Fear of Islam
What do you imagine when I say “Pakistan?” Terrorists, turbans,
Kalishnikov rifles, women hidden behind black veils, men with angry expressions
and facial hair, crowds enthusiastically burning the American flag. No
wonder. What else do we ever see? CNN and James Bond are in constant
need of villains.
First off, a few facts: Islam is the religion (like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism). The followers of Islam are Muslims (like Christians, Jews, and Buddhists). Say it: “Muslim.” Sprinkle this word into your casual office conversations; you’ll impress everybody. “I was talking to my Muslim friend the other day when he tried to take me hostage in the name of the Iranian revolution.” See how easy that is?
If you truly praise cultural diversity, then Islam should be near the top of your to-do list. Smart people nowadays throw around the word “globalization.” They bemoan how the world’s nooks and crannies are being touched by multinationals. Some travelers complain that distant lands are losing their unique character, looking more and more like an American suburb. Japan loves McDonalds; Chinese boys idolize Michael Jordan (a black man!); and Euro Disney won’t give up. Even Latin America has embraced democratic elections and stock market sensibility. Where can an adventuresome soul go for some serious culture shock? The answer, my friend, is the Muslim world.
The Muslim world starts in the west at Morocco, goes across North Africa, through the Middle East, and ends with Pakistan in the east. You might also include Indonesia, Malaysia, and various Sub-Saharan Africa countries. By all accounts, the wide lands of the Muslim world are cradle to magnificent cultures and postcard beauty, not mention lots of petroleum.
Ever wonder what it would be like to actually step foot in Afghanistan or Morocco? Sure, we’ve all enjoyed watching President Clinton send a few surface-to-surface missiles over Kabul (every time the Lewinsky scandal got hot), but what about spending your next vacation there? Would it be all work, or could you enjoy yourself, maybe even relax? Might you return so full of the experience that you’d write a book? Might you win points with your fiends? What’s the worst that could happen to you?
Karakoram
Why would I decide to go to Pakistan?
I, too, had suffered from fear of Islam. Any country ending in a ‘stan’ was off limits. On the other hand, travelers I’d met who had dared to visit Pakistan said it as their favorite country. The mountains were stunning. Everything was cheap. Culture was thick and fascinating. Though not as relaxing as Hawaii, as clean as Switzerland, or as elegant as Italy, Pakistan possessed magic. Muslim hospitality towards visitors – they said – was the best part. “You don’t have to pay for a thing, that is, if you accept all their offers of kindness. You’ll be invited into homes, given dinner, a place to sleep. You won’t spend a single Rupee.”
Then a friend turned me on to the Karakoram Highway.
The Karakoram Highway is not really a highway, but rather a high way (sorry). This road links northern Pakistan with northwestern China. If that’s too much geography for you, find a map. You’ll see that the two countries border each other for only 200 kilometers. You’ll also see nearby Afghanistan and happy Tajikistan, not to mention Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, with India below and Kazakhstan above. The descendents of Genghis Khan and Marco Polo and Ganesh and Mao Tse Tung are squeezed together in a knot, with the Himalayas pushing up under the Tibetan Plateau and the disputed borders of Kashmir inspiring decades of violence and retribution. The Karakoram Highway boldly threads through this geopolitical pressure-cooker, following the ancient route silk traders took through barren and dangerous mountain valleys on the backs of horses, camels, and llamas. Nowadays, travelers move by bus and truck and hi-tech chromalloy mountain bike from one end (Islamabad, Pakistan) to the other (Kashgar, China), taking breathers, walks and photos along the way. It’s like your very own Discovery Channel. Try finding that in Hawaii. Hah.
The highlight of the trip is crossing the Khunjerab Pass. As you approach the border, the mountain road navigates between near vertical walls of rock. At the end of a river valley, it curves back on itself and rises and curves again and rises … until you reach an altitude of 4,730 meters (15,518 feet). The thin atmosphere will give you a nasty headache. Coming from the Pakistani side, rivers flow towards the sea, south. Rise over the crest … into the wide, grassy, very cold plateau at the top of the pass … photograph some wild llamas grazing on brown grass, get your passport stamped, then begin to descend … and now the rivers flow towards Tibet, towards the east. Congratulations, you’re in China.
However, in winter, sometimes as early as November 1st, the Khunjerab Pass is snowed in, impassable. There’s no sanitation department waiting to plow the road. Snowmobiles aren’t an option. You’d likely die of exposure if you attempted to walk it. (Prove me wrong.)
