The first week was chaos disguised as order.
The Farabis had maps, wireless sets, and stamped letters from Government House. The city had habits, tempers, and a thousand small men who disliked anyone else's authority.
The clash was inevitable.
The order to seal a lane came on the second day.
Wireless from a municipal ward near Shah Alami:
"Three suspected cholera deaths in same lane. Families hiding bodies. Local councillor afraid of backlash. Request support for isolation cordon."
At once, the Emergency Control Room in Government House hummed.
Evelyn traced the lane on the map, then jabbed a finger.
"Send Shahdara Farabi unit," she said. "Bring the local sanitary council forward—imam, granthi, pandit, whoever belongs there. And tell them: this is our first test in the old city. We cannot afford to blink."
The message went out. Within forty minutes, eight Farabis in khaki stepped into the labyrinth of Shah Alami, rifles slung, faces set.
The lane in question was narrow, barely wide enough for two charpoys side by side. A small crowd had gathered around a closed door. A woman wailed from inside; men argued loudly just beyond the threshold.
The local councillor stood in the middle—sweating, wringing his hands, trying to look in control and failing.
"You cannot block our street!" a trader shouted when he saw the uniforms. "This is our house. Our dead. You will not parade them like criminals!"
"Step back," the havildar said evenly. "We are not here to parade anyone. We are here to stop the next three houses from joining your grief."
"The well is fine!" another man shouted. "My father drank from it this morning."
"And where is he now?" the Farabi naib-subedar asked.
A hesitation.
"In his bed," came the reluctant reply. "With loose bowels."
The naib-subedar did not waste breath arguing.
He turned to the councillor.
"You called us," he said. "Now stand at our shoulder, not in our way. The Governor and Premier have signed this order. Either you explain it to your people, or we will explain that you shrank when it mattered."
That stung. The councillor swallowed and looked at the crowd.
"Brothers," he said in Punjabi, voice shaking but audible. "This lane is sick. We all know it. Three bodies in two days is not ordinary. The doctors need to see every house. For that, the lane must be closed."
"We have to work!" someone cried. "Who will feed us if we stay locked away?"
"Cholera will not pay for your bread either," the havildar said coldly. "It will only make the baker dig your grave faster."
There was a dangerous mutter. The Farabis shifted, adjusting grips on rifles—not pointing, but ready.
Then the imam arrived.
He was not young, not especially impressive to look at—thin, with a white beard and a patched kurta. But he was theirs. The lane quieted as he raised a hand.
"I have seen the bodies," he said. "I have washed them. This is not the time for stubbornness."
He nodded to the Farabis.
"These men are rough," he said, "but the disease is rougher. The Prophet told us: quarantine the sick, do not enter a plague-ridden land. Today, this lane is that land. You may curse the British later. For now, you will stay inside and let the doctors see your children."
"You take their side?" a man yelled.
"I take the side of your children's lungs," the imam snapped. "And of my own old bones. I cannot recite janaza all day."
That broke the mood.
Grumbling, glaring, they watched as the Farabis stretched rope across the lane mouth, hammered stakes into cracked stone, and marked a chalk line on the ground.
"No one crosses without permission," the naib-subedar said. "Food will be brought in. Waste will be monitored. If anyone tries to sneak out and spread this to another street, we will know. And the Governor will know which lane killed their neighbours."
To reinforce the point, one Farabi unpacked a small wireless set on a stool by the lane mouth. The antenna wire ran up to a balcony; the operator began tapping test signals.
"What is that?" a boy whispered.
"That," his uncle muttered, suddenly uneasy, "is our mischief being written in the air."
At Lahore Junction, the station master still smouldered over his humiliation.
The day after his name was mentioned in the Premier's informal meeting, a telegram had arrived from the Railways Division. It was polite, perfectly phrased, and unmistakably sharp:
"Full cooperation with Emergency Sanitary Measures is expected. Any hindrance will be treated as insubordination during crisis."
"Emergency sanitary measures," he repeated sourly, watching the Farabis expand the canvas annex by the third platform. "As if this is a latrine and not a station."
The Farabi havildar responsible for the station, a tall Sikh with patient eyes, stepped up beside him.
"We will keep the filth away from your precious tracks," he said mildly. "Our sick will not lick your rails."
The station master snorted despite himself.
"I suppose the Premier intends to inspect this circus one day," he said.
"He might," the havildar replied. "But more importantly, the Governor can now see, in his Control Room, exactly how many cases pass through your platforms. If you do nothing, the numbers will speak for you."
He nodded toward the annex.
"Look," he said.
