Introduction
In Karachi, retail markets stay open late, and the city’s pace gradually relaxes into its nocturnal rhythm. As dusk settles, Amir closes his accounts, reconciles payments, and locks the metal safe, setting aside two stacks of US dollars. His real work begins after 10 pm, when he leaves the money-changer and steps into the city’s night-time economy. Delivering currencies to clients, transferring funds to Dubai, or depositing money with trusted couriers all take place in the dark, when the city’s flows thicken yet appear ordinary. After closing the shop one evening, Amir prepared cash packets for a courier bound for Dubai. He slipped several bundles under his shirt and handed me two packets—US\$ 20,000—to conceal on my body. The packets bulged from my shirt. I tried to mask my unease with a joke: ‘I’ll have to hold my breath to keep the cash level with my body.’ Amir laughed gently and told me to ‘stay normal’. For him, moving large sums through Karachi’s streets did not require theatrics or anxiety; it required blending into the city’s sensory terrain.
In a city where most people have experienced a mugging, travelling with visible stacks of foreign currency is risky. Despite this danger, all of Amir’s clients use similar tactics to transport cash. They often have money strapped to their bodies with elastic bands. Sometimes, they carry large sums in a lunchbox. Another way to blend in is to hide the cash under dirty clothes in plastic shopping bags, as if heading to drop off laundry. Carrying cash in Karachi can be stressful. Even secure banks are not immune to fears of theft, often involving guards meant to safeguard the money. The larger the amount, the greater the anxiety. Essentially, carrying cash means carrying fear.
When Amir carries foreign currency, he stays safe by ‘staying normal’. This means distancing himself from the city’s pervasive atmosphere of fear and anxiety, so deep that it becomes second nature. He does this by focusing on his breathing, a technique I avoided when I kept cash under my shirt. He believes that being aware of his breathing helps keep his mind from wandering into fear, allowing him to stay centred. Breathing reconnects Amir with himself, creating a stable awareness that helps him manage fear and handle cash safely. ‘Staying normal’ also involves blending in with the urban environment, becoming less noticeable by immersing himself in the rhythms of the city. It is a way of just being in the city, fitting in with how it functions. This is what Amir was suggesting I do in the market—stay calm, appearing neither nervous nor overly confident, but within a range considered acceptable in urban life.
On our way to the airport, he explained how the money transfer system functions. In Pakistan, currency dealers hide foreign exchange with Dubai-based money-changers. Dubai’s exchange rates are generally higher than Pakistan’s, which makes it more profitable for dealers to sell currencies there. Moreover, relaxed capital controls draw foreign investment into Dubai. Coupled with regional political and economic instability, this small city-state had become an attractive place to store wealth. More importantly, offshore finance disguises the nature of profit.Footnote 1 There are many ways to hold money in offshore accounts. One I find particularly interesting is similar to an old-fashioned way of physically transporting cash across borders, called khep. Money dealers transfer funds via khep by relying on trusted networks of family and friends. Some experts, known as khepiyās, or carry dealers, travel frequently and charge a fee for transporting money on behalf of currency traders.
When we arrived at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport, I felt relieved to enter the secure zone. I quickly handed Amir the currency. Within moments, a young trader I call Irfan appeared from the crowd, silently took the cash from Amir, and disappeared into the departure lounge. His quick, discreet movements indicated he is a professional khepiyā. Irfan regularly transports Amir’s money to Dubai and also carries goods, such as clothes and spices, in checked baggage to sell to shopkeepers. A dozen to two dozen carry dealers transporting foreign currency and commodities are always present on a Dubai-bound flight. This also raises the risk of surveillance by state authorities, who view khepiyās with suspicion.
Once the Dubai account transaction is finished, Amir receives confirmation in Karachi. This method is faster and simpler than traditional banking, which can take days, incur high fees, and generate paper records. Informal trade through khep or unregistered channels avoids documentation, making it difficult for authorities to monitor and control these currency flows. Such embedded practices challenge the rise of surveillance capitalism, a new economic order in which high-tech mechanisms are mobilized to capture, predict, and ultimately reconfigure human behaviour in the name of security and development.Footnote 2 Having a stash of cash in an offshore account, out of the state’s watchful eye, Amir can always send a coded message via an encrypted app such as WhatsApp to Dubai whenever he needs to send money internationally.
The article examines trade channels for transferring money and goods across borders, highlighting two distinct Indian Ocean cities with contrasting economic conditions. One city is quickly moving towards a digital future, while the other remains entrenched in a challenging present. Dubai, developed during the oil boom and petrodollar era, exemplifies a modern city-state driven by AI and cryptocurrency. Conversely, Karachi’s landscape suffers from ageing infrastructure, ongoing violence, and dependence on cash. Despite being only a two-hour flight away, these cities are worlds apart: one is a vibrant metropolis full of dreams and aspirations, especially for young people seeking better opportunities not available at home; the other reflects failed promises and conditions found in cities of the Global South. Dubai is often compared to other financial metropolises, but with a caveat. As a Vanity Fair article put it: ‘Dubai is Las Vegas without the showgirls, the gambling, or Elvis. Dubai is a financial Disneyland without the fun.’Footnote 3 Perhaps it is a mirage and not a real city— a ‘city of transients’ where 90 per cent of the population are expatriates holding only a three-year visa.Footnote 4 This large diaspora, especially of South Asian origin, nevertheless becomes its most significant strength, serving as a vast infrastructure for global flows, and making Dubai the most interconnected city in the region.