That’s where I came in. Last summer, my freelance work contract was scheduled to end by mid-September, still early enough to cross the pass before the snows arrived. Nothing else was keeping me in town (love, children, a sense of propriety). I had no excuses. I had no future, hope, or anything to lose. I began to plan. Kar’a kor ‘am.
My first act of adventure was to buy Lonely Planet’s guidebook (a relatively thin one) entitled, Karakoram Highway: The High Road to China.
You Want a Ticket to Where?
Bangkok, Thailand. I was sitting in a travel agency. The travel
agent asked me twice to repeat my destination. “Islamabad. You
sure?” She’d never sold a ticket to there before. My friend
Enrique, who’d been to Cambodia, Bangladesh, Russia, Albania, Romania,
and the old Yugoslavia, laughed boisterously at my dangerous plan. “Islamabad!
Trev man, hope you make it back, amigo.” Islamabad sounded like
a place where Osama Bin Laden kept an apartment. “Islam” was
in its name; so was “bad.”
However, I had done some research. Other Pakistani cities like Lahore and Karachi were often plagued by sectarian violence. Islamabad, on the other hand, was considered calm and peace loving. I was choosing to land in Islamabad because it would be safe. Enrique did not look convinced. “Have a good time,” he said.
“Up yours,” I replied.
I sat, arms-crossed, in a swivel chair, wondering whether the trip really would be a mistake. The agent got on the phone with Pakistani Airlines, and began squawking in Thai. I heard “Islamabad” several times, followed by laughing. Then I heard “American,” then my name spelled out, then more laughing. Enrique glanced at me sideways and chuckled too.
I chose to ignore this cynicism. I looked around me. The walls of the travel agency were covered with posters of pristine, cobblestone alleys in Munich, sun-bleached houses in Greece, and dazzling flowers on a Hawaiian beach. My eyes sought some image of Pakistan. Nothing. Any promotional item (Visit charming Pakistan, your docile Shangri-La) could have calmed my nerves. I clutched the Karakoram Highway guidebook like Dorothy clutching Toto as the flying monkeys encircled her.
Defiantly, I paid for the ticket. The trip would be either my own victory in the name of adventure tourism or just another crisis for the State Department. What the hell was he thinking? The kidnappers nabbed him right at the airport. Now we’ve got to go save his dumb ass.
Bombs Away
My flight date was two days away. Over breakfast, Enrique was sipping
café con leche while his girlfriend Yoom picked at an omelet with
chopsticks. “So,” he began in a tone pregnant with delight,
“I guess you saw today’s paper?”
I sensed I was yet again to be the subject of much giggling. “No.”
He handed me the Bangkok Post. The headline read “Pakistan Bomb Blast Kills Sixteen.” The article was from my destination: bad Islamabad.
A powerful bomb blast ripped through a crowded vegetable market … killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens of others …[the bomb] was hidden in a crate of grapes and went off at about 7:45 a.m. as the crate was being unloaded … the market was very crowded … some of the wounded lost limbs.
I’m a morning person, and I like visiting local markets. I even like grapes. In other words, that bomb pretty much had my name on it, but arrived several days too early. “Well, waddaya know? It’s a story from Pakistan. Thanks for saving this for me.” I considered not flying to Pakistan, going instead to China, or perhaps flying nowhere at all and just languishing on a Thai beach. It wasn’t like a war had broken out, though. It was just one bomb – not many, falling from the sky. “I’ll stay in my hotel room most of the time, and avoid crowds.”
“And avoid fruit,” Enrique added, then sipped again on his coffee.
For some reason – why?!!!! – the words of George Bush (senior) came to mind. ‘Stay the course.’ I did.
The Last One On
There was only one flight per day from Bangkok to Islamabad. It left
at ten in the evening and arrived at one in the morning. One?! At the
airport, I walked to gate 21, PIA flight 103. The waiting area gave me
my first taste of how the trip would feel.
My guidebook had advised against wearing clothes that revealed too much skin. Halter-tops and short shorts didn’t feature too prominently in my wardrobe, but T-shirts were almost all I had. I looked at the dark-haired passengers, sitting and reading newspapers in Arabic. Several Pakistani men had on T-shirts. My nerves settled a little. All of the women were seated together in a corner separate from the men. Little children ran around them and hid behind their knees.