Two attendants in improvised masks gently guided a sweating man into the canvas ward. A woman with him clutched a bundle of clothes, eyes darting with fear.
"They came on the afternoon train from Amritsar," the havildar said. "By the time they reached the cantonment, he would have collapsed in a bazaar. Now he will collapse somewhere with water and a doctor."
The station master swallowed whatever retort he had prepared.
The next time a Farabi needed a clerk to stamp a requisition for buckets and cots, the paper passed with only minimal harrumphing.
The sanitary councils were an unholy mix of sermons and street theatre.
In one Hindu-dominated ward near Anarkali, a local katha-vachak (storyteller) and a nautch-girl-turned-bhajan-singer agreed, reluctantly at first, to weave cholera warnings into their performances.
"You want me to sing about latrines?" the singer said, aghast. "People throw coins when I invoke Krishna, not when I mention excreta."
"Then invoke Krishna's rivers," the local pandit said dryly. "And tell them He does not enjoy their filth."
The Farabis stood at the back of the crowd that evening, arms folded, as the singer took the stage at a small temple courtyard.
Her voice rose: a sweet, strong current. The lyrics—half devotional, half didactic—told of a house where Ganga herself refused to enter because the courtyard stank, where Lakshmi turned away from a family that poured sewage into their own well.
Children giggled at the idea of embarrassed gods. Women, listening, nudged each other.
"Did you hear?" one whispered. "Even the goddess walks away from dirty floors."
Later, when the Farabis supervised the closing of a visibly contaminated well nearby, the resistance was… softer. Not gone. But softened.
Elsewhere, gentler tools failed.
In one ward near Bhati Gate, a notorious brawler whipped up a crowd against the isolation of his block.
"These dogs," he shouted, pointing at the Farabis and the health workers, "want to lock us in and run reports to their English masters! Who are they to tell us when we can step outside our own doors?"
"You prefer your children stepping outside in a funeral procession?" the Farabi havildar asked.
"They exaggerate!" the man scoffed. "Cholera comes, cholera goes. Our fathers lived through worse."
Then your fathers were lucky, Bilal would have said.
Instead, the havildar simply signalled.
A small group of Farabis stepped forward, not with raised rifles, but with a rope and a firm grip. They seized the brawler, tied his hands—not cruelly, but efficiently—and sat him on an upturned crate at the block entrance.
"What are you doing?" he sputtered.
"Demonstration," the havildar said. "You like to be in front? Good. Stay in front. Everyone who wants to protest the cordon will stand behind you."
He turned to the crowd.
"Listen," he said, voice carrying. "Any man who thinks this order is unnecessary may line up behind this brave hero. We will write your names and send them to the Premier with a note: 'These men are willing to be responsible for any deaths that follow their advice.'"
A ripple of unease passed through the gathering.
People shifted. A few stepped back without meaning to.
"You think you are clever," the brawler growled.
"I think cholera is cleverer," the havildar replied. "It likes crowds. If you wish to die for your pride, I cannot stop you. But at least I will help you die in a documented line."
The humour was dark, but it broke something in the air. No one stood behind the bound man. After a few minutes of awkwardly solitary defiance, he muttered a curse and stopped shouting.
The cordon held.
Every evening, Farabi posts reported.
From Lahore Junction:
"Today: four suspected cases intercepted, two confirmed cholera. Sent to hospital. No major resistance. Station master complaining less."
From Shahdara riverfront:
"Funeral prayers now conducted with supervised wash points. Imam announced new rule: no body washed in canal water. Crowd accepted, some grumbling."
From Montgomery city:
"Lane-level inspections uncovering hidden cases. One councillor tried to bribe health worker to overlook his cousin's house. Report forwarded."
The operators in the Emergency Control Room pinned these to the board. Evelyn marked trends with quick pencil strokes. Jinnah read the summaries at night, jaw tight, adding notes in his neat hand.
This is where the wolves matter, Bilal observed. Not in heroic charges, but in the slow, unglamorous business of biting through excuses.
On the ground, people grumbled about cordons and disappeared wells, about interference and indignity.
But slowly—very slowly—the stories in the tea stalls began to change.
"Do you remember Bakshi's lane?" someone said in a dhaba near Lohari Gate. "They locked it for three days. Everyone cursed. But only two more got sick."
"My cousin's mohalla refused," another replied. "They said: 'We will not be treated like prisoners.' Now half the houses are empty. The others boil water and whisper."
The Farabis heard these rumours and fed them, carefully.
They knew they were not liked.
They did not need to be liked.
They needed to be obeyed just long enough for the sickness to lose its appetite.