At six in the morning, the only thing can that can be heard in Sarafa Bazaar, the largest gold market in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, is the sound of bristles on pavement. Afsiroon Naqas arrives in the labyrinthine market long before it fills with braying donkeys, rumbling rickshaws and men hawking everything from slices of coconut to lightbulbs.
On hands and knees, he painstakingly sweeps every inch of the street with an old shoe brush. But he and his young son Asad aren’t collecting trash. They’re looking for gold dust that blows out of the jewellery shops around them.
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