I appeared to be the only non-Pakistani waiting for the plane.
For twenty minutes my face aimed itself at a magazine. I tried to look relaxed like I’d made this trip this millions of times. Then, a clear, feminine voice announced, “Would all passengers for Pakistani International Airlines flight 103 please begin boarding.” Predictably, everybody stood to get in line to board the plane. I would be last on – as usual. Why stand in line when I could sit and watch more CNN on the lounge TV? But this night, something was different. In under a minute, every man had disappeared through the glass doors. Only the women and I were left sitting. Startled, I stood. I modified my usual travel routine so as to be the last man to board the plane. With a smirk on her face, the airline employee took my boarding pass and closed a velvet rope behind me. I heard her issue a command to the female passengers, “Ladies, please line up behind me.”
Aboard the plane, the flight attendants wore their hair uncovered, in modern styles, with make-up, outgoing smiles and eye contact. This made sense, since a full, black veil would have been intimidating. The meal was – very strangely – a ham sandwich and a meat pie of mysterious ingredients. Muslims (like Jews) don’t eat pork. It would likely my last glimpse of the forbidden meat (for a while), so I made a special effort to enjoy it.
Immigration cards were distributed. One side was written in Urdu (which looks like Arabic) and the other in English. I filled mine out …name, passport number, and address in Pakistan. There was a space for my father’s name. If I were a married woman (which I wasn’t), I was supposed to give my husband’s name, not my father’s. I wrote my father’s name not sure if only women were supposed to do that. I wondered if Dad would be getting a call.
I had four hours until the plane would land.
Adrenaline Rush
After four hours in the air, the plane approached the runway and my adrenaline
began to pump. Pakistan was outside. My economy class seat would be the
last comfort zone before the unknown Muslim world. We touched ground,
rolled to a stop, and everybody stood to fetch their carry-on. I promptly
stood to assure disembarking with the men. One by one we emerged from
the plane into the warm night air to descend a metal stairway to the tarmac.
At the bottom, mustached men in blue military uniforms and berets stood
in a semicircle, eyeing each one of us. They could have been Saddam Hussein
impersonators. I was the only foreigner and felt like my body was glowing
purple and green. The women were last to get off.
My muscles shook with a steady flow of adrenaline. I kept alert. The roar of the jets drowned out all other sounds until we entered the arrivals room. Passport control was quick, then led to baggage claim for an x-ray of my luggage. This was looking for weapons. I’d brought nothing more lethal than a Swiss army knife and David Bowie’s greatest hits on CD.
It was two o’clock in the morning. I needed some Pakistani cash. Two currency exchange desks were still open, praise Allah. One offered 58.5 Rupees to the dollar and already had a line. The other offered 56.7 Rupees to the dollar and had no line. I changed US $20, assuming that rates would be better in town, in the morning.
Two days earlier in Bangkok, I’d called ahead to reserve a room in a “medium-priced” hotel. Normally, this would not be necessary, but Islamabad at two o’clock in the morning called for greater measures of preparation. “Medium priced” meant you got your own taxi from the airport. A taxi booking service was right in front of me, anticipating my need. I’d normally avoid this “service;” established to baby tourists and charge triple the local rate, but I was glowing purple and green and in need of some babying.
I scanned the arrival room for anyone who looked like a terrorist. Everyone did.
I stared at the new, unfamiliar, very colorful currency. Most of the numbers were in Urdu, some in English. I flipped the paper over and examined it like a space alien beholding his first souvenir from Earth. I paid. Without a word, the taxi service guy walked out from behind the counter. I assumed he meant to escort me to a car. I followed him. He was wearing clothes typical for a Pakistani man: a long shirt that reached his knees with slits running up both sides; pants of the same cloth that tapered to the ankles; on his dusty brown feet were sandals.
My hot little hand clutched the receipt. He led me into the arrival hall. Pressed against metal barricades on either side were over a hundred people, all dressed just like the mute guy I was following. Their bodies were draped in pastel cotton, crowned by a brown head, with brown hands and feet at the extremities. They looked really elegant, and simple. My American white-guy khakis and running shoes and T-shirt might as well have been a leopard-skin cat suit. My green and purple neon tubes powered up to maximum brightness.
