The Khyber Pass

The entrance to the Khyber Pass, seen from the open door of a Huey gunship.


I flew over the Khyber Pass in a helicopter gunship the other day. I'm not quite certain why I was given this highly sought after opportunity but when it was offered to me I jumped at the chance. A very senior State Department official and his Staff Assistant were here on an official visit and his program included a tour of Peshawar with a flyover of the FATA and the Khyber Pass.

The FATA is the Federally Administered Tribal Area and it's the place in Pakistan where most of the Taliban and other righteous militants gather, plot mayhem and hide from the light of day. The Khyber Pass is the historic route into the Indian Subcontinent and its military significance has been recognized and exploited by invading armies from Alexander the Great to the British Army of the Indus.

While it would be truly interesting to drive through the Khyber Pass and you'd gain a still greater appreciation for it if you hiked through it like an invading army, it's far safer and much easier to simply fly over it in a helicopter. The Government of Pakistan recently tried trucking a couple of helicopters over the Pass but, sadly, they were stolen by brigands along the way. No, it's much better to actually fly the darn things in the manner in which they were intended.

So we, the senior State Department official, his assistant, his Embassy supplied Control Officer and I, piled into two armored Land Cruisers and drove up to Peshawar from Islamabad. The senior State Department official (aka the Principal) and his Control Officer rode in the front car and I, as is my habit, rode in the back car (aka the Straggler). His bodyguard rode shotgun in his vehicle which meant that his Staff Assistant had to either ride three across in the back seat with him and the Control Officer or could ride in relative comfort with me. It is the nature of Staff Assistants to prefer to be close to power and I use the word 'prefer' in the sense that they would eat their own children for a chance to sit behind the Principal and whisper in his ear at a meeting. So the Staff Assistant had to be ordered into the Straggler and we set off for Peshawar, the Birthplace of Al Qaeda and current Home of the Taliban who, by the way, are the creature come into being with the full aid and support of the ISI, Pakistan's version of the CIA.


The Frontier Corps is responsible for maintaining control of this region.

Peshawar is now and ever was the gateway to the Pass. It has been fought over and occupied again and again throughout recorded history and is currently under the nominal control of the Government of Pakistan. Coming into Pakistan from Afghanistan, once past Peshawar, you are in the heart of the Punjab, the rich fertile Indus River valley. It's a two hour drive from Islamabad to Peshawar on a very modern and beautifully maintained motorway through a lush and green countryside and by the second hour the Staff Assistant had relaxed enough to begin to enjoy the scenery. Prior to that she had been very busy identifying every bearded man on a motorcycle as a potential suicide bomber. There are a lot of bearded men on motorcycles in Pakistan. Before she left the States someone told her that Pakistan is a 'dangerous' place and she, bless her heart, was certain that everyone we saw was poised to attack. I pointed out that anyone attacking us would certainly go for the front car, which we refer to as the 'Target', and that seemed to reassure her a bit.


Haystacks in a farm field on the Islamabad-Peshawar road.


Public transportation on the Islamabad-Peshawar road.


Public transportation in Peshawar.

When we arrived at the Consulate in Peshawar, the official party went off to have official meetings and I spent the morning with my counterpart, the GSO. He's a man about my own age, I know him well and we have a lot in common so I was able to "read between the lines" when he asked in perfectly phrased diplomatic terms, "How the f**k did you get a ride over the Pass, you a*****e?". The man's a poet.


This somewhat disturbing replica of a small plane going down in flames is at the entrance to the 11th Corps airfield.

After lunch he and I drove out to the 11th Corps military airfield to meet up with the official party and board the helicopters. We were driven out to the waiting aircraft and were told to board. The Principal and Control Officer were directed to the first helo which was painted in very military looking camouflage colors and the Staff Assistant and I were asked to get into the second machine which was painted olive drab. The Staff Assistant had had enough and stated most emphatically, "I'm going in that one!" and clambered into the camouflaged helicopter. As she was crawling into it she turned, saw me point at it and mouth the word "Target" and then I watched her knees buckle as I walked to my now private and personal aircraft.



The Khyber Pass!


The flyover was incredible! In the Khyber Pass we flew below the mountain peaks on either side and over forts, gun emplacements, rivers and roads. The doors were left open and I sat beside the door gunner on the left hand side. The winds were gusting with some strength through the Pass that day and we were batted around like a bingo ball in a mixer. At first it was a little unnerving to be flying in a narrow canyon, seemingly close enough to touch the rocks on either side, but I became so busy taking video and still pictures that I forgot to be nervous. The pilots, who do this regularly, were steering with their feet and eating peanuts from a bag with their hands. We spent an hour flying through and around the Pass before turning back towards home. The helicopters took us all the way back to Islamabad and we had an excellent view of the Punjab in all its splendor.