Karachi and Dubai have had a long history of exchanging labour and capital. For example, recent data leaks show that Pakistanis own over \$12 billion in Dubai real estate, making them the third-largest investors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).Footnote 5 Most of these properties belong to wealthy families, army generals, and politicians. Pakistan’s election slogan of returning stolen national wealth stored in offshore accounts seems like a joke or an oxymoron, as the ruling elite themselves keep their funds in safe havens. The trade between the UAE and Pakistan was estimated at \$10 billion in 2023, while foreign remittances were estimated at over \$7 billion per year.Footnote 6 Compared with inflows from other Western countries, capital flows from the Middle East remain high for Pakistan. The unofficial commodity trade and capital flow between the two countries remain undocumented.
In what follows, I trace the material and affective infrastructures of khep through five interconnected threads: a semantic and cultural mapping of the term and outline of the shifting definition of khep in state accounts and in mercantile discourse; the ethnographic journey across the border with currency traders and exploring the in-between space of the airport as interface; the nomadic subjectivity of traders navigating the risky terrain of surveillance and testing the ethical boundaries; the regulatory pressures of the post-9/11 security state in surveilling the capital and commodity flows; and a historical genealogy of trust-based trade in the transformations within Karachi’s market economy. The concluding section attempts to theorize khep by drawing on Jane Guyer’s notion of ‘platform economy’ as an assemblage of multiple factors.
This article argues that khep—as a transnational flow of goods—operates through moral economies, embodied risk, and affective ties. As both economic and cultural practice, khep destabilizes modern exchange systems premised on rationality and calculability. It occupies a liminal space between licit trade and smuggling, functioning within grey economies whose internal logic remains opaque to state authorities. Operating simultaneously inside and outside formal market structures, khep merges customary exchange practices with contemporary logistics infrastructures. This dynamic positions khep as a critical site for rethinking commerce, not merely as economic activity but as cultural praxis—one that generates alternative economic spaces that often exceed the capacity of regulated markets. Following Janet Roitman’s insight that ‘illegal’ economies operate through their own moral logics and reciprocal obligations, khep can be understood not as a collapse of legality but as an alternative ethical order that structures mobility, risk, and trust.Footnote 7 My key questions are: how do traders deploy embodied strategies to move goods across borders? Through what mechanisms does khep constitute an alternative economic space that surpasses or evades formal regulation? How do informal trade networks negotiate the tensions between official regulatory regimes and customary practices?
Most of my fieldwork unfolded inside a Karachi currency exchange shop between 2011 and 2015—an environment shaped as much by risk as by mundane life. The constant movement of cash, the shop’s vulnerability to theft, and the heightened scrutiny of financial transactions all contributed to a palpable sense of precarity. As I observed informal money-transfer techniques across Karachi’s commercial districts and residential communities and listened to family friends who had long worked as currency traders, I became increasingly attentive to a paradox: how a system historically grounded in trust, reputational networks, and economic reciprocity was abruptly recast as a conduit of terrorist financing and money laundering.
Amir, a close family friend deeply embedded in the city’s economic circles, became a central figure in this inquiry. His office on Tariq Road, one of Karachi’s busiest retail arteries, offered a vantage point into the everyday life of money-changers. There, I observed and occasionally participated in activities such as currency forecasting, cash transport, and routine exchanges. These seemingly mundane practices illuminated a form of economic subjectivity shaped not only by the imperatives of business but also by kinship, moral obligation, perceptions of risk, and the temporal rhythms of global markets. Money-changers, in this sense, reveal an embedded economy whose logic does not neatly align with the frameworks of formal finance or entrepreneurial rationality.
Travelling to Dubai with currency dealers and khepiyās further expanded this ethnographic lens. These journeys allowed me to see how traders navigate and inhabit transnational circuits that remain obscured by the categorical divides of licit and illicit. What is often framed as ‘informal’ from a regulatory perspective emerges, on the ground, as a densely organized world of obligations, improvisations, and long-standing relational infrastructures. The fieldwork that informs this article was thus never confined to a single site. Instead, it unfolded across a fluid, multi-sited terrain—one produced through relationships rather than geography, and animated by the movements of people, money, and trust. These in-between spaces, connecting Karachi and Dubai into a single analytic field, challenge the nation-state’s rigid boundaries that often constrain conventional ethnographic approaches.
