Step 5: Find somewhere nice to stay

One of the best things about making new friends in a town where everyone is "just passing through" is that you get to nose around the inside of a lot of hotels. So when we arranged to go antiques shopping with a journalist I'd met the night before, I jumped at the offer to pick him up from the place he was staying.

The car wound its way through the same mini-army barracks stationed at the gate of every compound, and past some of the grandest private houses in the city. Each had a perimeter to make you gulp and a guard outside who would turn your skin inside out to search for explosives before pressing the button to let you in.

There was no guard outside this house. It took more than a button to open the gates as in a slapstick performance Khorram struggled to push both open for long enough to allow the car to zoom through. Inside was some sight: a huge art deco building on two stories, with steps on all sides leading up to an open veranda. A large stucco balcony stretched around the first floor. Its windows were huge. It was like Mandalay built by the British Raj but styled by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was magnificent.

Yet not one pane of glass remained - some were entirely covered by rotting yellow newspaper stuck on with sellotape. The white walls and columns were crumbling and grey; the mosaiced paths were chipped and potholed.

Around the building were three or four acres of garden, all of it scraggy where it once might have been manicured. The lawns seemed vaguely intentional and geometric, though the dry grass had long ago grown over any borders. The remains of a vegetable patch could be seen towards the servants' quarters, which also looked to be an empty shell, but it was difficult to tell. A woman in a red sari sat and stared vaguely at us from a distance. Along the drive were the stubs of wrought iron lamps which - once leading the way trumphantly for visiting diginitaries, perhaps - were now headless, useless and rusty.

Khorram stubbed a cigarette out and l us through a side door (the front door hadn't opened for years). Inside, a vague half-light was provided by whichever shattered windows weren't boarded up. An unmade bed, some grand and rotting chairs, clearly missing from the rest of a once-ornate set, were scattered around the rooms. Ceiling fans which hadn't moved in decades hung mournfully from the ceiling. A winding staircase, each step looser than the next, led upwards to another set of dialpidated rooms, with washed-out murals on the walls. On the landing was a huge Afghan rug, rolled up into a useless, dusty grey obstruction. The only sign of habitation were the biscuits, congealed parathas and cigarette stubs on various tables scattered around, and Khorram's suitcase, the contents of which were exploded all over the floor.

It was like a Pakistani palace art squat.

Khorram explained that he had been invited there by the son of His Highness Mir Ali Murad Khan II, the last prince of Kairpur, an area in Sindh, South East Pakistan, but once a state of its own with Mir Khan at its head. During partition, Khairpur had voted to join Pakistan, but in 1957, as the country grew, the new Pakistani government reneged on its promises not to interefere with the province's education system or industry. Slowly, Mir Khan watched his hard-built infrastructure deteriorate along with his crumbling soveriegnty and fortune. He retreated further and further into his two loves: ecological conservation and his Muslim faith. After running the government's wildlife advisory board, he retired to his 'royal bungalow' in Sindh and now sees few guests from the outside world. Properties such as the one in which we were standing are virtually forgotten.

This one, according to Khorram, is sometimes visited by Mir Khan II's son. A lone servant is still technically hired here, though he has mostly ceased to turn up as the master is never home. There is hardly a need to keep the home fires burning.

The house itself is similar to the way another journalist described Pakistan when we met for tea a couple of days ago. "Everyone wants a united country," she said. "But I don't understand how it can happen. Everybody is leaving." Even now, over sixty years after partition, many Pakistanis feel as if they
have watched their Indian neighbours change, develop and join the world stage economically, politically and culturally, while they have not developed beyond militarised streets and a sectarian rifts that cripple the country's ability to progress.

Many of the middle classes, ashamed of the state of the land beyond their own front doorsteps and, indeed, afraid for their lives, are simply leaving. Pakistan's brain drain is an increasing concern. There is a real fear that the princely home hidden in Lahore might not be the only grand property left for dead.

Khorram is staying here in the cold and damp while he writes an article on the (formerly) royal family. In the early afternoon as the sun streamed onto the balcony with its blistering paintwork, we stood smoking a cigarette in silence. A lime green cockatoo swooped through a pack of eagles and landed on the bare branch of a nearby tree. It was easy to imagine the house in its former glory - there were enough ragged clues to its previous character. There was not a hint about its future.