A fort in the Pass. Every time I asked the crew what this building was they looked down and said, "What Building?"


This is the beginning of the two lane road through the Khyber Pass. If ever a road needed a 'Don't Pick Up Hitchhikers' sign, this is that road.



This town may or may not have been in the FATA. If it wasn't, it was pretty damn close.



These fields are definitely positively in the Punjab. I think.


This is a Huey 2, a Vietnam era helicopter that's been refitted with new avionics, engine and rotors. It was my personal aircraft for over two hours.



The 'Target'.

One of my colleagues told this story of her encounter with the Islamabad traffic police. She ran a red light and was pulled over by the cop on the corner.

"Madam, you ran through the red light."
"Yes, I did."
"No, Madam, you ran through the red light."
"Yes, you're right, I did."
"Yes, you did!"
"That's right, I did. So you can just give me my ticket."
"I can't give you a ticket. We don't have any paper."

If that doesn't sum up Pakistan for you then consider that several of my colleagues have opened tabs with the traffic police. They put down money on account at the police station and the cops just deduct from it for each violation.

So, remember...Don't walk through the Pass, don't ride in the 'Target' and never leave your helicopter parked on a truck!

The Holy Grail

I like a cup of coffee in the morning. I almost never have more than just the one cup, but I really enjoy that cup. Our cafeteria doesn't open until 7:00am and I am often on the compound before then and am forced to wait for my coffee. Many of my colleagues have those insulated coffee mugs made for commuters and bring a cup with them from home. This seemed to be a good idea to me, but I couldn't find one. I kept going to the commissary hoping to find one but, because they don't carry them, I never found one. Nonetheless, I looked for one each and every time I shopped at the commissary sometimes even making a special trip down to that end of the compound just to see if one had magically materialized.

Then one day before we destroyed my fleet of beat up vehicles and I lost my car to the vagaries of the Diplomatic Security Driver Training course I came up with a plan, I'd go to the market and buy my insulated coffee mug there! It's brilliance like this that has seen me become the successful Foreign Service Officer I am today. So I fired up my metallic pink KIA and headed for Khosar Market and a very nicely stocked kitchen supplies store. You can well imagine my disappointment upon discovering that this very nicely stocked kitchen supplies store carried everything from French coffee presses to Italian espresso machines but not a single insulated coffee mug.

Nonetheless I had come all this way and I felt fairly certain that the mug would appear if I put a little more effort into the looking for it, so I prowled the aisles, moved sundries, peered into gaps and spaces on the shelves and in general made a nuisance of myself. Then, quite reasonably, I got mad at the owner and clerks who were following me around and basically accused them of hiding the mugs from me. The Urdu word for "get out!" is "Jao!" but I didn't quite catch the correct pronunciation of the word for "lunatic".

The grocery store I frequent is right next door to the inadequately stocked kitchen supplies store and they carry Hagen Daz in limited flavors which would help take the sting out of my unsuccessful search for a mug. While paying for the ice cream I remembered that the grocery store had a small drug store type section upstairs and I climbed the stairs without any real hope of actually finding a mug. However, on a shelf directly opposite the top of the stairs was the last commuter's insulated coffee mug available for sale, quite possibly, in Pakistan. Between me and the mug were two Swedish diplomats, women who were looking at the mug, but, and I stress this point in my defense, they had not actually touched it yet. Using every inch of my reach I managed to wedge myself in between them and grabbed the mug. Diplomacy be damned, the mug was mine.

I paid for the mug and took it home. It was only several days later when I did the math that I realized I'd paid just over $35 for a mug that the Marriott Hotel routinely gives away as a promotional item. Of course, my mug doesn't have the Marriott logo printed tackily on the side. It has SIGG printed on the side, which turns out to be a Swiss company that manufactures mugs, water bottles and other promotional giveaways. All I can say is that my coffee has never tasted so good.

This week was a holiday week, someone left the doors of Congress unlocked and we had a surge in congressional delegations. Members of both Houses of Congress visit Pakistan with great regularity, never more so than over a holiday, to confer with various senior Pakistani officials including the President, the Prime Minister and the heads of the other two major political parties. That these Members are Honorable men is an indisputable fact, for it says so on their business cards, and they come in an honest attempt to educate themselves on the situation here to help them formulate our policy towards Pakistan in a way that best reflects our national interests.

