When the pandemic shut down New York City's streets in 2020, Sajjad Khan sold two of his cars and spent some of
the proceeds to fund a home renovation— not to repaint their walls or build his children a new bedroom, but to
give his pigeons reliable shelter.
The renovation is on the roof deck of his three-story home in Flatbush, Brooklyn: two new bird coops made of
concrete, each one of them roughly the size of a small bathroom.
The new shelters and a steel cage atop one of them replaced smaller wood pens for his 60 pigeons. Khan said he
spent thousands of dollars for them, but did not mind doing so for what he considers family.
Khan is part of a small number of Pakistani immigrants who take care of pigeons in the city despite the hefty
cost. Back in Pakistan, it is a family tradition passed on from fathers to sons that does not cost much. But in
one of the world's most expensive cities, pigeon tending does not come cheap.
Apart from spending on the new lofts and stairs leading to them, Khan said he also buys his pigeons feeders or
food for birds, and vitamins imported from Belgium monthly. At one point, he was also shelling out $100 a week to
hire someone to clean the coops every day, but the worker did not meet Khan's standards.
“He did not clean well,” Khan, 40, said. “The pigeons don't eat when the coop is not cleaned well.”
Known as "kabootarbazi" in Urdu language, pigeon tending is prominent in South Asia including Pakistan. Scholars
believe the tradition gained traction in mid-1500s when Indian Emperor Muhammad Akbar housed over 20,000
pigeons and strategically used them to impress foreign visitors, exact concessions and ultimately expand the
Mughal Empire toward India's neighboring countries.
Nowadays, pigeon tending carries a more positive significance for Pakistanis. It reflects commitment to family, a
vow to cherish and nurture them, said Manan Ahmed, a history professor who specializes in South Asia at Columbia
University.
The tradition attracts mostly men, particularly those with enough means to sustain it, part of Muslim communities'
divided gender roles.
The work demanded by petting pigeons however is no joke. Apart from feeding them and cleaning their shelters,
pigeon raisers said this type of bird also needs heat to survive New York's freezing winter. Khan ensured this for
his flock by installing heaters in their lofts.
He also personally attends to them: before working at night as an Uber driver, he cleans the loft and feed his
pigeons at around 4 p.m.
After a 12-hour night shift, he cleans again just before he hits the sack.
Khan's dedication to his pigeons is rewarded with loyalty. They easily recognize his voice and respond to him as a
flock.
On a recent Monday afternoon, pigeons quietly sitting in the steel cage almost simultaneously swooped down to
their coop as he called them for dinner. He says they won't eat if anyone else tries to feed them.
"Their meal schedule is 4-5 p.m. I don't go anywhere at the time. If I am somewhere, I have to go back here to
feed them. Otherwise, they won't eat," he said.
Cost of tradition
While pigeon tending is common back in Pakistan, only a few Pakistanis are able to continue in New York, mostly
because the cost of living in Pakistan is far lower than in New York City, Columbia's Ahmed said.
Here, nearly one in five Pakistanis were living below the poverty line even before the pandemic struck.
These stark differences in living costs are most obvious in a person's house.
Ahmed said that in Pakistan, pigeon tenders usually have three to four-story homes with rooftops, which is ideal
for pigeons because owners typically fly them around.
But few people in New York can afford to have their rooftops.
Such is the case for Ahmed Ali, an Islamabad native, who had 80 pigeons back home but gave them to friends before
leaving for New York in 2005.
Ali, currently unemployed, used to work several jobs in New York, including being a taxi driver, a Deicer safety
clearance officer at the John F. Kennedy International Airport, and a religious studies teacher.
An imam who gives free spiritual advice, he said pigeon tending itself does not hold any religious significance
for Pakistanis, but a part of their culture that grew because of the pigeon's heavy presence in the country.
"I don't see myself being ready to even think about pets in New York,” said Ali. “It's just not practical. If I
decided to get a pigeon now, that would eat my time so much that I would just have to be tending to my pigeons and
I wouldn't do anything else."
Until recently, Mohammad Asif, 60, could easily juggle work and tending to his pigeons.
Asif runs a construction business in Midwood, and said he typically caps his day atop his home and flying some of
his birds. Originally from Lahore, he personally asked his brother to send him 12 pairs of their pigeons at home
when he moved to the city in 1986, unable to find what he called a "Pakistani pigeon."
That kind of pigeon, Khan and Asif said, is less about where it comes from, but rather how it looks like,
something only obvious to pigeon raisers. For instance, a Pakistani pigeon, they said, would tend to stand tall,
rather than slouch, have a firmer belly than the average pigeon, and more importantly, "good" eyes.