Out from the airport building we strided quickly. The parking lot was dotted with loved ones reuniting and hugging and getting into cars. Arriving solo in a strange place puts great distance between yourself and those who are not alone. That’s when ‘alone’ feels the strongest. We walked up to six men crouching in a circle. Every one of them was dressed alike; only the pastels were different. A few words of Urdu were exchanged. One man stood. He reached out his hand to me; I handed him the receipt. He turned around –without a word – and I followed him.
I felt like a baton.
Our walking stopped at a very small car that looked like a child’s toy. He grabbed my backpack (a hulking thing half the size of the automobile), and slid it into the back seat. We got in. The thin doors shut. My knees were almost at eye level.
“Where you go?” he asked to me.
“The New Kamran Hotel,” I said, trying to effuse niceness and joy. He didn’t look receptive to this.
“New Kamran?”
“Yes. It’s on Kashmir Road.” My voice was solid, like it was stating a well-established fact.
He eyed me as if I’d just told him a lie, then started the car. The transmission was manual. Every gearshift sent the stick into my knee. I scrunched together tight to give him some room.
We only drove twenty feet before stopping. Someone’s parked car was blocking the way out. My driver got out and summoned his nearby homeboys to assist. With a heave ho, they picked up the obstacle car and cinched it over to one side, just enough so that we could pass. All the vehicles were very compact. He got back in. “This is Pakistani driver.”
I smiled at his ‘humor’ and he didn’t smile back.
We drove. We sped as fast as we could go. My seatbelt didn’t work. I wished it did. The road was in places very well paved, in others merely a dirt track. The curbs were a foot high and painted with diagonal stripes like a ‘hazard’ sign. We frequently slowed to pass speed bumps. The unpainted stone houses to our right and left had no electric lights. Walls were in places painted with words from the Koran (I assumed). Red Arabic letters stood out against a background of white. Except for a few stray dogs, the streets were empty.
As we approached the city, metal shields had been pulled down to seal up shop fronts. Numerous groups of men were sitting on street corners or walking to places. Where? Nothing was open.
Considering the wild praise I’d heard for Pakistani hospitality and kindness to visitors, my driver was a disappointment. He entertained no small talk. He showed no curiosity in me, the fearless tourist who had arrived in his country at the deadest hour of night.
After some driving, we still hadn’t found a sign for ‘New Kamran Hotel.’ We asked four pastel outfits sitting by the curb; they didn’t know, but suggested a direction anyway. I whimpered to my driver that I had a map, and held it up as proof, but was ignored. Instead, we used his superior knowledge of the city and drove around without sense or success. We asked more clueless guys for help, then headed back towards the airport, where I didn’t want to go. I finally convinced him to look at my map. He did, grudgingly, but had difficulty reading it. He might have been illiterate.
My driver had clearly taken the attitude that our late-night wandering was my fault. He also insinuated that the New Kamran Hotel didn’t even exist. Ten minutes later, finding the hotel – with the help of my map – was sweet success. I didn’t like my driver and was glad to see him proven wrong.
He watched me pull my backpack out of the back seat. I wondered whether he’d want more money than I’d paid at the airport. We’d spent almost an hour finding the hotel. Gas prices were high. I tried to imagine his wife and children asleep at home. Fifty Rupees to me would be nothing. He asked for a hundred. This disappointed me, but seeing him leave would be worth it. Screw his kids.
My Smelly-Ass Room
The hotel was built around a long courtyard, with all the rooms looking
in. I and my backpack slid into number twenty-five, on the second floor.
The stale air carried a faint odor of mold and human feces. The room
was almost a rectangle, a narrow trapezoid, six feet wide and twenty-five
feet long. The windows and the door faced the courtyard. The walls were
cement, sloppily painted pink, and showed signs of water damage. From
the center of the high ceiling, a fan was spinning slightly off-center,
making a soft noise.
I cautiously entered the bathroom. Horror! There was no toilet paper. What I’d heard was true. The hand – not the toilet paper – was ‘used.’ I’d also heard (and would soon verify) that the hand – not the knife and fork – was used to be used for eating. My stomach turned like a squeamish hospital patient.
The bed was built of wood, the mattress of foam. The sheets had been cleaned, but by hand, and showed stains from previous guests. The sheets of a hotel more expensive than ‘medium budget’ would have been sterilized with radiation and bleach, then crisped in an oven at 400 degrees and pressed with starch.
I was glad Enrique wasn’t on hand to see my situation.
Oddly, I again considered George Bush’s advice to the country: ‘stay the course.’