A week when five separate delegations descend on us 'en masse' means two things to me; first, I will get very little sleep and second, my motor pool will be given every opportunity to shine. This week, between Monday at 3:00am when the fun began and Saturday at 10:00am when the last delegation boarded their military transport for home, we staged fifty-one separate motorcades and moved the five delegations around like pieces on a chessboard. Every vehicle was where it was supposed to be, when it was supposed to be there. Every Honorable Member was transported in safety and security, often at high speed, without incident. Our drivers did an outstanding job! I rode the Control Vehicle or Straggler in most of these movements. When the principal delegate and his/her party are strapped in, the motorcade moves out whether all of our embassy officers are in vehicles or not. The Straggler is there to make sure that anyone missing the move gets brought along to the next stop.

President Musharraf has a beautiful compound in Rawalpindi known as the Camp Office and the drivers, security people and I often sit there enjoying a cup of tea while the Honorable Members meet with him to discuss policy and have their pictures taken. The Prime Minister's residence is in Islamabad on a hill with a glorious view of the city and the Margalla Hills and he prefers to meet with our delegations there rather than in his office, leaving those of us who don't make policy in either Pakistan or America to sit outside and admire that view while hoping that the Honorable Members, against all odds, get it right. It is fairly evident to the committee of us who sit outside the meetings and don't take part in the photo opportunities that the problems here are huge and complex and won't begin to be solved until the grinding poverty in this country is addressed. Pakistan is a nation that needs schools and hospitals, an adequate power supply, a massive infrastructure building project, jobs and food. It has a nuclear weapon, a corrupt bureaucracy and an army that is 0 for 5 since 1947.

High speed motorcades out to the airport and the government offices in Rawalpindi with police escorts front and back and all traffic pulled aside to let us pass were very exciting when I first did them. Now I bring a book and my iPod along. I really enjoy sitting in the Straggler, reading my book, listening to music, sipping my coffee and looking out the window at this very green and beautiful city. It's quite similar to working for a living.


Standing on a hill overlooking the NWFP (Northwest Frontier Provinces).


The fabled NWFP, land of brigands, bandits, terrorists and a whole bunch of people just trying to eke a living out of rock and dirt.

We're in the Monsoon season now, it's come early this year. It's hot and humid and it rains nearly every day but the rain doesn't cool anything down. When the rain stops, the humidity in the air builds up until it rains again in a constant cycle of humid mugginess and torrential downpours. Surprisingly, I don't mind this at all. I find that I like the monsoons and that the heat doesn't bother me. It makes me feel like I'm living in a W. Somerset Maugham/Joseph Conrad sort of foreign place and I should be smoking cigarettes in long holders and drinking gin and tonics on a bamboo porch cooled by slow moving ceiling fans while complaining about the lack of 'good help'. This is also the beginning of the mango season and mango milkshakes are available at the restaurant on the compound, as are mango pies, mango ice cream, mango smoothies, mango ala mode, mango tea and mango smothered in fresh berries. Fresh mangos make the monsoons all the more bearable.

My blue aluminum commuter's insulated coffee mug works very well with mango smoothies and is, therefore, almost worth what it cost me. By the way, it turns out that the Swedish phrase, "alltfor dyr" translates as "too expensive", not "look, Sally, there's the mug we've been searching high and low for!".

Mule Thief!

There are only a couple of things that annoy me about Islamabad, which really isn't too bad because this is, potentially, a pretty annoying place. Because the government can't produce enough power to meet demand, they shut power off to different parts of the city at different times of the day. This is known as 'load shedding' and no matter where you live or work, you share in the regularly scheduled power outages. These outages, set up to last for about an hour at a time, would be very annoying if we didn't have generators at our homes.

Fortunately, we do have generators so when the city turns off the power in our neighborhoods, our generators kick on and the lights, appliances and (most importantly) air conditioners turn back on. So load shedding itself doesn't particularly annoy me. I recognize how fortunate I am to have a generator and I know that life is pretty miserable for people who do not have them.

No, the annoying thing about load shedding is that my dvd player shuts down when the power goes off and forgets where it is in the movie. It seems to be impossible to time it so that I can watch a movie in between power outages, so any movie I try to watch quits twice and I have to search for the spot I was watching when the power died. Trivial, I know, but annoying none the less.

