It's All About Cars

"A démarche is a formal diplomatic representation of one government’s official position, views, or wishes on a given subject to an appropriate official in another government or international organization. Démarches generally seek to persuade, inform, or gather information from a foreign government. Governments may also use a démarche to protest or object to actions by a foreign government." State Department Diplopedia

Démarche can also be used as a verb, as in "I have to démarche the GOP (Government of Pakistan) today regarding our dissatisfaction with...". It is almost never used familiarly, as in "after de soldiers line up, demarche".

Back in November I put on my best suit and delivered our notification to "persuade" the GOP to release a small number of vehicles they were holding in Customs impound and to "inform" the GOP that these vehicles were needed, urgently, by the U.S. Mission in Pakistan for the security of our people. The vehicles which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was dragging its heels on releasing were all 'hard' cars or fully armored vehicles. I delivered my notice by hand to the Deputy Chief of Protocol, had a very nice cup of tea with her, chatted with her about her years as an undergraduate student at MIT and received her assurance that she completely understood our request and would act on it promptly. Then she left to go on Hajj for three weeks, during which time no one was empowered to act on her behalf.

I became aware of her return when I received a notice from the GOP which stated that our vehicles could not be released because it was against GOP rules to "sell these vehicles on the open market". I assured her that we would never dispose of our armored vehicles on the open market and was informed, via an official diplomatic note, that "the French had recently tried to sell an armored vehicle on the local economy". Excusé Moi! I immediately wrote, in reply, that under U.S. law we can only dispose of our 'hard' cars by a) sending them back to the U.S., b) dropping them into the ocean, or c) blowing them up. Pakistan, a nation notorious for selling nuclear weapons to the highest bidder, is concerned that a few armored Toyotas will end up in the hands of ruffians.

I was next asked to provide "proof" that we had disposed of our older vehicles appropriately. You can imagine my shock and disappointment when I learned that my word as a gentleman was not sufficient. We are given permission by the State Department to destroy these vehicles and we blow them up. We happen to videotape this process and I was able to give the Deputy Chief of Protocol a copy of the cd.

Time passed. More vehicles arrived at the port in Karachi and joined the original batch in impound.

I had several more meetings with the Deputy Chief of Protocol and her assistant and was assured each time that they were completely sympathetic and were working diligently to get our vehicles released. More vehicles arrived. I received a very strange note requiring us to declare the type of weaponry installed in these vehicles. We issued a diplomatic note in reply assuring the GOP that these were "unarmed armored" vehicles and received a demand to describe the level of protection offered by the armoring down to the NATO calibre of bullet the armor would stop. And when they had run out of absurd questions to ask, they did what any self-respecting bureaucracy would do...they passed the paperwork to another ministry. All they needed, they explained, was a No Objection letter from the Ministry of the Interior and they would immediately issue the needed approvals.

It took me almost a month to track down the desk in the Ministry of the Interior where the paperwork for our now thirty-three vehicles was being ignored, another couple of weeks to get an appointment with the Joint Secretary for Security and a one hour meeting to convince him to release the vehicles. Smiles, handshakes all around and a small Happy Dance in the parking lot. A week later, after phoning the Joint Secretary every day, I was told that he had passed the paperwork up the chain of command to the Additional Secretary and had recommended that "everything be approved".

From there it went to the Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, who declined to meet with me but assured me, through an intermediary, that he had forwarded our request to his superior, Rehman Malik, the Advisor to the Minister of the Interior, and as soon as Malik returned from London he would "quite probably" approve our request and let us have our vehicles. After all, hadn't we recently given the Ministry of the Interior 600 brand new Toyota double cab pick-ups (which, incidentally, never spent a single day in impound)?

Mr. Malik is described in Wikipedia as "the person responsible for the security of Benazir Bhutto" so I hoped he'd be somewhat sympathetic to our request to allow us to protect ourselves since the whole Bhutto thing didn't work real well. His level of concern and sympathy was expressed by stating that, "if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will issue me a No Objection letter to your request then I will issue them a No Objection letter to your request". Huh?

And so it goes.

A team is coming out from DC in June to give the motor pool drivers a two day course in security awareness driving. We use older unarmored vehicles for this course and treat them harshly. In my motor pool inventory I have six or so cars that have long since outlived their usefulness and are perfect for this course. The only concern over using these cars is that they haven't been driven for quite some time. So, one by one I've been driving them home at night and the next day I bring them to the auto shop and let the mechanics work on them. The other day I was driving home in an old Honda and I was within sight of my house when I got pulled over for speeding. The officer asked to see my license and I gave it to him. He asked me if I knew how fast I was going and I told him that I wasn't paying attention, but I guessed I was going too fast since he had stopped me. Then he asked me where I lived and I pointed to my house. "Awwww," he said, "you almost made it home!" He was so moved by my bad luck that he just gave me a warning and drove away.