Brushing my teeth forced a decision. Some – perhaps overly cautious – travelers put only bottled water in their mouth. I had no bottled water (or sense of preparation). Thus, there actually was no decision. I would ‘commando’ it. If Rambo could eat raw snake, I could brush my teeth with Pakistani tap water.
The bed did not look inviting. I spread out my green and yellow sleeping bag. I laid down on the comforting, familiar nylon. ‘She’ had been with me just as long as the ratty backpack: over ten years and many places just as crappy and shitty-smelling as that room.
I could not sleep. My head was still charged with adrenaline. A beer would have fixed that, but none was for sale (at any time of day) in Pakistan. Muslims aren’t supposed to drink. Some James Joyce would work too. Beer or Joyce, they both have the same effect. I tried to read. No amount of focused willpower could make me imagine the Ireland of Joyce’s childhood. I struggled to visualize rugby scrums and boarding school bullies; instead I saw dark moustaches and berets and stray dogs running from speed bumps. My eyes scanned the book’s prose from an era when people’s attention spans were not so short. Oh Joyce, you sniveling twit.
My pale body and my crayon-colored sleeping bag were bathed in the buzzing light of a wall-mounted, naked fluorescent tube. The hum from the tube blended with the regular scraping from the fan. Part of me marveled at how a single plane flight could be so isolating. Finding shelter in that room felt like hiding under a pile of leaves in the middle of a dark forest. It was three thirty. I fell asleep.
My New Balance
When my eyes opened, they found the watch on my wrist. My foggy brain
calculated that I’d slept three hours. Daylight was penetrating
through cracks below the door and around the window curtains. The fan
was still circulating moldy air, making noise. My sleeping bag had rotated
forty-five degrees, probably thrashed around in fits of active dreaming.
I stared at the walls until seven. Seven was late enough to venture outside for some errands. I got dressed without showering. The morning was too cold to be naked and dripping wet. A hotter hour of the afternoon would be a more comfortable time to scrub off the sweat and dust and confusion.
I needed something to do. The day’s first priority was purchasing a plane ticket to Gilgit, the next stop on the Karakoram Highway. My money belt was stuffed with cash and passport. I could already hear car noises outside the courtyard. I also needed my guidebook. I considered tearing out and pocketing the pages on Islamabad, for portability. On other trips I’d done that, ripping off pieces of the book like pieces of meat; so that eventually only the spine was left, with scraps of information on places I hadn’t seen. However, a complete book makes a good souvenir. I chose not to rip.
As an added bonus, my laptop needed an electrical adapter (in order to write this). The plugs in Pakistan were round, not flat. An errand. A purpose to the morning. An excuse to walk and talk in my new home.
My sky-blue New Balance running shoes took their first steps into the Islamabad morning traffic. Many men were already about, waiting to catch buses, setting up shop, spitting on the ground, walking with both hands behind their back. Women were nowhere. I frequently felt eyes staring at me. This could have been just imagination, but it probably wasn’t. No one smiled at me. No one waved with friendliness. I wondered about Pakistan.
The pavement was covered in stale dust. Dust and scraps of paper and scraps of rotting fruit were piled up against the curbs, where curbs existed. Pakistan was slowly waking up. Sounds were scarce enough to be heard one at a time. A diesel truck engine shifted up gears, then a bicycle bell chimed a few cheery notes. Two men were shoveling the burnt remains of a garbage pile into the back of a truck.
My progress forward was careful. I took special care when crossing the chaotic intersections. New York City, where I lived, had many Pakistani taxi drivers. The morning’s walk was providing a vivid view of the traffic in which they’d learned to drive. Cars barely missed hitting pedestrians all the time, which never bothered the pedestrians. Traffic lights followed an inefficient pattern, allowing the flow to advance one direction at a time, while the other three waited. Stopped buses regularly blocked lanes. I navigated from a page in my guidebook, searching – but not finding – a street sign.
The mood on the streets felt uninviting. Staring at me continued. Was I breaking any social customs? Walking too fast? Exposing too much skin? Not smiling enough, myself? My shoes got lots of looks. Did anyone recognize the logo on my T-shirt: evite.com? The new economy felt very far away. I and the T-shirt (free advertising) were bringing it one step closer to Pakistan. I was an agent of globalization.
Standing next to the road, a guy was hawking newspapers. From under his arm he handed me one in English, sensing I’d say no to one in Urdu. Street smarts. This paper was called “The News.” I gave him twelve Rupees. Although this purchase was my first real human contact of the morning, I hurried away from it.
