KARACHI: The floor of the large, dimly lit room is wet and slick, and a ‘fishy’ odour pervades the air. About 40 women and children, mostly girls — some no older than about eight — are seated in rows, squatting on their haunches. They plunge their bare hands into pails of icy cold water, take out handfuls of shrimp, shell each with nimble fingers and toss it onto piles in front of them.

“Sometimes we prick our fingers on the sharp edges,” says 14-year-old Taslima, who comes at 7.30am with her mother every day for several hours before attending afternoon shift at a nearby school. Some workers start as early as 3am when the first consignment arrives. They are paid according to the quantity they have shelled: Rs20 per bucket, which can hold about five kilograms of shrimp. Taslima can fill no more than three buckets during one sitting. Depending on the catch, work can continue until 7pm.

Just a regular day for hundreds of residents of Machhar Colony in Karachi, a katchi abadi that abuts the harbour. Most of those involved in fisheries-related work here belong to the Bengali community. In fact, the area is home to the largest Bengali community in Karachi, although it displays virtually no features that distinguish it as such. There are no signboards in Bengali; men wear shalwar-kameez and the few women on the streets are clad in the ubiquitous black burqa often seen elsewhere in the city. The Bengali language daily — Quami Bandhan — which was printed in the colony, was discontinued four years ago. “There was no readership left for it, and it ran out of money,” says Mohammed Kaiser, formerly a reporter with the paper.

The Bengali community lives in the part of the colony closest to the harbour. By their assessment, they number at least 400,000 here. A majority of them are second- and third-generation settlers, which may explain why they’re so well-assimilated. Most of the long-term residents have been here since before 1971, when Bangladesh came into existence, although Bengalis continued to trickle into Pakistan throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s.

But however integrated they may appear to be, the Bengalis are officially ‘illegal aliens’. They live in a peculiar kind of limbo, for neither Pakistan claims them as its own, nor would Bangladesh do so, even if they wanted to go back to the land of their forefathers. Many have relatives in Bangladesh with whom they maintain contact through telephone and letters. They cannot visit them because they have no documentation, and hence no passports.

“A number of them have managed to get Pakistani identity cards by paying off local officials,” says Mohammed Kaiser. “But sooner or later, they get caught out, such as when they try to renew their card, or open a bank account. Then their card gets blocked for fraud.”

Bengali women are usually employed in shrimp-cleaning, fish-cutting, packing seafood, etc in factories at the harbour or in the colony, while the men work as labourer at the harbour or on fishing trawlers. A number of Bengali men also work in Iran, which they enter illegally, often by sea, while leaving their families behind in the colony.

Travelling further south into Machhar Colony, leaving behind the fetid, fly-ridden Lyari river heaving with solid waste that snakes through the locality, the warren of streets opens up and one suddenly comes upon the Moosa Lane nullah filled with what appears to be black sludge. Across it, against the backdrop of the harbour, is a rather striking line-up of several fishing launches in various stages of construction. Many Bengalis are also employed as labour for building these vessels, the largest of which can be worth Rs20 million and carry a crew of 35.

Rasheeda Begum’s husband is away at sea these days. “He’s gone sometimes 20 days, at times even a month,” she says in strongly accented Urdu, even though she’s lived here over two decades. The couple has seven children, of whom none has ever attended school. Four go to the madressah nearby.

Madressahs are the main source of education for the children of the community, and are on the increase, while schools, both government and private (with the exception of the three The Citizens Foundation schools in the colony) struggle for resources.

Mohammed Akhtar Hussain, principal of the Gulshan-i-Yasmeen primary and secondary school, who’s wearing a curiously dapper western ensemble — complete with waistcoat — shows us around the premises of his institution which teaches 500 boys and girls in four shifts. “Our last shift is from 8 to 10pm, specially for the children who work during the day,” he says. “Most children from our community work some job or the other.”

The school fee ranges between Rs100 and Rs200, depending on the parents’ means. Nevertheless, most families can’t afford to send more than one child to school, and the drop-out rate is high. The medium of instruction is Urdu. “We don’t teach Bengali as there’s no demand for it,” explains Mr Hussain. Conditions are spartan; classrooms are small and dingy. Others have too much light, for part of the school has no roof, which means there’s no class when it rains. Government schools in the colony are in a similar, or even worse, state of disrepair.

On the other hand, at the Darul Uloom Tayyabia Tahiria, with its spacious building and marble floors, the 230 students aged upto 15 years get lessons in the Quran and three meals a day, all for no charge. Their families are also given ration by the madressah several times a year. With the completion of two more floors, twice as many students will be accommodated.

The madraessah belongs to the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, one of 20 run by the party believed to be a reincarnation of the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan in Machhar Colony. According to Maulvi Noor Mohammed, who teaches here and is also of Bengali descent, “The older boys go on to study at our Darul Uloom Amjadia which is located at Jail Chowrangi (elsewhere in the city)”.

There are also a number of madrassahs in the area run by other, largely Deobandi, organisations.

Meanwhile, the school principal, Mr Hussain, is perturbed by news that henceforth only students with the Form B — issued on the basis of parents’ CNICs — will be allowed to sit for their Matric exams. “Our children already can’t get admission into colleges because they don’t have requisite documentation. Now it seems they will even be deprived of a basic Matric qualification.”

The lack of opportunities leads to feelings of alienation and hopelessness among the younger generation in an area that is already a hotbed of crime and violence. “We were born here and have lived here all our lives. We contribute to the city’s economy. So why are we deemed non-Pakistani?” asks Mr. Hussain.