Before there was colour, there was an aging wall overlooking one of Peshawar’s busiest roads. Thousands of people passed it every day, but the wall had become almost invisible: dusty, weathered, peeling, carrying the marks of time. I looked at it and saw something different. I saw a place where a story could begin. For me, this was never only a mural. It was a way of asking a difficult question in a city where Khwaja Sira people [a traditional third gender community in Pakistan] are often visible in public life but are still denied dignity and full belonging: What would it mean to paint ourselves into the story of our own city?
The wall carried dust, peeling paint and forgotten stories. I remember looking at its worn surface and thinking that decay did not have to be the final story. I wanted to listen to the place before asking it to change. The location mattered to me because it was part of everyday Peshawar—people moving through the street, children going to school, rickshaws passing, shopkeepers watching the day unfold. I wanted the mural to speak in a language that belonged to this place. Not a borrowed language of beauty, but the language of Peshawar itself: colour, flowers, birds, local patterns, women, peace, community, and the cultural memory of Pashtun life. I wanted the wall to say that dignity is not foreign to our culture. It has always been here. * The first circles and outlines felt fragile. From a distance, they probably looked like very little. For me, every line carried a question: Would this idea survive in public? Would people accept seeing transgender people represented with dignity? Could a wall become a place for a conversation that many people would rather avoid? I was painting in a public space, so I was never painting alone. People watched. Some were curious. Some smiled. Some asked what we were making. The street itself became part of the artwork.
The mural became more meaningful when members of my transgender community joined me. Kontara, Gulpana, Dua and Mashal helped me paint flowers and butterflies and add details to the wall. Their hands changed the meaning of the work. It was no longer simply my mural. It became something we were making together. We painted flowers and butterflies because we wanted the wall to carry life. I think of those moments as painting hope. We were taking brushes in our hands and putting something gentle into a public space. For people who are often told that our bodies, our identities, or our presence are a problem, making beauty together was itself an act of courage. There were moments when the work felt almost playful. Someone could look at a flower and say, “Sumra khkule de!”—how beautiful it is. Another moment could bring a laugh: “Sanga maza kai!”—how much joy this brings. These small expressions matter to me because they are part of how we live and create together in Peshawar. Our activism is not only protest. It is also friendship, laughter, colour and the simple pleasure of making something with our own hands. * One of the strongest memories for me is standing on the scaffolding, looking at the wall and seeing Peshawar around me. From there, the mural felt both enormous and intimate. I was painting a public wall, but I was also painting pieces of a place that shaped me. I wanted the work to carry Peshawar’s cultural character and my understanding of Pashtunwali—not as a museum piece, but as something living. I wanted to connect culture with peace, dignity, equality and love. The patterns and borders were inspired by local artistic traditions, while the doves, flowers and butterflies carried a language of peace and renewal. Standing there as a transgender woman, with a paintbrush in my hand, was deeply personal. I knew that my own body and identity had often been treated as something that should remain hidden. Yet there I was, high above the street, helping to put our stories into a space where thousands of people could see them. * Slowly, faces, flowers and doves emerged. The wall began to breathe. The colours made it difficult to walk past without looking. Neighbours stopped. People watched the brush moving across the surface. Some smiled, some asked questions, and some simply stood there for a while. I loved these ordinary encounters. A school-going child looking at a butterfly. A rickshaw driver glancing toward the wall. A shopkeeper watching from nearby. These were not formal audiences. They were the people who already belonged to this street. The mural entered their daily routine without asking permission to become important. Not everyone responded positively. Some people enjoyed the pictures and the mural. Others criticized the work. Some said that making such pictures was “haram” in Islam. Some specifically objected to the representation of transgender bodies and argued that such images could have a negative influence on the new generation. I understood these reactions as part of the transphobic attitudes and behaviours that transgender people can encounter around us. Hearing such criticism was not always easy. But I also did not want criticism to become the only story told about the mural. I was not painting to insult anyone’s faith. I was painting because I believe that transgender people are part of Peshawar too. We have families, friendships, memories, culture, faith, creativity and dreams. We walk these streets. We work here. We laugh here. We grieve here. We make art here. For me, the mural became a peaceful answer to the demand that we disappear. I did not need to shout. The colours could speak. * As the work continued, the street became part of the story. Rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers, school-going children and elders gathered around the wall. People watched us painting and enjoyed seeing the picture develop. Sometimes there were questions; sometimes there were smiles; sometimes there was criticism. All of it became part of the life of the mural. That is one reason I love public art. A gallery has walls, but a street has memory. A street has noise, traffic, gossip, children, shopkeepers, weather and everyday life. When we painted there, the artwork could not be separated from the people around it. For a while, people who might otherwise never sit together in conversation were looking at the same wall. The mural created a small opening for conversations that rarely happen openly. * There was also a moment when the space beneath the wall felt like a celebration. The scaffolding was still there, the work was still connected to the ordinary mess of the street, but something had changed. The wall was becoming a shared point of visibility and pride. For me, community is often built through these small moments. Not through perfect conditions, but through people showing up. Kontara, Gulpana, Dua and Mashal showed up. Other community members showed up. People on the street stopped to watch. The wall slowly became ours. * When the mural was finally complete, I stood in front of it and looked at what we had made. I could see the flowers and butterflies. I could see the doves. I could see the women and the colours. I could see patterns that connected the work to Peshawar and to the cultural landscape I know. And then I saw myself in it—not only as the artist, but as a transgender woman who had refused to make herself smaller. I felt proud. Proud to stand there. Proud to have climbed the scaffolding. Proud to have painted my city with the people from my community. Proud that the wall carried something more than colour. I wanted to paint hope, resilience, bravery, courage and love. I wanted to paint the possibility that a transgender woman can stand openly in her own city and create something beautiful. I wanted to leave behind an image that says: we are here. Standing beneath the completed mural, I realized that the wall no longer belonged only to me. It belonged to the city. In a place where transgender people are often pushed toward the margins, this mural quietly insists that we have always been part of Peshawar’s story. Perhaps that is what I mean when I say I painted hope. Hope is not always a grand speech. Sometimes it is a flower painted by a transgender woman. Sometimes it is a butterfly. Sometimes it is a child stopping to look. Sometimes it is a rickshaw driver smiling at a wall. Sometimes it is four community members picking up brushes and saying, in their own way, that this belongs to us too. And sometimes hope is simply a brave woman standing beneath what she has created and saying: “Da زمونږ Peshawar de.” This is our Peshawar too. I did not paint only colours. I painted the courage to remain visible. I painted resilience after fear. I painted love for my community and for the city that raised me. I painted the possibility of belonging.
Every mural eventually becomes part of the weather. Paint fades. Walls crack. New buildings appear. Streets change. But I believe walls can remember. They remember the hands that touched them, the people who stopped to look, the arguments and laughter, the children who passed by, and the courage it took to put something beautiful into public space. This mural is my portrait of resistance through public art. It comes from Pashtun cultural memory, from the resilience of Khwaja Sira people, and from my belief that peace and equality must also be visible in the places where we live our ordinary lives. I wanted the wall to say something simple: transgender people are not strangers to Peshawar. We are part of its streets, its memories and its future. We have always been here. And if someone looks at the mural years from now and sees a flower, a butterfly, a dove, a woman, a colour, or simply a wall that refused to remain silent, I hope they also see what we were trying to leave behind: a little more courage, a little more love, and a little more room for everyone to belong.