After an hour of meandering and squinting, I was within two blocks of the airline ticket office. I turned a corner. At the left edge of the sidewalk was a five-foot deep cement open sewer, two feet wide. At its bottom were plastic bags, rotting leaves, and black water. One false step over the edge would earn you a broken ankle, or broken skin with black goo seeping in to poison you, like an anti-personnel trap from World War I. Two young boys were pissing into this ditch, an insurer’s worst nightmare. I walked by, pretending not to notice, hoping to not feel a mist on my cheek. I toyed with the idea of giving one of them a slight push. I didn’t.
The airline ticket office was inside a walled-in compound. Two security guards smiled at me with yellow teeth. My mood lifted. They pointed towards a glass door. I walked in. It was a ticket office, but not the tickets-to-Gilgit ticket office. A cheery clerk told me to go back outside to find another door around the corner.
I passed the smiling guards again. They both pointed in the direction I was already walking.
Inside the tickets-to-Gilgit office, I booked my flight, but had to pay back in the first office.
I walked past the guards. They were even happier to see me, like the game (me shuttling between the two doors) had gotten fun for them too. They pointed. The exercise was very Alice in Wonderland.
Back in the first office, payment could be made by credit card. The price was 2,500 Rupees ($42 US.) While waiting for my card to be approved, I scanned the newspaper that had been folded under my arm for the past hour.
No Progress in Bomb Blast. The Police were not likely to discover who’d planted the bomb that had spooked me back in Bangkok.
Blast kills 7 in occupied Kashmir. ‘Occupied’ was the key word. Both India and Pakistan claim all or part of Kashmir. Why should you care? Because they both have nuclear weapons. Kashmir has inspired two wars and a consistent trickle of terror. Ten years ago, I met an Israeli woman who (with five friends) had been kidnapped in Kashmir – politically motivated; they escaped, but only after one was killed. On the newspaper’s front page, a color photo showed an Indian soldier with a hand-held mortar launcher, pointing right at you. The caption said Indian troops were preparing to attack Pakistan. Pakistan always blames India first, investigates later. India, in turn, blames Pakistan.
Enough politics. You’re bored.
My credit card was still being processed. Probably, on the other end of the line, in the high-technology States, one very skeptical employee was scrutinizing the billing request from Pakistan.
Boy killed, brother injured in Sukkur blast. The story was small, filler. I read. “Two brothers found a bomb look-like ball thing lying in bushes and started playing with it.” It occurred to me how common the word ‘blast’ was in the newspaper. Boys shouldn’t be playing with bomb look-like objects.
The credit card was approved.
To pick up my ticket, I walked outside, past the guards (more pointing), and back to the ticket-to-Gilgit office. The yellow-teethed guards and I were almost beyond smiling at each other every time, but the pointing would continue.
Later in the morning, I was in the market for an electrical adapter, so that my laptop could run on Pakistani electricity. Again, having a goal brightened my approach to the day.
My search led me to a neighborhood where all the shops sold auto parts. A man approached me who was missing his right arm; one cotton sleeve of his long shirt hung empty. He extended his left hand to shake. This required an exception to the rule about shaking only with the right (the clean hand). He was smiling. He was portly. He had one arm. He spoke English happily with a vocabulary of five – maybe ten – words. From my pocket I pulled out the AC adapter for my laptop. He gently took it from me and held it up like a glass of fine wine. I pointed to the flat plugs. “Adapter. For Pakistani style plug,” I said. I extended two fingers like a peace sign to give him a picture of what was needed. Hopefully, two extended fingers weren’t an obscene gesture in his culture.
A second man arrived – dressed as a security guard – to stand with us. He was given the adapter, and examined it like a customs official searching for cocaine or a bomb. They discussed in Urdu. I was sure neither of them knew a single thing that would help me, but they were both trying hard to help. I smiled at them like Barbara Walters patronizing a child interviewee.
The one-armed man pointed across the street, towards another auto parts shop, clearly not a place to find an adapter. I turned to him and carefully said, “electronic.”
“Ah! Electronic.” He at least understood that, probably. As a general rule, languages adopt English words for anything new or technical, rather than go through the unnecessary process of finding a local equivalent. Only the French resist. Globalization. The one-armed guy took me by the elbow so that we could stroll down the sidewalk together, like two country gentlemen. He’d found me first, after all, and had dibs on walking with the foreigner. I hoped we were at least not walking away from any electronics shops. The situation called some small talk.
