Pakistan, Oct. 11 -- In Lahore's tangled alleys, where the scent of diesel mingles with gunpowder and gossip, power has never worn a uniform - it has worn a name. Among those names, none echoed more ominously than those of the Truckanwalas and the Butts. Their saga - part feud, part folklore - shaped the moral geography of Punjab's capital for nearly half a century. It was a mythology sustained by patronage, violence, and selective amnesia, ending only this week when Khawaja Tarif Gulshan, better known as Taifi Butt, was shot dead in Rahim Yar Khan during an alleged exchange of fire with police. His death, like those of his rivals before him, is both a literal and symbolic end of an era - the twilight of Lahore's informal kings.

The stor...