A portion of my field research unfolded in an unlikely site for anthropological inquiry: the airport. This is a space we typically move through without pause, our attention absorbed by the anticipation of arrival or departure. Yet airports are thick with stories—suffused with aspirations, fears, and anxieties that rarely register in our consciousness. Their liminality makes them appear empty, but that emptiness is deceptive. The more closely I observed traders who repeatedly passed through airports, the more I realized how profoundly the khepiyā reconfigures this space. For him, the airport becomes a strategic field of action rather than a transit corridor or a ‘chokepoint’.Footnote 8 It is here—in lounges, security lines, waiting areas, and boarding gates—that I came to understand the khep not simply as an economic system but as an economy of flows shaped by palpable experiences, sensory perception, and ethical as well as moral imperatives. For a khepiyā, the airport discloses itself as a maze: a dense, navigable terrain where he takes risks, carefully blends into crowds, pauses when necessary, and reads the micro-textures of movement and surveillance. In these thickened spaces of transit, my understanding of the khep took shape—not as abstract circulation, but as an embodied practice grounded in the rhythms and frictions of global mobility.
Khep: Historical context and contemporary practice
The history of mercantile communities from South Asia and the Middle East reveals an intricate web of commerce that connects continents in the premodern world. Notably, accounts of merchant houses from western India, particularly Gujarat and Sindh, highlight their connections to transnational flows of goods and capital through diasporic kinship networks.Footnote 9 Traders such as Irfan and Amir, in some ways, continue to live out the legacy of old mercantile communities that have long since been consigned to the dustbin of history. For example, the use of khep as a trading system exemplifies the past as a lived tradition in the modern business world. Similarly, one of the most advanced and widely used financial tools for money transfer was the hundi, or bill of exchange, which emerged during Mughal rule in sixteenth-century India and remains in fashion to this day. Hundi served as an ‘instrument for raising short-term credit repayable at another location’ and was used to send money securely across regions without risk of theft or loss.Footnote 10
As Mughal authority declined in the eighteenth century, the western Indian merchant class, known as the Bania, established strong connections with the British East India Company. Banias managed the hundi and credit systems in eighteenth-century India, using these channels to transfer British military and administrative funds.Footnote 11 The first Indian merchant to settle in Dubai in 1865 was a Bania, who also provided loans to Arab pearl traders, increasing their reliance on him.Footnote 12 During colonial rule, Hindu merchants from Sind and Gujarat built extensive commercial networks that significantly impacted trading communities across Asia and the Middle East.
Karachi’s market dates back to the late nineteenth century, when indigenous Hindu-Sindhi merchants (known as Amils) and Gujarati bankers (referred to as Sarafs) organized transregional trade networks. Although Europeans viewed the Asian systems of money transfer and capital movement as inferior or ‘bastard offspring’ of Western finance, they exploited these indigenous systems to enhance their dominance in the Indian subcontinent.Footnote 13 After consolidating power, the British formalized India’s vernacular financial practices, including the introduction of a uniform rupee coinage in 1835.Footnote 14 They also regulated local capitalism, framing it as a cultured phenomenon, while creating legal mechanisms to shape merchants into modern citizens and entrepreneurs.Footnote 15 Traditional merchant life, including joint families, religious and esoteric rituals, speculation, and gambling, was regarded as backward and irrational, obstructing capitalist progress. Britain’s dominance in Asia began with the adoption and integration of vernacular business practices and finance, establishing a lasting foundation for Western financial power.Footnote 16 The geopolitical shifts spurred by Partition brought about transformative changes in these age-old merchant networks. Notably, most of Karachi’s Hindu merchant class, the Amil, migrated to India in 1947.
After Partition, Pakistan’s nascent state designated Karachi as the principal hub for business and finance, and invested heavily in industries and manufacturing. The city’s bazaars emerged as the epicentre of commercial activities, attracting people from across the country. Today, the Muslim merchant community, encompassing Ismaili, Khoja, Bohra, and Memon groups, spearheads bazaar operations. In addition, other merchant groups, including ethnic Punjabi and Urdu speakers, as well as daily wage earners primarily from the ethnic Pakhtun and Baloch communities, contribute to the market’s vibrancy. This intricate tapestry of diverse forms of Islam, ethnicity, and kinship weaves the complex social fabric of Karachi’s bustling marketplaces. It is within this multicultural context that the khep found new life, adapting to the emerging border realities that shaped modern South Asia and the Middle East.
During the 1970s and 1980s, when import tariffs were high, khep became the main method for flooding local markets with imported products. Luxury items such as formal suiting fabrics, perfumes, ladies’ swimwear, branded trainers, flower vases, artificial jewellery, eyeglasses, and shampoos from Hong Kong flooded well-known markets catering to wealthy consumers. These items were packed into 6 x 6 foot wooden cubes and shipped to Karachi port, where they were released after paying a small fee to customs officials.
Khep became instrumental in the 1970s, when Karachi’s largest wholesale bazaar, Bolton Market, emerged as a significant hub for trading foreign commodities following the establishment of a free trade zone in the nearby Arab Gulf city of Dubai. This transformation coincided with Dubai’s rapid growth, driven by the oil boom, which cemented its status as a regional trading hub. The trade links between Dubai and Karachi are pivotal in shaping Pakistan’s middle- and upper-class consumer culture, encompassing goods such as gold, electronics, health and beauty products, and clothing. These commodities predominantly traverse informal merchant networks between the port cities.
