Quetta Port Traders — M.A. Jinnah Road

From the caravan route to your desk

Haji Abdul Zahir's grandfather drove goods on the caravan route — Quetta to Chaman, across to Spin Boldak, back with whatever the border let through — and when he settled on M.A. Jinnah Road in 1979, the shop's first stock was bags: camel-hide satchels, then canvas, then the laptop bags no one in Quetta had a name for yet. Three generations later the shop sells the desk's small goods — bags, docks, mice, keyboards — by the piece to offices and by the dozen to the bazaar's resellers. The daak still comes through Chaman; it just arrives by truck now.

The third generation sits at the counter now — Jawad runs the shop and the computer; his father arrives at eleven, reads the register, and corrects one entry before the first customer. The 1979 ledger still lives in the back room, and the spoken-word rule of the caravan survives in it: the price written is the price that stands.

Quetta Port Traders — M.A. Jinnah Road

Eastern row, M.A. Jinnah Road, Quetta

Quetta, Balochistan 87300