Among the old beaters that I'm trying to get into shape for the Security Course are several Hondas, a Mitsubishi and my personal favorite, a KIA Spectra. The KIA is metallic pink and looks like the car awarded to Mary Kay's least successful salesperson.

An acquaintance from the Peace Corps showed up in Islamabad yesterday. He left Bulgaria last Fall, traveled overland through your various 'Stans and arrived in Pakistan through the mountain passes from China. He has traveled through parts of the country that we are not allowed to go into with armored vehicles in convoys. As one of my friends put it, "he's hitchhiked through Hunza and I can't go to the KFC". However, to be fair, by tradition the KFC in Islamabad is the first thing burned to the ground during riots. Traditions are important in every culture.

Inspired by this example of adventurism and being the rebel that I am, I ordered up an armored vehicle and drove across the street from my house to Said Pur Village. There are three things that are interesting about Said Pur Village. First, it is currently being renovated as a 'model' village for tourists to visit; second, it has the mosque that calls me to prayer at times when I am least inclined to pray; third, it has a fully functional goat market.







As you can see, Said Pur Village will be a charming little place to visit once it's finished. Depending on your own personal perspective, the Goat Market may or may not add to that charm.






The government buildings along Constitution Avenue are truly impressive and, when the army isn't out in force, it's possible to grab a shot or two of them.


The Supreme Court of Pakistan


The Prime Minister's Palace

My expedition to the Said Pur tourist village has left me feeling so adventurous that I am thinking of swinging by KFC for dinner. I'll be sure to wear my "Free the I'bad 33" tee shirt.

Cat Wrangler

The flag carriers at the Wagah Crossing.

Our Embassy diplomats have many important reasons to travel to Lahore. That ancient and fascinating city is the political capitol of the Punjab, the traditional home of the Army's officer corps and the ancestral fiefdom of Nawaz Sharif, whose PML-N party is forming a coalition government with Benazir Bhutto's PPP. Our Political Section, therefore, is often required to meet in Lahore with one dignitary or another to solidify relationships and practice diplomacy. The folks from the Economic Section are frequently called upon to fly down to better gauge the pulse of the Pakistani economy in this center of commerce second in importance only to Karachi. They regularly meet there with Pakistan's captains of industry. Our Public Diplomacy people go there because Lahore is the cultural heart of the country and a prime location for news and media outlets. Cultivating these vital media resources is an important means of getting our message out to the population. So, many of our diplomats are in the position of having to travel to Lahore to better do their jobs. The fact that Lahore is also the acknowledged center of Pakistani cuisine and home to most of Pakistan's best restaurants is purely coincidental.

I went to Lahore last week to deliver a cat.

Admittedly, this doesn't rank as a seminal moment in diplomatic history but the cat and its owner appreciated the effort and it was the only excuse I could come up with to finagle an 'official' trip to Lahore. The cat is the pet of a diplomat who left Islamabad suddenly last year, too suddenly to arrange to take the cat with her. She left her pet with friends and contacted us recently to ask us to ship it to her new post. The best way to get the cat to her was to send it on a flight from Lahore and the only way to get it to Lahore was to send it down by car. I decided that if I had to send a motor pool vehicle to Lahore for a cat, I was going along for the ride.

The old Grand Trunk Road runs from Peshawar at the Khyber Pass, by Islamabad, through Lahore, through Delhi and on, all the way to Bangladesh. Between Islamabad and Lahore it is in very good condition and goes right through the picturesque towns of Gujranwala, Gujrat and Jhelum as well as many small villages and roadside markets. It's a slice of history resurfaced in macadam. We are, of course, prohibited from driving down the Grand Trunk Road and are required, instead, to take the Motorway. The Motorway is a six lane divided highway the equal of any interstate in the US and every bit as boring. The cat seemed annoyed too at not being allowed to drive on the fabled Grand Trunk Road and expressed its displeasure most of the way down by making very loud cat noises. At one point the driver said, "Sir, I think your cat is dying". "Possibly, but it's not my cat", was all I could think of to say. The cat managed to not die on the trip and I saw it safely into the hands of the shippers before I began my tour of Lahore.

The Grand Trunk Road crosses the Pakistan-India border just outside of Lahore in a town called Wagah which has the distinction of being the only open border between the two countries. Each night at around sundown, Honor Guards from each country close the gates and lower their respective flags in a carefully choreographed ceremony.



