In the heart of the city, surrounded by beautiful mountains, Quetta’s Parsi Colony is picture-perfect. The lush green trees sway in the breeze. There is a rare feeling of trust: instead of the common elevated walls demarcating boundaries of houses, there are flimsy grills with open, inviting doors.

To the unsuspecting eye, this scene may not look like one from a metropolis in Pakistan, let alone one from the troubled province of Balochistan.

Despite the oft-reported turmoil in the region, however, Parsis have peacefully lived here since before partition. It was during the British Raj that the community was allotted this colony.

Today, of the many Parsis who once resided here, only about two to four families remain. Others have either died because of natural causes or migrated out of Quetta.

The presence of Parsis in the provincial capital has not been documented by the mainstream media like that of their counterparts in Karachi. This is understandable, Parsis, after all, migrated from Iran to Sindh as far back as the eighth century. Furthermore, the community is relatively bigger in Karachi as compared to the one Quetta.

Yet, there are Parsis who prefer their home city to the concrete jungle that is Karachi.

Click Here for this interesting piece from Dawn