“How can we salvage this trip?” A crossroads in Pakistan

It’s a strange experience to travel to Pakistan and then, a week later, head to Cuba. It’s difficult to process two complicated countries. But there are worst problems to have than too many interesting things to think about.

Though Cuba was an amazing trip, I wasn’t done understanding Pakistan, so I picked up a copy of “The Nine Lives of Pakistan” by Declan Walsh and pushed my mind back there so I could complete the journey. Traveling does not stop when you get home. It continues in the thinking and talking.

There’s an image from Pakistan that I can’t get out of my mind. I saw one man. The sun was setting. It was snowing and it had been all day. We were in the mountains.

And this man was inside of an empty market stall, the metal door rolled up. Nothing for sale in there. He was by himself, sitting next to a little cooking fire. We made eye contact for a moment.

Then I noticed that all around the mountainside, people were lighting cooking fires. Smoke rose from inside the walls of compounds and men sat by themselves outside. We were driving back to our hotel in Quetta.

I’ve been turning that image, that glimpse that I caught from the car window, over and over in my mind since I saw it.

That moment stays with me because it felt like I saw inside for a second, behind the curtain. But I don’t fully understand what I saw. And for me that’s the theme of that whole trip to Pakistan.

The beginning and end of our trip were easy - visiting English speaking friends, many educated in the United States. They translated the culture for us and we sat in mixed company, the women speaking as freely as the men.

But Balochistan, the sparsely populated western region we came to visit, was harder to understand.

We started our trip with a visit to the Karachi Press Club. The journalist who gave us a tour presented us with a scarf with an ancient pattern that has become the mark of the Sindh region. We saw the podcast studio and stage with green screen and news desk for anyone to give a report. I looked at the room with four computers set aside for women to write.? ?

The club was a place for journalists to work and to socialize, but it was also something else. It was a place for people to protest outside and have their protests recorded. On the walls outside the gates were murals and graffiti about the people of Gaza, written in English.

We ended our trip at the Karachi Boat Club, a colonial remnant overlooking the mangrove shores of Chinnah Creek off the Arabian Sea, built in 1881 as a rowing club. Dark wood paneling. Members only. No photos allowed. Strict dress code. No cell phones.

These spaces felt familiar and the conversation was easy. We sipped chai and spoke freely and I was acknowledged.

Between bites of cake and sips of chai, I asked the table, “What does it mean to be Pakistani?”

The answers came pouring out.

It means something different to everyone. It means something if you are Pashtun, Punjab, or Baloch.

It means family values.

It means one word, “Resilient. If you know how much people had to do every day to survive, you wouldn’t wake up in the morning.”

It means dealing with hyper inflation and skyrocketing utility bills and food prices.

It means being engaged, where the recent election had a 50 percent turnout, where 60 percent of the country is younger than 30 and 10 million people were eligible to vote for the first time.

**

We arrived in Pakistan weeks after the election.

People had gone back to work after days of protests. Chief minister Sarfraz Bugti had been chosen and we were in Quetta on the day he was installed. He walked through the lobby of the Serena Hotel with his entourage and greeted everyone, including Earl.

We sat at a table in the corner, playing Ludo on a cardboard board our guide bought in the market after I said I wanted to learn to play.

We rolled our dice and moved around the board and the guide and driver relaxed into themselves as they became competitive and told jokes and laughed easily.

We passed the time in this way as we waited for permission to travel to nearby Ziarat in the mountains. We had already been denied permission to stay there overnight for our safety.

Then we got the word and headed over to the police station. They poured us tea and gave us chunks of raw sugar to place in our teeth as we drank, as people do in that area. A ceramic space heater glowed in the corner.

They smiled at Earl and asked where we were from and then introduced us to our guard, a man with an AK-47 who would ride in the front seat of our car.

As we drove into the mountains, before the snow began to fall, flags floated from every building and over the streets like prayer flags, but these were to advertise various political parties. Some had designs - the head of a lion - and some had the faces of local candidates.

This part of the world is war hardened and weather hardened.

But Japanese tourists come here in droves to see the cherry blossoms in the spring. Between the road and the mountains are rolling orchards. Cherries. Almonds. Apples. Plums.

Along the side of the road were makeshift huts, housing the latest mass of Afghan refugees.

They’ve been coming here since the Soviet invasion in the 1979, in waves. Some never leaving. In that first wave, they brought Afghan carpets and tourists would come to buy them at reduced prices. They are still for sale in shops in Quetta and Karachi. The number of refugees spiked again in 2021 after the Taliban takeover.

In late 2023, the Pakistan government announced that all undocumented Afghan refugees were being expelled. An estimated 1.4 million Afghans are living in Pakistan as registered refugees, according to The Associated Press. Those without paperwork were ordered to leave by Oct. 31. Police were told to arrest 10,000 a day. We were told that deadline was pushed and they were given an extra six months to leave.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the US gave $60 million to the regions of Pakistan hosting Afghan refugees in 2022.

In his book “The Nine Lives of Pakistan,” Declan Walsh writes, “The United States and Pakistan had been feuding and falling in love for decades. People often compared their tempestuous, co-dependent relationship to a bad marriage, but it was more accurately the worst kind of forced marriage - a product of shared interests rather than values, devoid of genuine affection and scarred by a history of dispute and betrayal.”

***

We were in the lobby of a hotel in Khuzdar, in central Balochistan. The police were outside and they were not letting us go out into the town. If we wanted to eat, we could order food.

And then came the news that the hike to Moola Chotak we planned for the next day - to walk up a canyon riverbed to a beautiful waterfall - was not possible because of the flooding.

Weather and security were turning our trip into a drive from hotel to hotel.

Our guide delivered the news. We would head to Quetta, then catch a flight back to Karachi a couple days earlier. He offered to take us around Karachi.

I started to tear up out of frustration. Why had we flown 26 hours and driven for days only to be kept in rooms and cars? How would we ever understand this place?

Earl and I went back to our room. The window looked out on the parking lot and the police posted outside. I wondered aloud, “How can we salvage this trip?”

Part of the plan was to take the Bolan Mail train for an hour and a half, just long enough to see the famous Bolan Pass. Then a car would meet us and take us to the airport for Karachi.

What if we took the train all the way - 25 hours from Quetta to Karachi?

The plane tickets had already been purchased and couldn’t be refunded, our guide said when I walked back out into the lobby to ask if it was possible.

That’s OK, I said. Taking the train will make me happy.

That’s what I want more than anything, he said. I’ll have news by the morning.

From Post and Courier Travel:

Next week, we will be hosting an event at the Charleston Library Society to talk about travel and our upcoming trip to Morocco. Please come by. The food will be traditional Moroccan fare - Khobz bread, lamb hand pies, grilled chicken skewers seasoned with lemon and herbs, marinated olives and goat cheese, and Zaalouk dip. I’ve been reading Paul Bowles to put me in the mood. The event is free. 6-8 p.m. Monday, April 8, at the Charleston Library Society, 164 King St. Here are more details: https://tickets.postandcourier.com/e/post-and-courier-travel-launch-party-morocco/tickets?aff=cityspark