Our Consulate in Lahore had made arrangements for me to attend the ceremony that night and I went out to Wagah in an armored vehicle with a full police escort. I showed my ID to the military guards surrounding the spectator's area and was escorted into the grandstands built around the Wagah gate. They took me past all the stadium seats and then past the rows of VIP seats right up to the VVIP seats which were virtually next to the crossing gate itself. My escort from the Consulate and I were the only two people in this section and I was pretty sure someone had made a mistake. No sooner had we chosen our seats from among the twenty or so empty chairs when, sure enough, a soldier came up and asked us to move. Then he moved us to the VVIP seats on the opposite side of the road so we would have a better angle for taking pictures! To this day I still wonder who they thought I was.



The ceremony begins with flag carriers running up and down the road between the two sets of grandstands leading the crowd in cheers, exactly like a college football game. They wave their flags and shout, "PAK..I..STAN" and the crowd roars back, "ZIN..DA..BA" which means, 'long live'. And just across the border Indian flag carriers are leading their crowd in equally patriotic cheers. All the while each side is playing pop music on loudspeakers set to maximum volume and soldiers are wandering here and there. This goes on for thirty to forty minutes before the actual border crossing ceremony begins. The official ceremony starts when the Pakistani Honor Guard comes down the road towards the gate (the mirror image of what's happening on the Indian side) and the crowd goes wild. These men are chosen from one particular regiment and must be at least six and one half feet tall. They march aggressively towards the gate, stamp their boots in greatly exaggerated movements, scowl ferociously and shake their fists at their counterparts on the Indian side, who are behaving in exactly the same manner.



After quite a bit of martial posturing on both sides war is narrowly avoided by the strategic withdrawal of the belligerents and decorum is restored. At sunset, with bugles blowing, the flags are lowered in unison, folded with great respect and escorted on each side back to the barracks. The two senior members of the Honor Guards meet in the center of the road salute and give each other one crisp up and down handshake, then the gates are closed for the night and the ceremony is over. It's a truly wonderful spectacle and I highly recommend it if you're ever in this part of the world.



On the domestic front, I decided I'd had enough fun having a housekeeper and it was time to let my guy go. When he shows up he works at my house on Tuesday and Friday afternoons and does some light cleaning, the laundry including any necessary ironing and cooks dinner if I remember to defrost any food. Unfortunately, he seems to miss work more often than he comes and doesn't ever quite get everything done when he does grace me with his presence. Laundry is left in the washing machine or the vacuuming isn't done or if he's cooked, the kitchen looks like a food bomb exploded on the stove. In fact, it seemed to me that the only thing he does with any efficiency at all is ask for more money and he does that all the time.

So I drove home early on Friday to let him know his services were no longer required at Casa Gemmell. "Saqib," I would say, "I've decided that I don't need a housekeeper/cook and even though today is your last day, I'm going to pay you through the end of the month." I was fully prepared for some whining and even some pleading. I knew he would bring up his wife, his sickly mother and his three small kids, I was prepared to remind him that I was not responsible for his family and that if he had done a better job I wouldn't be letting him go. I was prepared for every argument. I was not prepared for the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Somehow the phrase, "I don't need a housekeeper/cook" came out sounding suspiciously like, "You can BAKE!"

Saqib's new title is Cook/housekeeper. We've agreed that he will cook enough food to last me until his next work day and that he will leave the kitchen spotlessly clean. If he doesn't have time to do the laundry or ironing, I'll use the dry cleaner and I can always run a vacuum over the rugs once in awhile if he can't get to it. His genuine gratitude towards me for not firing him was quite moving and he ended our conversation by asking for more money.

Summer is the busy season at Embassy Islamabad because most of our transfers in and out of Post take place then. I'll be kept hopping for the next couple of months looking after the Motor Pool, Shipping and Housing. My colleague Lita is responsible for Housing, but she's moving on to her next Post this month and her replacement won't be here until the middle of June so I'll pick up Housing in the interim. The workload will be heavy but I find it interesting so I'll survive. It's beginning to heat up now and days of 100 plus degree temperatures are just around the corner. I was given the chance to move into a brand new house on a quieter street, but my place suits me and all my flowers have bloomed and the new place doesn't have a yard. I have green parrots and crested woodpeckers and scarlet hummingbirds in my trees. I have trees! The new house has a jacuzzi tub and a glass shower. I'll leave them for the next guy.