The 1980s witnessed Pakistan’s gradual opening of its financial markets. This move corresponded with the rise and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), at the time the world’s seventh-largest bank. Headquartered in Karachi and operated by a prominent ‘indigenous’ banker,Footnote 17 the BCCI’s downfall prompted heightened financial regulations and surveillance, often supported by developmental regimes. A common perception emerged among traders and merchants that the demise of the BCCI was part of a Western conspiracy designed to bring down a significant bank managed by Muslim bankers from South Asia and funded by the petrodollars of the Arabian Gulf. This increased financial surveillance paradoxically strengthened khep’s appeal—as formal banking channels came under greater scrutiny, merchants doubled down on informal systems that remained invisible primarily to regulatory authorities.
In the 1990s and 2000s, as import tariffs declined, Karachi’s markets saw a surge of foreign goods, the rise of banks, the emergence of air-conditioned shopping malls, the growth of stock and bond markets, an increased media presence, and the spread of financial and telecommunications technologies. The financial sector was restructured mainly in line with neoliberal principles, including the privatization of banks, free capital flows, microcredit, and digital money. With the rise of digital finance—such as online payment platforms like Easypaisa and mobile wallets—the retail sector is rapidly transforming. Logistics companies are also changing how goods are transported domestically and internationally. These pressures posed the most significant challenges to khep, altering its economic and cultural importance, but do not entirely rule out alternative methods of organizing exchanges. Traders adapt to emerging economic and technological forms to stay afloat in new market conditions.
The rise of China as a global manufacturing centre and declining tariffs on imports flooded the local market with inexpensive Chinese goods. This made consumer preferences more accessible and broader, leading to a decrease in both the number and size of khepiyās in the market. Some traders exited the business, while others looked for new markets. This shift posed a significant challenge to khep in the evolving commerce landscape, which was set to transform patterns of mobility and flow worldwide.
To understand how informal trade networks function, we must unpack the meaning of khep—not simply as a transactional activity, but as a cultural, emotional, and embodied system of exchange. Translating khep as ‘trade’ or ‘informal trade’ is inadequate because the practice is deeply enmeshed in extra-economic domains. Some might even classify it as smuggling. Yet such translations flatten the rich lifeworlds that give khep coherence and legitimacy. For this reason, I retain the term as used locally, preserving its semantic specificity. In everyday Urdu, khep carries multiple meanings. It may refer to a load, belongings, or personal possessions. John T. Platts’ Dictionary of Urdu defines khep as ‘a journey to and from, a trip, voyage; a turn, a single time or occasion; a load; cargo; shipment; an assortment; periodical supply (of grain or merchandise)’.Footnote 18 This constellation of meanings—movement, circulation, load, and return—captures the conceptual architecture of khep and provides a vernacular entry point into the phenomenon.
Khep generally refers to an informal, transnational trade network that uses air routes to bypass customs duties on goods and on money transfers. Unlike large-scale maritime shipping, khep operates in modest volumes through air cargo, personal luggage, and small consignments that routinely sidestep state regulation. Officially, khep is described as an illegal smuggling network facilitated through collusion with customs authorities at airports and seaports. Consequently, it is condemned as an extra-legal activity requiring suppression. But this regulatory framing obscures the social logics, moral justifications, and everyday practices that animate khep as a lived economy.
Contrary to official narratives, khep relies on customary exchanges and dense social bonds to facilitate the smooth movement of goods across borders. It embodies the camaraderie and trust required to maintain circulatory chains—an economy of cooperation that sustains the network. As such, khep is not merely transactional; it is relational. It operationalizes kinship, obligation, and reciprocity, converting them into logistical capacity. These kin-based networks span cities, countries, and continents, forming channels through which goods and capital flow beyond state-sanctioned infrastructures. Historically, traders have depended on community ties to transport goods across distant regions; khep represents the contemporary transformation of these older systems in a world shaped by global mobility and regulatory asymmetries.
Khepiyās frequently travel to cities such as Dubai, Bangkok, and Istanbul to procure merchandise and bring it back home. Viewed by some as economically subversive, khepiyās played a pivotal role in the pre-liberalization era (before the 1990s), smuggling foreign consumer goods into Pakistan’s protected economy. They leveraged personal ties with airport customs officials to import high-tariff items such as electronics. Their activities not only filled gaps in a restricted market but also helped shape aspirational consumer cultures around foreign goods. Even after tariff reductions, khepiyās continue to move items like mobile phones, laptops, gold, and foreign currency—goods that are still burdened by high duties. Although they remain marginal in the vast landscape of contemporary logistics and mobility, khepiyās persist as influential actors who subtly shape trade networks and recalibrate the flows that connect Karachi to the broader world.
