If you need to pee on the way to Turbat

The bus lurched to a halt on the long, dry highway that takes you from Gwadar to Turbat. A clutch of men jumped out and sprinted towards the makeshift bathroom by the road. Some of them scattered into the bushes. Back in the bus, anchored to their seats, women stared out of the windows stiffly. They must have done the math before boarding: drink enough water to bear the heat, but not so much that you need to empty your bladder. Gwadar to Turbat is a short two hours. But it is eight long ones if you are heading to Karachi. A washroom on the Makran Coastal Highway between Turbat and Gwadar Balochistan’s new and smooth highways are praised as corridors of connectivity and trade and promise progress for a place that has long been politically and geographically distant from the rest of Pakistan. Motorway 8 goes from Ratodero to Gwadar, the N-10 runs along the Makran coast, the N-25 RCD Highway connects Quetta to Karachi and the N-40 that meanders towards the Iran border from Quetta to Taftan. But the praise for this network does not make up for the lack of safe and accessible public bathrooms for hundreds of kilometers. Where you do find one, it is rudimentary at best, a hole in the ground, a door that won’t close or lock and almost never any running water. To make matters worse, the women’s toilets are usually located in male-dominated spaces, such as roadside motels, dhabas, and bus stops. In Surab, washrooms are attached to the mosques and are strictly off limits for women. This neglect is now being challenged in court by Kulsoom Baloch, Fauzia Shaheen and Dr Quratulain Bakhtiari. They filed a complaint in the Balochistan High Court, arguing that the highways are deliberately designed to prioritise the cold mechanics of commerce at the expense of human safety, accessibility and equity. They said that the long stretch between Mastung and Kalat is the worst affected. There isn’t a single restroom for women when you travel from Quetta to Makran through Kalat and Mastung.