I have company coming for dinner tonight. I'm serving duck l'orange, twice baked potatoes with cheddar cheese, a vegetable dish that is a mouthwatering combination of fresh veggies and spices and some kind of baked apple thing for dessert. I'd better go now because I have to clean up the kitchen before my guests arrive.

Random Bits & Pieces

I have bought some things since I've been here. Five carpets, four camel skin lamps, three tables, two pieces of old brass and one set of Multan pottery. I am assured, primarily by those who sell these things, that I've gotten incredible bargains on them all. Each of the carpets was purchased at the vendor's shop and was selected from the hundreds of samples he'd unrolled for my inspection.



The four camel skin lamps were an impulse purchase made during a Vendors Day on the Embassy compound. As their name indicates, they are made from camel skin that has been shaped, then hardened with shellac and painted. There is no subtlety in this artwork and should I ever decide to open a bordello, four of the lamps stand ready now to light the bawdy rooms.




The three tables, a coffee table and two end tables, are made of old carved windows fitted with legs and covered with glass. The furniture maker also inlaid some brass scrollwork around the edges for an effect that I like. I had a choice of having them finished with a dark stain or left unstained and oiled and I chose the unstained and oiled option.




I bought the two pieces of brass when they were grey-brown with age and dirt. The vendor cleaned them and polished them and they look very nice, but I probably wouldn't have bought them if I hadn't seen them looking all old and nasty.





Multan is a city in central Pakistan where they make pottery. Samples were brought up to the Embassy and I picked out a pattern I liked and ordered a set of dishes. About six weeks later, my pottery arrived packed in a flimsy cardboard box tied up with yarn. I managed to get it home without breaking anything and opened the box. Inside, my seventy-eight pieces of hand thrown, hand-painted Multan pottery were packed in Pakistan's most plentiful resource, dirt. It took the better part of a day to get it all sorted out and washed and then another couple of hours to clean up the entryway to my house.




My tables have long since soaked up the original application of oil so I went back to the furniture shop to ask if I could buy some and oil them up again myself. I learned that they use plain old cooking oil, "like olive oil?" I asked. "Sure, but that's very expensive, we just use any cheap cooking oil." Today I'll re-oil my tables with some inexpensive sunflower oil and we'll see. My concern is that I'll be reminded of french fries each time I walk by them.

My house and yard are receiving the Phase III security upgrade. The walls around the property have been raised to a height of approximately ten feet and topped with long steel spikes. Concertina/razor wire has been added to the spikes on the wall in the backyard and the front gates to my driveway have been replaced with taller ones made from a much heavier gauge steel. All the windows in my house have had heavy steel grids welded across them and my wooden doors are being replaced with solid core steel. To get into the Embassy, you have to pass through delta barriers and 'man traps' and I'm half expecting those to appear in my driveway soon. If the phrase 'man traps' misleads you into picturing alluring young women in silk shalwar kamisses beckoning you forward, I'm sorry to have to tell you that they're a series of gates that open and close in sequence rather than simultaneously and can thereby trap a man trying to run through an open gate onto the compound. Even without these, my house is more secure that it ever was and I feel perfectly safe in it.

The flowers have bloomed and the yard looks great. My gardener has done a terrific job and I enjoy sitting on my front porch with a cold drink, smoking a cigar, looking at my flowers, reading a book and watching the birds fly through the trees. The only negative to this peaceful way of passing a Sunday afternoon is that there is a type of wasp, the size of a small airplane, that seems to be attracted to men sitting quietly on their porches. The first time I saw one of these beasts was when it landed on my book. When I yelled, the guards came running up to see what was wrong. I pointed the wasp out to them and they said it is a very dangerous type and very aggressive. I told them to shoot it. Apparently, they are more mature than I am and one of them killed it with his sandal.





At work I have been awarded the position of Parking Czar. We have 134 legitimate parking spaces on the compound and two parking lots just outside the walls that hold more than 600 additional vehicles. More than half the 134 on-compound spaces are reserved for one VIP or another which leaves roughly 60 temporary spots for the masses to use. On any given day there are anywhere from 150 to 200 vehicles scattered around the compound because anyone with a red (diplomatic) license plate can bring that vehicle through the gates. My solution is to issue exactly 134 on-compound parking passes and restrict access to only those vehicles exhibiting them. The powers-that-be are unanimous on two points A) my plan will work and B) I will be the most hated man in town once it's implemented. Perhaps that's why I'm getting the security upgrades done on my house. As with most things to do with the Department of State, where status is everything, to the great unwashed there is status in having a delta barrier lowered and the man-traps opened to allow them to park in the inner sanctum. The parking lots are guarded, fenced and barricaded, but they are not on-compound and require a walk of ten or fifteen yards to the pedestrian entrance of the compound. When the 134 spaces are filled, vehicles are currently left in fire lanes, in the motor pool area, against the warehouse, blocking driveways and over paths. Vehicles have been left in temporary parking spaces since the Eisenhower administration and would probably fall apart if the dirt were ever removed from them. After the permits have been issued, any vehicle found parked illegally will have one of my forklifts positioned with its blades under the chassis. The owner can then come and find me and wait while I locate the keys to the forklift and move it. I like to think of it as a "US Embassy Islamabad boot". The fun and games begin next week.