The other annoying thing, to me at least, are the bombs. I confess, even if it's culturally inappropriate, that I don't like people who set off bombs around innocent civilians. I find it especially irksome when they target diplomats. The most recent bomb was detonated in front of the Danish Embassy to express displeasure with some political cartoons that ran in Danish newspapers several years ago. No Danes were injured in the attack but many local people on the street including a young boy were killed or badly injured. The brave souls at Al Qaeda, who immediately took credit for this latest bombing of an unarmed unsuspecting populace, were fairly dribbling spittle into their beards in excitement over their 'great victory'. I was at the Embassy at the time of the blast and learned about it through the grapevine at work. The Danish Embassy is not located with us on the secure diplomatic enclave. Many nations have established their embassies, missions and representatives in the spacious and elegant housing found throughout Islamabad. The Danes are in a very nice residential neighborhood about fifteen minutes from the enclave. To be specific, they are in my neighborhood. In fact, they are one street behind me.

I got home that night to find that my back door, the one facing the street with the Danish Embassy, had been blown in off its hinges by the pressure wave from the blast. The wave then went through my house and blew every single window outwards. Not a single other thing was damaged and, much more importantly, none of my guards were injured. The guards said that the blast was quite loud but not so bad that it hurt their ears. In all, we had eight houses damaged to more or less the same extent and our maintenance people worked all night to get them boarded up and secured. Glass and doors can be replaced and we're fortunate that none of our folks were hurt.

So, for the week it took to replace the glass and door it was a bit like camping out. The mosquitos certainly believed that was the case. Replacing the glass was a more complex task than measuring, cutting and plugging-in because of the security grills covering every single window opening. All the grills had to be cut off then re-welded into place after the glass was installed. However, all the work's been completed, all the mosquitos have been evicted and we're operating under heightened security rules...again. Ironically, this bombing came on the heels of the current Government of Pakistan's insistence that negotiating with the terrorists was effectively bringing peace to the country. If you can't trust the word of people who use suicide bombers to kill children, you could begin to lose your faith in diplomacy altogether.


This is how all my windows looked immediately after the blast.


When all your windows are boarded up, it's a little like living in a cave.

I stole a mule today. In an incredible lapse of good judgement I purloined the DCM's mule. All I can say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Before I'm hanged as a mule thief, a word or two of explanation is in order. 'Mules' are Kawasaki all terrain vehicles that are used on the compound like golf carts. GSO (my section) has one mule for sure and another who's ownership is debated. We feel it's ours and the DCM insists that it's his. For those of you unfamiliar with the hierarchy of an Embassy, the DCM is the Deputy Chief of Mission, second in command only to the Ambassador herself. So, our 'debate' has, up until today, consisted of us muttering under our breath and never in his presence, "it's really our mule" and him stating emphatically, out loud and directly to us, "keep your damn hands off my mule!". He took both the keys to the mule called Paco (all the mules have names) and that would have been that if we didn't have the ability to make duplicate keys. Reasoning that sometimes he's away and we might need Paco, we had a set of keys made just as a precaution.

Today, Saturday, the temperature and the humidity were climbing and Chuck and I needed to go from Post 2 down to the commissary. It's a long walk on a hot day and Luci, our undisputed GSO mule, was being used so we looked for Paco and couldn't find him. Chuck is our Housing Coordinator, an ex-marine and a fellow about my age so he and I hiked down to the commissary grumbling every step of the way. On the way we passed the Facilities Maintenance building and spotted Paco parked neatly by the barber shop. One of us suggested that since we had the spare key with us we should just take 'our' mule back especially since it was unlikely that the DCM was on the compound anyway. Chuck agreed. Just to be safe, we peeked into the barber shop and determined that DCM Bodde wasn't there. We hopped onto Paco and drove to the commissary.

As we exited the commissary loaded down with groceries we ran smack dab into the DCM looking exactly like a man who's mule has been stolen on a very hot day. He saw us and said very quietly and with great purpose, "who stole my mule?". Chuck and I immediately pointed to each other. The commissary is right next to the Maintenance building (where the DCM had been in a meeting...who knew?) and the fact that we hadn't actually left yet for Post 2 probably explains why I am still a Foreign Service Officer. He confiscated our spare keys and left us to walk back to Post 2.


Lita asked me to wear a shalwar qamees to her "Outta Here" party.


Cricket and baseball have some similarities, apparently this batting stance is not one of them!


This is a Punjabi grain chest. The farmers in the Punjab used these chests to store their winter grain. This one is about eighty years old and has been refinished and converted into a wine cabinet.

Chuck and I have agreed that the next time we steal Paco we'll have a spare license plate along to switch its identity.

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.