WHY PAKISTAN SAVES IN PLOTS

Every month, Idrees sends money home from Dammam in Saudi Arabia. His wife pays the children’s school fees, the electricity bill and the cost of his parents’ medicines and buys food, fuel and clothing. She puts aside what she can. Some months, there is barely anything left. Other months, she manages enough to feel they are getting somewhere. When they have saved enough, a relative suggests buying a plot. It would be theirs, he says. Idrees can already picture taking his wife and children to see it, pointing out the boundaries and telling them that, one day, they might build a house there. For…