In a recent bombing that made international news one woman was killed and several of my friends and colleagues were badly injured. Our already restricted movements have, understandably, been further curtailed as our security measures have been tightened. A delegation of elected officials expressed considerable annoyance at not being allowed to wander through the markets to go shopping and even questioned our nerve. It is my unassailable belief that we could elect monkeys to replace some of our members of Congress without suffering any noticeable decline in the level of competence of that august body. Our people are recovering from their injuries in hospitals abroad.

The weather is getting warmer now and the Embassy pool is open. We also have a brand new Cardio Gym with state of the art treadmills, bikes and stair-steppers. I've got to begin getting some exercise one of these days so I'm thinking seriously of lying by the pool with a cold drink and watching my colleagues go in and out of the Cardio Gym. I think I'll use my on-compound parking permit to get a spot near the pool.

La Dolce Vita

The elections have been held, the current government has been voted out of power and has accepted the results of the polls, there was virtually no violence before, during or after the voting and the Devil is wearing long johns and earmuffs.

By 'virtually no violence' I, of course, mean by Pakistani standards. Naturally there were bombings in all the usual places, Quetta, Swat and the FATA, but these appear to have been unrelated to the elections specifically and were, rather, just life in balmy (please forgive the terrible pun) Pakistan. The local newspaper also carried a report of a wedding and the "three young women who were killed, on this happy occasion, while getting in the way of many celebratory firing of weapons". Rahman, you silly man, point your rifle towards the sky like the rest of us, you rascal!

In other news, an aunt and her brother kidnapped her nephew and "after torturing him for several days, slaughtered him in a terrible way due to her grudge against his father. They were only discovered as being the culprits after her brother let the cat out of the bag during dinner". Please pass the roti and daal and, by the way, we slaughtered young Amir this morning in a most terrible way, oops, I mean the curry is very good don't you agree?

Finally, in another part of the country a boy was eaten by wolves. "The young fellow and his mates were in the woods when they were set upon by a herd of wolves. While most of the boys made a good escape, Mohammad Saqib a slow boy, failed to get away and was eventually nibbled to bits by the beasts. When the villagers ran to the woods to rescue him, they were able to find only his clothing and some small parts of the boy". Somehow, being "nibbled to bits" makes it sound almost like fun...but I digress.

The elections were a huge success for Pakistan and represent the first time in the country's history that a government has been changed through a peaceful democratic election and not by military intervention. There are few claims of foul or vote rigging and, more importantly, no rioting or loss of life. For those of us who live here it's a bit strange, wonderful, but strange.

Several international organizations, citing security concerns, opted out of observing the elections. Our Embassy, however, fielded over twenty teams throughout Pakistan and observed polling stations from Karachi to Peshawar. The Embassy teams from Islamabad travelled as far south as Bahawalpur and PakPattan. Our responsibility was simply to observe the proceedings and make note of any obvious irregularities. Again, things went quite smoothly and we were allowed access to everything we wanted to see and reported very few concerns with the "Free and Fair" elections. Most importantly, to us, all of our teams went out, did their jobs and returned safely.

Leading up to the elections the country was overrun by representatives of the international media. You couldn't kick over a buffalo chip without two or three of them scurrying into the sunlight. Every night they stared solemnly into their cameras and predicted, with grave sincerity, massive bloodshed and loss of life in the days to come. With glycerin tears in their eyes they prayed that Pakistan might somehow avoid the inevitable upcoming tragedy and ratings boost. They oozed sincerity.

Surprisingly, the positive news of Pakistan's peaceful elections has received comparatively little coverage and the media have evaporated like a distasteful odor in a strong breeze.

I worked in the 'Command Center' and so didn't get to volunteer to take part on an observer team because I was tasked with keeping track of our people in the field. By 'people' I mean, of course, vehicles. As I explained to our drivers in all our pre-election briefings, "We can always get more diplomats, we can't replace the vehicles. Take care of those cars!". Here are a couple of photos of the Command Center which, admittedly, aren't half as interesting as photos of polling stations would have been.