“Germany?” he asked me.
“America.” Did I look German?
“Oh, American. New Yawk?”
“Yes, New York.” We’d found a connection. I’d have said yes even if my home had been Alaska.
He said, “my father in New Yawk.”
Taking a chance, I lifted my hands to simulate grabbing a steering wheel. Hopefully, his father wasn’t ambassador to the U.N. “He work taxi?”
“Yes.”
Whew! We arrived at the end of our walk, at the end of the block. He pointed forward across a curvy intersection. “Walk straight,” he said. His only hand sliced a line in the direction of a small road, “then turn right.” His hand waved left. Again, I imagined Alice in Wonderland. I, in pigtails and a plaid dress, was being guided by the rabbit in a top hat.
“Okay, thank you.” I smiled at him, radiating complete confidence in his directions. Crossing the road, I hummed “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” A pick-up truck came barreling at me, its horn a-blowing. I scooted out of the way, then skipped further towards the curb to avoid a three-wheel motor rickshaw. Much less concerning were the bicycles and bits of animal droppings I evaded like a game of dodge ball. Compared to the utter life-threatening mass of the merciless trucks, I was prepared to knock down a bicycle just to score one for the on-foot team.
It occurred to me to watch for any suspicious crates of grapes.
Mr. Mustard
By noon, the errands had been exhausted. My sky-blue New Balances entered
the quiet of the hotel’s courtyard. During the morning, I’d
gotten the hang of Pakistan, sorta, but all the talking and walking and
squinting had made me parched. Aside from a little morning tea, no liquid
had passed my lips since the flight from Bangkok, twelve hours earlier.
Sure, brushing your teeth with tap water was okay, but drinking it would
have been a one-way ticket to dysentery.
Near the front of the courtyard was an empty vendor stand where cool soft drinks were for sale. I paused, hoping that someone would see me, would see a customer, and come running to the rescue. Someone did. A cheerful guy in mustard-colored cotton appeared, galloping towards me.
“Hello, sir! Yes. What can I help you? You would like something drink?” His head nodded to the side as he spoke, like his neck was too loose.
“One Mirinda and one Pepsi.” He handed me one Mirinda and one Pepsi and one bottle of water. I poked some money at him.
“No. It’s okay. You pay when check out. You like everything, just later pay. Maybe have some lunch or some tea. I bring.”
How nice! I basked in Mustard Guy’s warmth and trust. He possessed a simple and understanding heart. I rubbed his honesty into my skin like coconut scented suntan lotion.
One hour later, I was planted in my room (having gotten used to its smell), shirt off, sweating, and typing. The door was open to allow air in, but not as an invitation to all passers-by. Without a knock, without a sound, Mustard Guy walked straight into my room. He caught sight of my computer and his eyes expanded.
“Oh, computer! You big man.” His tone was respectful. I felt like a colonialist. “Have big computer.”
I would explain that the laptop was a cheap, used model and worth only $250 (hardly worth stealing.) However, I realized that it was entirely worth stealing, worth a small fortune in Pakistan.
“You like some tea?” he said. He sensed my sugar level had dropped from the soft drinks, earlier.
Later, after two pots of tea, after never a knock or warning sound, Mr. Mustard appeared yet again. This time he handed me a menu. “You like something lunch?” Mr. Mustard was taking care of my every need. Chicken masala and chapati sounded good, but not without risk. I like my chicken skinless and boneless, tender slabs of white meat. The masala dish would likely have loose, flapping skin and cartilage and bits of chopped up bone.
Fifteen minutes later I heard the tray of food jangling outside my door, then the sound of some silverware dropping to the ground. A brief pause followed, then he walked in. I couldn’t tell if it was the knife or the fork or the spoon that had touched the floor. Rambo came to mind. To improve my odds of eating with clean utensils, I used only the spoon – and my right hand, of course.
It was the early evening. I’d spent all afternoon in the room, writing (this). Mr. Mustard walked in, silent, like a condiment-colored ninja. It was a surprise when he sat down. “Hello, my friend. How are you?”
This didn’t bode well.
He looked at me seriously, and was wearing a black Muslim skullcap. He’d just returned from prayers. “Hi.” His expression held nothing carefree or accommodating. Again he eyed my laptop. I felt conspicuously wealthy, uncomfortable. Daylight was fading and the room was growing dark; he turned on the harsh fluorescent tube. The room filled with x-ray clarity.
