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Published: November 30th -0001
first glimpse of Pakistan
dropping below the thunder storm cloudsAboard the red eye from Kansai to Bangkok passengers are served onigiri, rice balls and an omelette at breakfast eaten with chopsticks if you so choose. The midday flight to Islamabad serves curry. The young man was upset with the attendant. He had failed to order a 'special meal'. His meat must be hilal, prepared by a muslim. Most passengers on the flight are Muslim but don't seem in such a quandry. My neighbor in the aisle seat is from PeSHAwar. He studies accounting in Guandong. How many muslim chefs are there in Guandong?
I'm in the toilet when the plane experiences turbulence. I am surprised by my good aim. We are descending on the edge of an electrical storm. Between white fluffy clouds, the plane shakes and I spy verdent hillsides, meandering chai brown streams and mudbrick villages. There are several oval shaped yards surrounding smoke stacks puffing black whisps of smoke, baking bricks.
Passport stamped, luggage retrieved, I push my way through the lobby to the parking lot of over-priced taxis. I make a V for the gate and hail a small black and yellow suzuki. I know its a taxi by their mere number, every two out of
three cars. The driver yells hurriedly at me, Get in! get in! police! I have already broken a law. The road is wet and the smell of rain on ashphalt relaxes me. How is there still so much dust in the air? A twenty minute ride brings me to Rawalpindi, known more commonly as Pindi, to New Kamram Hotel on Kashmir Rd. The owner is a chubby middle aged middle class man with receding white hair and thin spectacles on a plump nose decorated with moustache. While I register I strike up a conversation with his nine year old son. I fell as though I've entered a story, as though I have read about these characters somewhere.
Showered and dressed, I not my body odour has already taken on an exotic spice. I place a call to a friend in Islamabad and arrange to meet for dinner. Meanwhile I head into the surrounding bazaar. There are no women in the streets, only men, young and old, dressed in thin cotton shalwar-kameez, soft blues, whites, pale browns and mustard. I feel a little out of place but trudge on. In the bazaar I see a few women covered head to toe
in flowing shawls of indigo and pink and sky blue, the fabric stitched with floral patterns. I feel safe in the markets of Pindi. The shopkeepers are friendly, not the leats bit pushy. What is your country? hat is your good name, sir? Take my picture. Most watch me with a curious smile. There are countless stalls selling sunglasses but nobody is wearing any. A man with a red right eye sitting on a back street corner teaches me 'how are you' in Punjabi. A crowd gathers immediately. I practice my new line. A few blocks later I try it in the hotel's teashop. Silence.
A packed mini van carries me to Islamabad an hour away. Sun sets as my host approaches me in the car park of a popular market, an american loking strip mall, really. He is tall, dark and handsome, slim and muscular. At my suggestion, we drive to Shah Faisal Mosque on the city outskirts, one of the largest mosques in the world and named for its financer, the Saudi King. Its white rocket shaped minarets rise above the prayer hall glowing in the night sky. The Margella Hills impose a dark silhouette in the background
creating a hushed romantic feeling. Bare footed families shwish up the steps and across the vast courtyard of warm white tiles. My host phones in a reservation and we drive across town to a favourite restaurant of his, tucked behind well guraded gates in a posh hotel. We are escorted to a table on the lawn. At a half dozen tables sit other embassy workers, Germans, British, French, Italian, American. Some say hello to my friend. A server leads us through the buffet, soups, kebabs, salads and pickles, strange casseroles and several desserts. We share a variety of the kebabs including brain. I learn how my host had taken the foreigh service exams and benn granted two years employment in Ottawa before he was sent to Pakistan, one of Canada's busiest immigration offices. Conversation is good. I learn about the foreign consular community, their parties. I find my friend's lifestyle rather odd, a high class segregated from the locals, like the British a century ago. We hop back in his BMW and I'm shown inside the embassy enclave, past three armed checkposts and a car bomb check.