Trading in transition: Airport as interface
Many traders and merchants still rely on centuries-old methods of transporting goods across borders. Although the nation-state framework has significantly altered the mercantile network, traders continue to create new channels for the exchange of commodities and capital. The intricate patterns developed between Dubai and Karachi are an example of traders’ ingenuity. To better grasp the embodied nature of khep, I turn now to an ethnographic journey between the two cities, undertaken with a currency dealer and a professional khepiyā. These encounters reveal how traders perform risk, trust, and discretion through their bodily comportment and social networks. My first experience transporting cash to a khepiyā at Karachi airport gave me an immediate sense of these capital and commodity exchanges between the two cities.
In 2015, Amir took me to Dubai to show me how informal trade works between the two. A professional khepiyā, Irfan, joined us. When I reached Karachi airport, Amir handed me two packets of UAE dirhams to keep in my jacket. I nervously asked, ‘Do not get me arrested.’ Amir smiled and explained that the amount was below US\$10,000, the legal limit for crossing borders under Pakistani law. A khepiyā takes advantage of this rule by carrying the allowed amount, along with other goods, to Dubai. Irfan also arrived but quickly took his ticket from Amir and went to the airline counter, not wanting to be seen talking to us. The state surveils khepiyās and treats them with suspicion. This route facilitates the informal transfer of currency and goods outside government oversight. To avoid detection, Irfan appeared uninterested in us.
Amir and I entered the airport through the heavily guarded security checkpoint. As I made my way, I kept touching the packets in my jacket to ensure I had not lost them. A tactile experience of the cash offered comfort that the money was still there. At the baggage check, security personnel quickly frisked me and checked the pockets of my jacket. For a second, I got nervous. Perhaps the guard would instruct me to remove the item from my coat. But luckily, he did not ask. Although I was not undertaking any illegal activity, as the amount of money was under the legal limit, the thought of transporting cash itself was a nervous experience, especially with heavily armed security personnel breathing down one’s neck. My own embodied experience of carrying cash revealed how khep transforms participants into sensing, vigilant subjects who must constantly manage risk through bodily discipline.
After boarding the plane, Amir encountered many khepiyās hauling cash currency on a two-hour flight to Dubai. One trader even offered to sell his money to Amir at a slightly higher rate than in Karachi. For every packet, typically valued at \$10,000, a carry dealer receives a fee of between Rs 6,000 and Rs 10,000 (\$60–100), depending on current market rates, to transport it to Dubai. The trader will charge more when the dollar is strong against the rupee. The additional money comes from transporting commodities for shopkeepers. On average, a khepiyā earns a modest monthly income. While Amir and I stayed seated during the flight, Irfan mingled with almost every khepiyā he could find on the plane. Even the airline crew knew him quite well.
After landing at Dubai airport, Irfan instructed us to wait in the terminal building. He had asked a shopkeeper to pick up the food and clothing he was carrying from the airport. Within 30 minutes, the shopkeeper had collected the goods from him, freeing us from the heavy load we had been hauling from Karachi. The next stop was a commercial district in Deira, where Irfan had arranged for us to stay in his friend’s apartment for a few days. Most of his friends stay in this apartment whenever they come to Dubai. It was a two-bedroom apartment; a group of labourers occupied one room, and three of us decided to share another small room. Situated in the central trading hub of Deira, Al-Naif Street is home to the city’s largest currency dealers, well-connected through an intricate web of commerce.
We went to a money-changer across the street the following day, where Amir maintains a currency account. Because Dubai has relaxed trade rules, it is convenient for Karachi-based currency dealers to hoard cash in Dubai and transfer it worldwide without raising eyebrows. Whenever Amir wanted to send a substantial amount to China, he would instruct a Dubai-based dealer via WhatsApp to transfer it to the account. Amir has known some Dubai-based currency traders for the last two decades. He considers one of the leading dealers to be his teacher, who showed him how to do currency business in a market dominated mainly by the Gujarati-Memon mercantile community. When we arrived at the money-changer we exchanged ceremonial greetings, then pulled the packets of cash from our pockets and stacked them on the table. The cash was quickly counted and deposited into Amir’s account. Most of the staff inside the currency exchange were from Karachi. However, some were from African and other Middle Eastern countries. These Dubai-based currency exchanges are the primary financial source for traders from South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. According to a currency exchange dealer, a ‘large amount of cash currency is pouring in from African countries. Sometimes, this cash is delivered in sealed packages placed inside oil tankers. These tankers come to Saudi Arabia and then to Bahrain, and finally, they make their way to Dubai.’
Once we were done with the business and Amir seemed more relaxed, we returned to the apartment, knowing his cash had been delivered safely. While we were watching television, breaking news emerged on Pakistani TV channels. A female Pakistani model, Ayyan, had been arrested at the Islamabad International Airport for carrying US\$500,000 dollars in cash in her luggage. She was boarding a Dubai-bound plane. The news quickly went viral, and so was the speculation about whose money she was transporting to Dubai. I joked with Amir: ‘You guys had the poor girl arrested.’ After her arrest and subsequent trial, she became known as a Dollar Girl in Pakistan and, for several months, a source of entertainment for the entire nation. Public interest and outrage only intensified when the customs officer who had confiscated the money was murdered soon after Ayyan’s arrest. The involvement of a glamorous model, foreign currency, political corruption, Dubai (a dreamland of sorts for the majority of Pakistanis), and now murder ensured that the case dominated the news cycle in Pakistan for months on end.