“You have everything is okay?” he asked.
“Yep. I maybe order dinner later.”
“Okay. You order eight, nine o’clock. No problem.”
A thick pause followed. Was he tired from a long day of bringing me tea, or just paying a social visit? I felt no friendship towards the guy; he’d been my waiter. Looking down and to one side, not straight at me, he spoke. “I working so much. Me one month pay only one thousand five hundred Rupees, only.” (That’s less than thirty dollars.) “Not enough.”
Mr. Mustard looked up at me, and pulled down his bottom lip to show his missing teeth; a gap ran from the front of his mouth back to his molars. “Cannot fix,” he said. “Since one week cannot eating some food, is big problem. You … you rich man, from strong country. Me? I too poor. Have something need, cannot.”
I knew what was coming.
“Some people give pay tip, some people not give.” He nodded his head to one side, loosely.
More pause ensued. This was awkward. He was looking at my laptop, sitting there, not talking, letting me stew in my own rich guilt. I had nothing good to say. You’re right. I’m rich (by your standards) simply for having the good fortune to be born to American parents.
Mr. Mustard spoke some more, repeating his self-deprecating tale. He wanted to work in Bangkok. I listened constructively. Bangkok was a bad place for him to go. An army of poor Thais was willing to work for one hundred bucks a month. Why should Thailand need a toothless Pakistani man?
“Some people can pay tip, others do not.”
Okay. I got the point. He wanted me to give him money. Handing him money right then would have been wrong. His guilt gun was working on me, but I couldn’t let him so obviously extort me for a handout. I’d grease his palm later – baksheesh – as if it were my own idea.
My memory searched for instances of struggle in my own life: four years of junior high school, my first job out of college, rejection from girls (once or twice). It hadn’t been a hard life, but rather a string of good fortune: a solid education, work opportunities, a safe and happy family, and the English language in my back pocket. A warm glow overcame me, then dissipated as I looked back a Mustard Guy.
Old, toothless Mustard Man sat like a mule, applying the pressure, prolonging my guilt. He eyed me, pitifully, wondering if I’d crack. Would I pay? Or would I summon a stone cold façade and thank him with a handshake?
What he was doing was uncool. It was unusual. He had invaded my living space to lay his pity trip on me. Were I in his place, would I do the same? I let the silence between us hang. My face turned to stone. I’d seen much worse than him.
An hour later, Mr. Mustard returned to pick up the dirty dishes from my dinner (I’d chosen chicken masala again). I stuffed two, one-hundred-Rupee notes into his hand. He gave profuse thanks. He practically kissed me on the lips. As soon as he was out the door I felt bad. I felt had. I knew he’d give that same speech to the next foreigner who passed through his hotel.
From outside in the street, I heard the sound of an ice cream truck’s music box playing Jingle Bells.
Fokker Over the Mountain
The next morning, at the Islamabad airport waiting to fly to Gilgit,
I was sitting in the departures area, yet again the only Westerner. A
polite man with a gray moustache approached me and asked if I wanted some
tea. Cautiously, I said I did. I paid him up front so as to avoid another
pity trip.
My guidebook described in detail the upcoming flight. The plane would be propeller-driven, an old Fokker from the 1960s. We would fly right over the summit of Nanga Parbat, the eighth highest mountain in the world. Bad weather – anything less than perfect – would result in a cancellation. The air was thin. The plane was small. The winds were scary. In summer, the book explained, the plane couldn’t be fully booked because Fokkers got less lift in warm air.
I stood looking out the window. A man in a brown uniform – an airport employee – was nearby. He looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. A tiny, propeller-driven plane with room for perhaps four passengers was parked on the tarmac. It was slightly bigger than a mini-van.
I pointed. “Is that the plane that flies to Gilgit.”
“Yes.” He flashed me a big, amused smile. “That is to Gilgit.”
Yikes! The little toy plane made me think of Tarzan and his parents crashing into Africa. I had to sit down.
It was not, however, the real plane to Gilgit. The real plane to Gilgit was considerably bigger.
We flew. The views were stunning. We passed directly over the mountaintop. I peered out the window at jagged rocks upon which no one had ever walked.
By late morning, I was in Gilgit. A friendlier Pakistan began showing itself to me. Personally, I like cities, but they are often not the best representatives of a country’s character. If I ever return to Islamabad, I’ll find a better hotel.