The "Green Tunnel" leading to the Lodge was already beginning to look like a promise—unfinished, but undeniable. The young grapevines were still only thin green shoots, climbing cautiously up the wooden posts, as if they were testing whether the estate truly meant to keep them alive. To buy them time, Ahmed Khan had improvised a temporary canopy.
He had ordered woven jute mats and dried palm leaves, and had them lashed across the trellis roof in long, overlapping strips. It was not the living ceiling it would become in two years, but it did what mattered: it broke the harsh Punjabi sun into soft, amber stripes of shade. The glare no longer hit the path like a hammer; it arrived filtered, civilized. Below the posts, the motia saplings sat in dark, wet soil, drinking greedily, preparing to bloom like they had been told an important audience was coming. Inside the Lodge study, the air had changed as well. The scent of disinfectant and sweat—the ghosts of the cholera ward—was being pushed out by something deliberate: new leather, fresh polish, sandalwood. Furniture from Lahore had arrived in heavy crates and had been unpacked with the careful reverence usually reserved for icons. The study was becoming what it was meant to be: not a sickroom, but a command room disguised as comfort.
Ahmed entered with dust on his boots and a roll of paper tucked under his arm. He laid it on the desk and unrolled it with both hands, pinning the corners flat as if he were anchoring a map before a campaign.
"The War Office has been generous, Sir," he said, tapping the blueprint with two fingers. "They will supply materials for the Officers' Colony—bricks, cement, timber. They want it built quickly, about three hundred yards east of the Lodge, on the high ground overlooking the lake."
Jinnah studied the layout without speaking, letting the lines explain themselves. Rows of houses. A spine road. Service lanes. A small parade area.
"And the Farabi families?" he asked, without looking up.
Ahmed's expression tightened in the small way it always did when he had to deliver something ugly in polite language.
"The British engineers suggested moving the local population—including the Farabi families—to the western sector, near the canal intake," he said. Then, because there was no point pretending: "Segregation, essentially."
Jinnah frowned. Not in outrage—he was too experienced for theatrics—but in calculation.
"It is efficient for security," he said slowly, "but socially… predictable."
He leaned closer. His finger traced the empty space beside the proposed British colony, the blank portion of the plan that looked like an afterthought.
"Ahmed," he said, voice steady, "expand this."
Ahmed blinked. "Sir?"
"The British are building thirty houses for their officers," Jinnah replied. "I want you to build fifty."
For a moment, Ahmed only stared at him, as if he had misheard.
"Fifty?" he repeated. "That's nearly double the garrison size."
Jinnah's answer was practical, not dramatic—an administrator explaining a budget line.
"I am hiring staff for the Lodge," he said. "Chefs, housekeeping managers, a proper concierge. If thirty British families arrive, I cannot run an establishment of this standard purely on village labour. I will need experienced staff—likely Goans or Anglo-Indians from Lahore and Bombay. They will need housing that matches their station."
He paused, and when he spoke again, his tone softened by only a fraction—just enough to be human.
"And," he added, "I would like you to take one of those houses. And Evelyn. And Mary."
Ahmed hesitated. He had been living out of what was available—useful rooms, renovated servant quarters, the kind of space a man accepts when he is focused on surviving the next crisis.
"You want us in the Officers' Colony?" he asked carefully.
"You are my family, Ahmed," Jinnah said simply. "Or as close as I have here. I want my senior staff living with the same dignity as the Crown's officers. It sends a message: in Sandalbar, competence outranks race."
Ahmed cleared his throat, suddenly more moved than he wanted to show.
"I… thank you, Sir," he managed. "I will adjust the plans. The estate will cover the cost of the extra twenty houses?"
"Every rupee," Jinnah said. "Do not cut corners. Use the same bricks. The same finish."
1) The Blueprint of Civilization
That afternoon, Ahmed stood on the actual ground where the colony would rise. The lake glittered behind him. The slope fell away in the exact way an engineer loves—enough gradient for drainage, not enough to erode. A team of British army engineers had arrived ahead of the main unit, sunburnt and skeptical, carrying clipboards and assumptions.
"The drainage is key," Ahmed began, pointing down the slope with the flat confidence of a man who has seen disease start in bad water. "Mr. Jinnah insists on a centralized sewerage system. No septic tanks that need emptying. We run a main line down to a treatment pit far from the lake. The waste is processed into fertilizer for the cotton fields."
A British engineer—Captain Miller—raised an eyebrow.
"That's municipal-level planning, Mr. Khan," he said. "Expensive."
Ahmed did not argue. He simply stated the principle.
"Mr. Jinnah believes bad plumbing is more expensive in the long run."
He walked them through the rest with the same calm momentum—one amenity after another, each one a quiet insult to the low expectations the Crown had brought with them.
"Here," Ahmed said, pointing to a flat clearing, "we will lay a clay tennis court. Standard dimensions. To the left, a small swimming pool—twenty feet by ten—filtered water from the lake system."
"A pool?" Miller chuckled, half amused, half disbelieving. "My wife will think she's in the Simla Club." "And here," Ahmed continued, indicating a shaded grove of sheesham trees, "a children's playground. Swings, a slide, a sandpit."
He hesitated, then tapped a small, standalone building marked on the plan—a structure set slightly apart, simple but elegant.
"And this building," he said, "Mr. Jinnah suggested as a community hall. But he specifically instructed that it should be adaptable for Sunday service."
Miller stared at the design. A high roof. A modest bell tower—just enough to be recognizable without being provocative.
"A makeshift church?" he asked, surprised. "Mr. Jinnah is Muslim, isn't he?"
"He is," Ahmed answered. "But he knows your families will need a place for their faith. He calls it the 'Sunday House'."
Miller looked from Ahmed to the blueprint again, reassessing not the colony, but the man behind it.
"Well," he muttered, more quietly now, "I expected to be sleeping in tents and digging latrines. This… this is civilized."
Ahmed allowed himself a controlled smile.
"That is the Sandalbar motto, Captain."
2) The Crown's Blessing
Back in the study, Jinnah was working through the morning mail when Ahmed returned. The pile on the desk was heavier than usual, thick with official seals and stiff paper—letters that carried weight even before they were opened.
Jinnah opened the first envelope. The seal: Punjab Police Department.
A purchase order.
Khaddar uniform cloth—grey.
Quantity: 5,000 yards.
Destination: Lahore Constabulary Training Center.
He opened the next. North Western Railway.
Bed linen and towels—standard issue.
Quantity: 2,000 units.
Destination: Rawalpindi Division staff quarters.
Another. Department of Prisons.
Rough weave cotton.
Quantity: 10,000 yards.
Jinnah leaned back in his chair and looked at the stack as a whole. Not as paperwork, but as a signal. Months of work for village weavers. A factory that hadn't even been built yet—and an order book already full. It's happening, Bilal whispered inside him. This is the Crown's Blessing you negotiated. They are shifting procurement to you.
Jinnah did not smile. He did something more dangerous: he understood.
"It is a river of money," he noted silently, calculating the totals without needing to write them down. "And it flows into the pockets of villagers."
It's better than money, Bilal corrected. It's integration. The police will wear your cloth. The railway will sleep on your sheets. You are becoming part of the state—literally the fabric of it.
Jinnah picked up his pen. He began signing acceptance forms with steady strokes, as if he were signing not orders, but a new phase.
Then he called out, voice carrying beyond the study door.
"Ahmed."
Ahmed entered, wiping dust from his boots, still half smelling of sun and brick.
"Tell the village headmen to hire more weavers," Jinnah said. "And tell the bricklayers to hurry with that church. We are going to be very busy."