We spent a few days in Dubai, exploring luxury malls as casual wanderers. The small city-state has experienced extensive urban growth, evolving into a global hub that has attracted renowned ‘starchitects’ to craft and redesign its urban environment.Footnote 19 It now relies less on traditional petrodollars; tourism and finance are its primary sources of income, making it one of the few Gulf monarchies to have achieved economic independence from oil. During our visit, Amir and Irfan bought various goods to bring home to Karachi. Irfan took us to a warehouse where he collected used laptops and mobile phones, while Amir purchased a large gold bar at the Gold Souk. Carefully packing these items to avoid customs duties in Karachi took skill. Amir cleverly stacked three phones together and wrapped them tightly in plastic sheets to conceal them. They also unpacked used laptops from boxes and handed them out to fellow travellers heading to Karachi.
Some khepiyās are willing to take risks by passing on items like laptops and mobile phones to acquaintances returning to Karachi. They often look for travellers between the two cities to take advantage of the airline’s excess baggage allowance. Irfan handed some laptops to friends who were going back to Karachi and had agreed to carry them as a favour. This is neither illegal nor a formal import; it is simply using the additional luggage space of fellow travellers in exchange for a favour. It avoids detection by the state and paying customs duties, while creating a mutual bond of courtesy and trust between traders and travellers.
As the plane approached Karachi, Irfan placed mobile phones in his pockets. He gave a few to Amir as well. At the same time, I was given two used laptops and a gold bar, wrapped in a cigarette box. I was instructed to leave the plane and go straight to the immigration counter. After passing through immigration, I went to retrieve my luggage, and 15 minutes later Irfan and Amir emerged from the immigration room. Irfan was again ignoring us. He told me quietly to grab my bags and leave. He added, ‘Take the cigarette box from the bag and put it in your pocket.’ When I picked up the cigarette box, it was heavy, making it too obvious to carry in a jacket.Footnote 20 I decided to keep it in my jeans pocket instead. Slowly rolling my trolley towards the exit, a customs officer gestured for me to stop. Slightly nervous, I greeted him. He asked about the origin of my flight. I replied that I was coming from Dubai. He paused for a second and, with his hand, gestured for me to go.
Feeling relieved, I came out without looking back, fearing I would be caught at the airport. I was unsure whether bringing gold into the country was legal or illegal. I waited for Amir and Irfan in the airport parking lot. It took them another 20 minutes to come out. Comforted that everyone had come out with the stuff, Amir told me he had handed all the mobile phones to a customs officer waiting for them inside the washroom. Irfan clarified, ‘The customs officer will bring it out for us in return for Rs 15,000.’ Within a few minutes, the officer arrived with a bag of used phones and handed them to Irfan in exchange for cash.
The trader’s body: Risk, movement, and disguise
A khepiyā is an intriguing character. He is versatile, witty, and cunning. Since he has to bypass multiple hurdles at airports without drawing attention to himself, a khepiyā tries to blend into the airport rhythms to navigate the terrain swiftly and discreetly. Yet his body is marked. The state authorities can trace him, monitor his movements, and watch him as he moves along the path. He remains under constant surveillance. Despite this, he manages to slip through the cracks. Body posture, gait, and gaze communicate specific codes and meanings to other traders and officials. He has learnt the craft of navigating the airport. A khepiyā learns to read the airport like a text: which customs officers are strict, which X-ray machines are older and less precise, which arrival times attract the least scrutiny. This embodied knowledge—passed down through apprenticeship and experience—is as crucial to khep’s survival as the trust networks themselves. The fear of getting caught by the local authority makes a khepiyā nervous. He monitors his luggage as it passes along the conveyor belt, scanning the surroundings for unwanted attention. The anxiety of leaving the airport quickly and unscathed constantly pushes the khepiyā’s imagination outside the premises into the future. He struggles to keep himself being perceived as just another passenger, a fellow traveller who happens to cross one’s path. Yet he knows that he is not like others. He carries high-value goods; he is a frequent flyer and lacks the cultural capital to assert authority with airport staff.
The airport becomes a playground for traders like Irfan. He knew how to navigate the terrain, where to stop, who to talk to, and when to move. Being at the airport requires a particular disposition for khepiyās. Whenever Amir and I waited in a queue, we found Irfan smoothly making his way to the front without stopping to speak to the security or staff. Almost everyone at Karachi airport recognized him, including the airline crew, who knew him as a frequent flier and a privileged club member. As a young, energetic trader, he was an adventurous risk-taker, ready to push the boundaries of the law. In a month, he makes several trips, sometimes even a day trip, leaving Karachi in the morning and returning at night. On every trip to Dubai, he earns approximately Rs 40,000 (US\$ 400). Several trips per month could add up to a reasonable amount.
