Part I
The White Mosque’s call to prayer nudged me awake as it echoed through the empty bazaars splaying from Regal Chowk like bent spokes. There could be no more fitting way to begin the day. The sound of the call to prayer embodied everything I didn’t know or understand about this exotic place, and the thrill that I experienced in that brief moment of reflection was the very thing that brought me all this way to Pakistan.
I stumbled out of bed and across the roof deck to the “sky bath”, filled a bucket with water and paused, to reconsider, before dumping the first scoop over my head. The cold water jolted my body awake and left me tingling with warmth from within. I threw on a tan shalwar kameez and cinched the baggy trousers with a cotton waist string.
Downstairs, I always felt a pinch of guilt waking up Azir to let me out, and would hesitate for a moment before rousing him with a heavy whisper. If I caught him in the middle of a dream, he would thrust out of his bed in a state of disorientation, requiring several minutes to collect himself. There were many intriguing characters at the Regal hotel, but it was my friendship with Azir that I valued most. Belonging to the small Kalash tribe of northern Pakistan, Azir was a long way from home, and his struggle resonated with me. But the resentment of Islamic culture that festered in Azir, while amusing, was tragically ironic. As he removed the padlock from the door and I departed toward the street, he offered commentary on my own irony:
“Mr. Peter, you are looking like Muslim man in shalwar kameez, why you are not looking strong like English man with pant-shirt? And the beard should be full shaving, Peter, not looking like mullah –”
“OK, Azir, we will talk about that later, I have to get to work now.”
Outside the hotel, past the chai-wallah, the men at the flower stall had begun cutting their bouquets of roses, so I proceeded on with confidence. Being one of Lahore’s landmark intersections, Regal Chowk is a popular venue for demonstrations and political rallies. If anything disagreeable were in the forecast, the flower stall would shut down and serve as my cue to stay inside.
Along Mall Road, Lahore’s most prominent avenue of stately British architecture and urban greenery, I made my way to the rickshaw stand adjacent to the White Mosque. Approaching the yellow rickshaw at the head of the queue, I introduced myself to Dawood Sb (“Mr. Dawood”) who, in the coming weeks, would become a trusted friend and host. Hailing from Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, Dawood Sb is a Pashtun man whose brethren spawned the Taliban movement across the border in Afghanistan. Dawood Sb and I didn’t have any formal agreement for my morning commute, yet he never missed a single day delivering me to work.
The rickshaw rides to and from work were the highlight of my day. From Regal Chowk we drove south down Temple Road, which is one of the busiest neighborhoods in Lahore where people, vehicles and livestock converge on narrow streets in absolute chaos. The diversity of obstacles and near collisions you encounter racing through these bazaars could easily double as the set of an action film. As a foreigner it’s tempting to deduce that Pakistan lacks driving rules altogether, but this is not the case. There is a hierarchy on the road, whereby the larger your vehicle, the more dominance you assert over others. As a pedestrian, it is critical to understand that you have no rights, and no vehicle will ever yield to you, not even a donkey.
In Dawood Sb’s rickshaw, there was no mistaking that you were in his custody as a guest, and he took personally any attempted breach of his hospitality. At traffic lights, beggars with filthy infants slung over their shoulder would frequently approach us. I have no idea what Dawood Sb would say to these people on my behalf, but he did so in a very calculated tone with his arm placed across the door, and never had to repeat himself. As a veteran rickshaw driver of 30 years, Dawood Sb also employed the hobby of chastising other motorists for their incompetence. These exchanges took an aggressive posture, but were harmless and became an ongoing source of entertainment.
I’ve often questioned the substance of such relationships, where you spend an hour every day with someone, know basic facts about them, but don’t share a common language. Without the benefit of conversation, other forms of communication assume greater importance, and Dawood Sb and I got to know each other through our actions and body language. Central to our relationship was my investment of faith with Dawood Sb, and his supervision of my wellbeing, which required no explanation.
Temple Road terminates at its southern end by joining Jail Road at Quartaba Chowk, which recently became known as the sight of the dramatic shooting of two ISI agents by “Raymond Davis”, a contract security officer for the CIA. In the annals of espionage blunders, this one was the stuff of movies. The climax of tension during Davis’s custody occurred during my first two weeks in Pakistan, and to drive past the scene of the shooting on my way to work was a daily reminder of my delicate existence.