We were in constant communication with all of our teams all day long for the entire three day exercise.


The cities represented by the clocks on the wall behind me are the direct result of some fairly intensive coin flipping.


This was the cake we had at the Motor Pool 'wheels up' Party.


My guys. The Islamabad U.S. Embassy Motor Pool team.

On a personal note, I submitted my bid list for my next post last Friday. In descending order, I asked for Rome, Athens, Madrid, Paris, Budapest, fifteen other cities and Suva, Fiji as a twenty-first choice. The way it works is that 'High Equity' bidders get assigned first and then everyone else gets what's left. My year in Islamabad qualifies me as a 'High Equity' bidder and I was fairly confident that I would get a post in my top ten, maybe even my top five if I got lucky. With no disrespect intended towards Suva, Fiji, I didn't really expect to have to accept my twenty-first choice and I only put it on the list as a lark.

The postings were announced this morning for the 'High Equity' group and, in recognition of a lifetime of sin and as penance, the Foreign Service has assigned me to Rome for my next job. The Church is already dusting off their "How To Do One Of Those Exorcism Things" books and many clergy are praying for my immediate reassignment to anyplace else. I'll go back to FSI this coming November to begin learning Italian (how tough can it be, I can already say "espresso") and then head off to Rome in August 2009. This will be a two year assignment, with one year as a Consular Officer and the second as an Economic Officer. The only problem with being told about my onward assignment this far in advance is that whenever anyone asks me about things I'm responsible for now, I just look at them and think, "Ok, but what does this have to do with Rome?"

You know, Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were raised by a wolf. Ironic isn't it? I wonder if she ever nibbled on them? So, until next time, Ciao Bella.

Monkeys and Other Stuff

My hike in the Margalla Hills.

We are fairly restricted in what we can do with our free time here in Islamabad. We cannot leave the city limits on our own, walk anywhere, take any form of public transportation or gather in groups of more than eight. We can, however, drive personal vehicles, go to restaurants on the RSO's approved list, gather in groups of eight or less, hike the approved trails in the Margalla Hills and shop. This week I took advantage of the freedoms we're permitted.

Anywhere I've ever rented a car I've had to sign multiple forms guaranteeing that I would basically purchase the company a new car if the one I'd rented was so much as scratched. I've had to hand over my driver's license, credit card, two valid forms of id and several telephone numbers. Then, reluctantly, the clerk would give me the keys to a car that was, inevitably, not the one I had reserved. The car I had reserved at $19.99/day with unlimited mileage would always be unavailable so I'd be forced to take one for 'only' $29.99/day. By the time they finished adding on all the surcharges, insurance, and fees, I never got away with paying less than $100/day.

I rent a car now on the weekends and this is how it works here. It's delivered to my door on Friday night and picked up on either Sunday night or Monday morning. Whether I'm home or not on Friday, a car is left in my driveway. When I'm finished with it on Sunday I call the company and leave the keys with my guard. Sometime between Sunday night and Monday noon the car is collected. Then when I have time, I take a motor pool vehicle and run over to the rental office to pay my bill. I'm charged $22/day all inclusive. I don't sign anything and I pay in cash when I have time. Having a car on the weekend enables me to join a group of 'eight or less' that meets regularly in an ever changing location to play poker. Sometime early in the day on Saturday a text message is sent out to a group of regulars advising one and all of the location and starting time of that week's game. You RSVP regrets only and if you miss too many games, you're dropped from the call list. Theoretically, this poker game doesn't have to be an expense, but so far it's worked out that way for me. Without the car I wouldn't be able to make it to the games, so I suppose it's fair to add the poker losses to the car rental bill and, you guessed it, I'm right back up to $100/day!

We can also drive to the trailheads for the hiking trails in the Margalla Hills and we're allowed to hike on Trail No. 3. The Hills and trailheads are literally right across the street from my house but I'm not allowed to walk outside my gate or cross the road on foot. So, I get in my car and drive down the street, make a U-turn, come back just past my house on the other side and park in the lot for Trail No. 3. The trail goes up into the Hills and is about five kilometers long. I hiked it with three friends and it took us just under two hours to climb to the top of the first set of ridges. The Margalla Hills are the foothills of the Hindu Kush which are the foothills of the Himalayas; so, indirectly, I was hiking in the Himalayas last weekend and, I'm pleased to say, I climbed the shortest peak in the tallest mountains on earth. The trails are surprisingly well tended and very popular with many people in Islamabad, especially on the weekend. About halfway up the climb we hiked through a troop of monkeys who seemed intent on surrounding us. Some of them would play and pose on the trail and while we were distracted, several of the bigger guys would try to sneak around behind us through the bushes. I do not know their intent, but from the look in their shifty beady close-set little eyes I suspect they had villainy in mind. While we had them in size, they were our superior in numbers so we hurried along the trail and left the monkeys to plan their mischief around another group of hikers.






