.

A nationwide crackdown was already underway, but smugglers change locations to evade capture. In Europe and Pakistan, smugglers who are caught are primarily low-level operatives, resulting in limited impact on the overall business.

Staring at the mansions being built around his modest brick home in the Pakistani village of Dera Bajwa, Ali reflected on his wasted journey.

“These are the houses of those who made it abroad,” Ali said. “People like me see them and dream without thinking.”