The day after Davis was released, word spread of a demonstration planned after Friday prayer on Mall Road at Regal Chowk, just steps from my hotel. Steeped in anticipation, this was the event I had dreaded. Several journalists arrived at the hotel to cover the event for international news agencies. There was a German writer, a Spanish photojournalist, a French videographer, and a Dutch reporter. That morning we were hanging out on the roof deck and one of the reporters began to rehears a “fake-live” dispatch on the “inflammatory situation in Lahore”. Once ready, he climbed onto the roof of the sky bath with his video camera on a tripod, and delivered his speech while standing in a collared shirt and underwear.
The protest was peaceful and consisted of only a few hundred people. As the journalists returned to the hotel in the afternoon, they made no effort to hide their disappointment at the lack of action.
“Hey guys, you’re back! How were the protests?”
“Terrible day. Nothing happening here so we’re heading back to Islamabad.”
Alas, the last story any newspaper editor wanted to run was a nonviolent demonstration of free speech in Pakistan.
Part II
After a long day at work, returning to a crowd of friendly faces at the hotel felt like a college dorm. On this particular day, we had planned a falcon feeding so Phillip and I went on a quick run down Temple Road to buy a half-kilo of diced chicken. Phillip and his wife were Swiss travelers who recently overlanded through Iran into Baluchistan, where they made national headlines after being arrested for lacking the requisite paperwork. As it is, few tourists visit Pakistan these days, and it’s an even scarcer number that make it to Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan and headquarters of the Afghan Taliban. When I first heard this story I asked Phillip if he thought traveling through Baluchistan was a good idea:
“Beautiful place, Baluchistan! Definitely worth a visit... Yeah, no problems really, the police are very friendly.”
Back on the roof deck, we lured the falcons with a few warm-up throws. In short order they gathered into a swarm of several hundred birds, and the aerial acrobatics that ensued were a terrific sight. The falcons would accelerate towards the roof at alarming speeds, arresting their dive at the last moment and often brushing their wing tips against the walls of the building. In local lore, feeding the birds was a way to deliver sacrifice to God, but for us it was purely childish entertainment.
On nights when a good crowd had amassed at the Regal hotel, the owner would arrange for his favorite Sufi bands to play on the roof deck. Nadeem Sb was somewhat of a legend among travelers who had come through Lahore over the past decade, as pretty much all of them stay at the Regal. Having lived with Benazir Bhutto for several years and served as her media advisor while she was Prime Minister, Nadeem Sb was never short for a good story. Perhaps it was his disillusionment following Benazir’s assassination that led him to open the Regal, which provides a distraction from the quandary of politics in Pakistan.
It was a full house that night with the two Swiss, the two Japanese, a Belgian couple, two German NGO workers, and a French couple. The acoustics of unamplified live music makes everything else pale in comparison. For me, there have been few times when I have truly let go of my self-awareness and lived in the moment, and this was one of them. The style of Sufi music was very unusual to me, but the drum beats, the accordion, and the lead singer’s powerful voice owned everyone’s attention, and we danced for several hours beneath a smattering of Punjabi stars.
That night I learned an important lesson about Pakistani hospitality. After the band finished we were sprawled out on the roof deck when I complimented one of the band members on the wool vest he wore over his shalwar kameez. The vest turned out to be an article of considerable personal sentiment, but my complimenting it in public meant that he felt obliged to offer it to me as a gift. To convey respect, I had to accept his gift, but felt very uncomfortable doing so. What I did was, I graciously accepted the gift, and the next day I thanked him for letting me borrow his vest, and returned it – which presented an honorable exit for us both.
Mornings after a big night at the Regal, Azir and I would head out to get yoghurt for everyone. Crossing Mall Road we passed the electronics bazaar and turned down Ice Cream Street, whose namesake was the handful of milkshake parlors at its entrance. The yoghurt stall was at the edge of the lamps bazaar where it met the hardware bazaar, and there were also fruit vendors, men selling goats, and other food stalls. I also needed a shave and Azir brought me to a barber down one of the alleyways.
The two kids running the place were jovial and flamboyant. They didn’t speak English but I was pretty sure one of them was referring to me as a “beautiful man”. I leaned over to Azir and asked if these men were gay. Azir responded, “No, no, Mr. Peter, nothing like this. These are Muslim boys, their fathers are Muslim too. They are not being gay or something, they are just talking too much. They are very nice boys.”
As if on queue, less than a minute later, a third man walked in and one of the barbers declared this man to be his “wife”. I retorted that it was impossible for a man to be someone’s wife, and the barber, to illustrate his point, reached his arm around the man and they proceeded to make out in front of all of us. At first I was in a state of shock but then burst out laughing along with Azir and the other barber. It was the last thing I expected to see in Pakistan, and reminded me how little I really understood this place.
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