These monkeys are, apparently, not under the same security restrictions as us and they regularly walk across the road to root around in my garbage cans during the night.

The most popular participation sport for expatriates in Pakistan is shopping. Carpets, furniture, brassware, pottery and jewelry are the Big Five for diplomatic bargain hunters. One of the first questions people ask each other upon being introduced is, "How many carpets have you bought?", then they begin to swap information on shops and prices and immediately plan a safari to acquire still more stuff. I broke down and bought two mid-sized carpets from a guy who does a lot of business with Embassy staff. They are hand woven kilims from Harat, Afghanistan and have an interesting pattern that I find attractive.


This doesn't really do the colors justice, but it's the best picture I have. The golds and greens seem to come up better if you enlarge the photo.

So I say, "I have two, but they're very special hand-woven kilims from Harat" and the response, inevitably, is "Oh yeah, I've got a few of those and twenty-seven other, nicer, carpets too!". Like I mentioned, it's a participant sport. It becomes a full contact participant sport when we move into the area of furniture. There are several businesses in Islamabad that cater to the dip community's insatiable thirst for old furniture. Brand new antique pieces are being made in factories all over town as we speak. Old doors and windows are piled in heaps in basement stores under every carpet shop and people like me have tables and cupboards, chairs and desks, swings and mantle pieces made from them. Until I began getting the rental car, I was excluded from the Saturday hunt for treasure. Now I'm a full fledged member of the "I had an old window made into this cool table" Club.


The lattice work is from an old window and the bronze inlay on the sides is all new. The lattice work will be covered with a big piece of glass. My 'new' antique coffee table will be finished and delivered in a week.

There is a matching end table to go with it and if I want a second end table, "We'll find you a matching one by next week, Sahab!". There you go, antiques made to order. Half the fun of going to these places is finding them. One store is so hard to find that its location is passed on from one person to the next by taking them there because it would be nearly impossible to find from any set of directions. It is behind the PIA bulding, not the first PIA building, the white one, and then you have to make a U-turn on the 'new' Jinnah Blvd. and park in the front parking lot. You walk down an alley in the northeast corner and look for a small black sign pointing down. Follow the stairs down to the heavy iron doors and ring the bell. A man will look out the peephole and then let you in. Sort of like a speakeasy. You know what, it'll be easier if I just take you there.


This is what's behind the heavy iron doors. This store is called Tribal Arts and it's a favorite of the big-time shoppers. Lots of old doors and windows waiting to be turned into custom made furniture.


These old trunks are from PakTurk, another furniture dealer. I've been told that they're the next big thing. I bought my two tables from PakTurk.

One more thing the rental car gives me is the ability to just wander around and take pictures.


I go to Saeed Book Bank every couple of weeks because they have a great selection and a frequent buyers discount card.


The Faisal Mosque is right down the street from me and is one of Islamabad's landmark buildings. It's set up against the Margalla Hills so the Call to Prayer really reaches every corner of the city.


Jingle buses and trucks are everywhere. In addition to the wild paint jobs, they have these metal disks on chains hanging down in the back and on the sides that give them their name. You can just see the chains on this one below the license plate.

So, until next time, remember to drive on the left, don't pay the asking price and never, ever let the monkeys circle in behind you!!

The Week When Nothing Worked

This was the week when nothing worked. It started on the weekend when the car I was supposed to receive from a rental company failed to show up. Our Procurement Section has arranged to have a rental car delivered to my house every Friday evening and picked up again on Sundays. After ironing out the details all week long, I sat waiting for my first car like a kid on Christmas Eve. It turned out that the phrase, "your car will definitely be delivered tonight, sir" didn't actually mean that my car would be delivered that night, or any subsequent night either. Language nuances, communication mix-ups, cultural misunderstandings, gross indifference, who knows?