My relationship with Irfan deepened over the few days we spent together. In his early thirties, he has dark hair and a fair complexion. He comes from a Gujarati-speaking background and is known for his entrepreneurial acumen. He lives in a small apartment with other family members in a densely populated area of the old city. He makes his living by trading currencies, investing in small businesses, and buying and selling items on commission. He does not have an office. He prefers to stay mobile. Moving from one market to another, from one shop to another, and meeting several traders and merchants regularly gives him the freedom and agility to do so. I experienced a certain plasticity in his disposition. He was free from the hassle of being on time, opening a shop, or being in the office. This entrepreneurial autonomy fosters a sense of selfhood rooted in mobility and informality. In Karachi, many businessmen draw a sense of identity from not having to serve an employer. A business of one’s own, regardless of size and volume, is an source of joy and autonomy for thousands of traders. Irfan’s ability to converse in multiple languages with ease and confidence makes him better able to navigate the linguistic landscape of the region. Irfan’s Urdu accent has a Gujarati inflection, but he is also not shy about conversing in broken English with airport staff and flight crews.
The older generation of khepiyās travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1970s and 1980s to buy consumer goods. During the 1990s, as economic liberalization brought new opportunities, men from modest economic backgrounds entered the business. The new class of khepiyās—young and ambitious, driven by emerging globalization and increased mobility—began exploring new markets abroad. Dubai, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and China emerged as key new destinations, offering considerable potential for those willing to take risks. One of the most sought-after trade routes was between Thailand and Pakistan. In the past, importing Thai fashion clothing proved to be a profitable venture for Karachi khepiyās.
The new, young khepiyās are not solely motivated by business ventures. Instead, these traders sought a hedonistic lifestyle unavailable to them in their home countries. They indulged in the glamour and excitement of bars and pubs, the blue-sand beaches of Pattaya, Thailand, and the freedom to live independently. Business and pleasure are intertwined in these experiences. Some frequent travellers were under state surveillance, and state intelligence agencies occasionally conducted investigations into them. While they were often harmless and not directly involved in criminal or terrorist activities, the state’s paranoia could still harm their exchanges. The very mobility that made khep possible—frequent border crossings, cash transactions, ethnic kinship networks—became the criteria by which khepiyās were marked as suspicious. The following section will outline how the state regulated capital and commodity flows in the post-9/11 era.
Surveillance and suspicion
Corporate governance now incorporates surveillance technology to reshape traditional business practices. This transformation gained momentum after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Following 9/11, the US government and Western media concentrated on Pakistan’s informal economy—larger than its formal sector—where financial flows largely bypass state oversight. One specifically monitored practice was hawala, an informal money transfer system used by South Asian merchants and labourers for cross-border transactions. Hawala’s financial cousin, khep—the consignment-based goods-trading system—initially escaped Western scrutiny because it dealt in commodities rather than in pure capital transfers. Yet as regulators began connecting the dots between informal money flows and informal trade networks, khep too became implicated in the post-9/11 security apparatus. Using 9/11 as justification, Western financial agencies expanded their intelligence efforts to target what they saw as a secretive, outdated, and suspicious terrorist financing network via hawala. This channel was viewed as a security threat and a challenge to the stability of the modern financial system in developed countries. As a result, the US Treasury and global security organizations are actively working to dismantle the informal economies in post-colonial nations.
However, under the guise of counter-terrorism surveillance, neoliberal entities have established regulations and directives that create dubious cultural distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ money. Khep found itself caught in this binary: goods moving through formal logistics channels with documented invoices became ‘legitimate trade’, while the same commodities travelling through kinship networks via passenger luggage were recategorized as ‘smuggling’ or potential contraband. Hawala channels are categorized in the illegal realm of ‘dirty money’, used by underground terrorist networks. The global economic system is portrayed as an organized and rational order.Footnote 21 More broadly, the process of ‘othering’ hawala as a terrorist funding method has become a discursive condition for maintaining the legitimacy of global finance post-9/11.Footnote 22 Therefore, in legal discourse, hawala acts as a frontier: ‘an edge of space and time: a zone of not yet—not yet mapped, not yet regulated’.Footnote 23
This framing emerged after 9/11 and has become a profitable avenue for multinational corporations to channel wealth away from embedded networks. For instance, Western Union, a US-based value transfer organization, has grown rapidly, opening over 13,000 branches across Pakistan as a convenient alternative to hawala. Similarly, multinational logistics companies positioned themselves as the ‘legitimate’ alternatives to khep, offering tracking numbers, insurance, and customs clearance—services that promised to bring informal trade into the light of regulatory compliance. Meanwhile, some currency traders have been arrested for suspected money laundering and terrorist financing, new systems to track currency flows have been implemented, and financial literacy programmes are promoted to influence merchants’ attitudes and behaviours regarding money movement.