At breakfast I sit with a crowd of men in the hotel
tea shop, all dressed in shalwar kammeez fluttering under the fan. I order chai and chapatti, pointing at my neighbour when one man who seems to be looking at me as though to ask my order. I had gotten so used to the uniforms in Japan. I always understood a person's role and knew whom to take my questions to. Noon, I hail a suzuki to Rajah Bazaar. I'm overcharged. Skin tax. The bazaar is a crowded tangle of dusty main roads weaved with quiet charming back alleys. Shop after shop each employing five or six men sell the same items, blocks and blocks of fabric, then kitchenware, then electronics, fruits and vegetables, meat. Shopkeepers work twelve hours seven days a week in this market, not bothering to rest on Friday. Much of their work would seem restful though. Most earn little more than one hundred dollars each month. I lose myself in the narrow back streets of colourful three story residences. Three adorable young faces watch me approach. Three brothers waiting for the youngest to have his haircut. I step into the cave of a barber shop. The barber is as old as Moses with a flowing white beard
farewell, shinkansen noriba
Masumi & Dave holding back the tears and a serious face. He pushes and twists the young boys necks, snipping and shaving. Its impressive what he accomplishes with scissors and a comb. He sets a new blade for my haircut. Fifty cents later I have a story to write home about.
The afternoon is hot. I am hungry and thirsty but weary of my stomach. I slink into the back table of a corner fruit drink shop. Four young men blend and pour mango and other fruit juices or serve small bowls of rice pudding. The head juicer is strikingly handsome, like a young version of Osama Bin Laden. Several streets later I enter a non-descript eatery next to a lot full of rickshaws. I am served chapatti and a dhal. I spend most of the afternoon eyeing the shops fr ready-made shalwar-kameez but in the end I accept a tailor's offer. He will have it made in one hour. Down a tiny side street, I am taken to a sewing shop where five men are croded into a few square metres hunched over old Singers. I am measured by a short older man and the fabric is tossed to one of the young sergers. I wait
back in the fabric shop, conversing with the half dozen employees, accepting tea and water, declining lunch. Two hours later my sky blue shalwar kameez is finished.
Dressed in my new robe, I meet my friend back in Islamabad. We wander the carpet shops, antiques, book stores, licking ice cream cones. Up the road we find a table at an outdoor Afghani restaurant in popular Jinnah Market. The food is delicious, skewers of meat, pickled veg, dumplings, aubergine curry. I spend the night at my host's. I am surprised by the posh interior of his 2 bedroom home, like something you'd expect in Kerrisdale. My friend heads to
work early. I am left alone to insepct the kitchen cupborads, coffee, granola, yogourt. I am a bit put off by a cupboard full of Starbucks mugs from middle eatern countries. I enjoy a slow leisurely morning, yoga in the backyard followed by scooping up the dog's poop and squishing all the snails. I psyche myself for another hot afternoon and set off for the ethnographic museum, Lok Virsa. Before exiting the compound a truck approaches me, the driver for the american embassy offers me a lift all the way to the
people on the street
I discover the assertiveness of Pakistani men who wish to have their photos taken. Some are surprised my camera cannot print out a copy. park's hilltop museum. Rugs, ceramics, korans, posters, musical instruments, clothing, cooking utensils and a side exhibit praising women's rights in Pakistan supported and furthered by the government of General Musharaf. IN the front covered terrace, I sit with a friendly man from the Ministry of communications and media. He introduces me to his brotyher's family visitng from Lahore and boast that he is on the phone to his wife in England. We are entertained by four musicians accompanied by a dancer with an expressive face, a thick pointed black moustache and a green dress. He mimes the words of the songs.
That evening after a long walk back out of the park and a two hour nap in the market unable to even stand up and fetch my self a drink to rehydrate, I stumble into a carpet shop where I planned to meet my host. The recently arrived Amercan ambassador is upstairs leafing through carpets. Her guards watch me closely. My friend finally arrives after a long work day. We speed back to the enclave and are stopped by traffic police. Twenty minutes of argument and we continue our route, my friends wallet three dollars lighter. I have a
gut wrenching feeling and a fever as night falls. I spend most of the night on the toilet. Welcome to Pakistan!
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Leslie
non-member comment
Lahore - aptly named!
I remember thinking that it was some kind of tourist trick. A big fat Pakistani man lurching along the street with a spear stuck through his stomach. We dodged the spear shaft.