On Monday morning the telephone at my house died and, apparently, in its death throes took my internet line with it. That caused me absolutely no concern for two reasons, a) this sort of thing gets fixed very quickly by my able and competent staff in the Housing section and b) I worked an eighteen hour day that day and had no real need for either the phone or the internet. Senator Lieberman arrived for his visit and I spent most of the day working with the inevitable changes to his schedule. Islamabad received its first rain of the season and the cold rain came as a welcome relief in this dusty dry country. I spent most of the day with wet cold feet, but that's just part of the territory. I was a bit surprised when I got home just before midnight and discovered that the phone/internet was still out and I made a note to remind the guys to look after it in the morning. The rain on the roof was quite soothing and I slept like a baby.

On Tuesday my hot water joined the phone and internet in what was, apparently, a sympathy walkout. I showered with invigoratingly cold water and set off to work shivering but wide awake...at 4:00am. Our second group of visitors, three congressmen led by Congressman Mitchell, arrived and I spent the day shuttling between their schedule and Senator Lieberman's. I got back home just after 11:00pm, noticed that the phone/internet was still out, washed my face in wretchedly cold water and hit the sack. It had rained all day and while I slept my cold wet shoes were drying out by the heater. The heaters were warding off the damp cold and I slept soundly for five solid hours.

On Wednesday I had hot water!!, but still no phone and the lights went out, well technically they never went on. Sometime between midnight and my driver arriving at 5:00am the electricity joined the phone and replaced the hot water on the walkout list. I got dressed in the dark which explains the tie I chose that morning and left for work in a hammering thunderstorm. I got home late and the phone was still out. At least one call a day had been put into the maintenance folks and they assured me each and every day that it would be working that same night. They lied. However, someone had made my electricity work again. Unfortunately, the heaters were now in the non-functioning mode so the house was pretty cold but I climbed into bed in my sleeping bag and passed out. The rain pounding incessantly down on my roof was no longer soothing.

On Thursday morning I didn't give a damn. I got up in time for my 4:00am pick-up and began the busiest day on the schedule. Phone still dead, heaters gone, hot water (shamed into solidarity) now back on strike and, when I climbed into my waiting vehicle all the lights in the house went out as the electricity died again. Senator Lieberman left on an early morning flight and the rides to and from the airport were uneventful. Congressman Mitchell was due back into Islamabad from a side trip to Afghanistan in the early afternoon so at about noon we saddled up and headed back out to Chaklala.

They say it was the worst storm in Islamabad in five years. I was sitting on a highway in Pakistan in a blizzard not moving an inch. The drivers in our motorcade were very excited and I was happy for them, but we were not going to be on time to meet our VIPs so I wasn't quite as happy for me. We position expediters at the airport to assist us so I just called our man on the scene and asked him to meet the delegation, put them in the lounge and explain that we were on the way. His response was, "Sir, they are already here, they are in the lounge and they are fine".

We arrived at Chaklala thirty minutes later to learn that they were not in the lounge, they were not at Chaklala, in fact, they were not in Pakistan at all. They were still on the ground in Afghanistan. Language nuances, communication mix-ups, cultural misunderstandings, gross indifference, who knows? For the next three hours we received a continual stream of incredibly bad information. At one point we were informed that the Afghan controllers had handed them off to Pakistan but that the Pakistani controllers could not make contact with them. During the half hour that we lost contact, in truly nasty weather, with a small aircraft containing three U.S. Congressmen for whom we were responsible I instructed anyone who would listen to refer to my colleague Alex as "Second Secretary Whittington, the man in charge of this congressional visit" and to refer to me as "a low level embassy functionary" without using my name. Of course, as soon as it was determined that they were safe I became, "Larry, the guy who got the motorcade to the airport on time in the worst storm of the decade". I got home very late, I couldn't care less what was or wasn't working and I went to sleep. It had rained and/or snowed all day and my mood matched the weather.

On Friday Congressman Mitchell and his group left. I got up at 3:00am to see them off and watched the sun come up over Islamabad as we headed back from the airport. By midday my phone/internet was working, the hot water heater had been replaced, my generator had been fixed and all my heating units were up and running. My Vonage phone seems to have died, but I'll deal with that in good time. I had three hundred unanswered work related emails on my queue and most of the afternoon free to read through them.

From Monday to Friday I logged over 75 hours covering two very successful congressional delegations and a third, also successful, VIP visit. The guys who work for me took care of business and I ended the week in a position to catch up by putting in just a couple of hours in my office over the weekend. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining on the Margalla Hills across the street from my house. Best of all, the car rental company has promised me that my "car will definitely be delivered tonight, sir", so I have that to look forward to.


Sunny downtown Islamabad!


http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1767257

This is a link to a video I made about the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery. The video is grainy and small because the file was huge and I had to reduce it substantially to upload it to Yahoo Videos.