Currency smuggling continues to be a contentious issue in Pakistan, with estimates suggesting it costs the government billions annually. Much of this smuggling is directed to Afghanistan and Iran through land routes. Additionally, transporting cash to Dubai has become highly profitable over the past decade, fuelled by growing demand for foreign currency in the Gulf. Amir explains, ‘These currency dealers used to work for prominent money-changers in Karachi. But after the crackdown on the informal money transfer system—hawala—following 9/11, they moved to Dubai.’ The crackdown on hawala simultaneously disrupted khep operations, as the two systems were deeply intertwined—merchants relied on hawala to settle accounts for goods moved through khep. When one system came under surveillance, the other inevitably fell under suspicion as well.
Post-9/11, under pressure from Western authorities, the Pakistani government aimed to formalize money-changing operations into exchange companies. It compelled many money-changers to consolidate into groups of three. By 2004, all were officially part of the exchange company framework. During an interview with the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SPB) director of foreign exchange, I was informed that currency dealers continue to operate within the informal economy. The director notes they ‘lack a role model’ and a ‘corporate culture’. When asked to define ‘corporate culture’, he explained it involves ‘shareholder approval, SBP licensing, internal audits, on-site inspections, off-site surveillance, due diligence, compliance, and registration’.Footnote 24 After years of crackdowns, the government introduced new licensing, auditing regimes, centralized accountability, and computerized monitoring of capital flows. Specifically, those involved in foreign exchange, remittances, and money transfers are now required to register with the authorities and report daily transactions to the SBP. These same measures extended to commodity traders: customs authorities demanded detailed manifests, tax identification numbers, and documentation of business relationships, requirements fundamentally incompatible with khep’s logic of trust-based, undocumented consignment trade. These measures aim to alter the traditional approach to handling money through kinship, religious, and trust networks.
Amir challenges the statist view on regulating money-changers, regarding the official narrative as a way to force an arbitrary structure onto complex khep and hawala businesses. ‘The state seeks to assert its authority’, Amir said when I mentioned the SBP’s push for corporate practices like due diligence and compliance. He is disillusioned with how the state controls long-standing merchant traditions. ‘They want to impose ideology with the power of money’ [Paisay ki taqat se soch musallat kerna chahte hain], he added. When I asked how this impacts khep specifically, he became more animated: ‘Customs officials raid and seal shops they suspect are buying shipments via khep. Now shopkeepers must keep invoices and tax documents. The increased surveillance is rapidly transforming the market, making it very hard to operate.’
Since 9/11, the formalization of money transfer systems and the criminalization of informal commodity flows have changed how merchants do business in Pakistan. While some efforts have been successful, others encounter resistance because they are seen as threatening traders’ independence. Khep practitioners like Irfan and Amir found themselves navigating an increasingly hostile regulatory environment. Some adapted by hybridizing their operations—using formal channels for larger shipments while maintaining khep networks for smaller, time-sensitive goods. Others retreated deeper into informality, relying more heavily on personal relationships and ethnic networks that remained opaque to outsiders.
Conclusion
Karachi, a bustling metropolis of 23 million people, is Pakistan’s primary commercial and financial hub, generating substantial economic revenue for the country’s Treasury. Ranked as the sixth most populous city in the world, Karachi’s markets hold both commercial and historical significance. Many traders and citizens with limited access to formal logistics and financial services depend on personal networks for trade and exchange. This is especially common among Pakistan’s population, where many remain excluded from the global economic system or lack access to financial resources. Their social networks come in handy for raising and circulating capital, or moving goods across borders. Some may perceive khep as a shadow economy or as a subversive activity that challenges state sovereignty. Others might dismiss it as insignificant compared to larger, more formal trade networks. However, I argue against simply labelling khep as either resistance or illegal, as this oversimplifies the complex moral reasoning and practical risks involved. Such a view can obscure the deeper emotional and historical connections that sustain it. Khep operates in the gaps between global finance and local tradition, unfolds in the transition spaces such as airports, and plays out at the threshold of ethics and economy.
Throughout the article, I have argued that khep is an embodied form of commerce deeply rooted in the visceral and sensory experiences of traders. From Amir’s instruction to ‘stay normal’ while carrying cash through the streets of Karachi, to Irfan’s practice of attaching mobile phones to the body, khep demonstrates that the trade is not just an abstract concept but a lived reality. Traders actively transform their bodies into mobile trading infrastructure, using sensory knowledge to conceal themselves and evade security check posts, employing bodily gestures to navigate environments, and experiencing the physicality of transporting cash. The sight of currency packets protruding from my shirt, the weight of a gold bar in my pocket, and the tactile comfort of touching money are not mere accessories but central to understanding how khep functions beyond the rational calculations of formal markets. Using breath to manage fear, a technique Amir employs while transporting cash through the streets of Karachi, signals an embodied commerce in which respiratory frequency becomes the instrument of commercial significance. Such bodily techniques are not mere aberrations but are the operative logic of khep. Thus, when I refer to khep, I am not describing a clandestine underworld but a moral and sensory platform.
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr Mubbashir Rizvi, Adeem Suhail, and Salwa Tareen for their helpful feedback on the earlier version of this article. I also appreciate the traders who trusted me during this journey and provided invaluable insights into trade practices.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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