Cheeseburgers in Pakistan

The Last Cheeseburger in Pakistan

2011-06-13T18:43:00.021+05:00

One of the many misconceptions I had about Pakistan before moving there two years ago was that I might not get a cheeseburger during my time in the country. I pictured a diet solely of rice, spicy curries, barbecued meat on skewers, and a few other dishes that I found on Wikipedia under "Pakistani cuisine." But where would I get a regular old hamburger with cheese?

(Other misconceptions I had for those keeping score: 1. That Islamabad would be in a desert wasteland like the Middle East, which it is nowhere near, 2. That I would always have to wear a head scarf in public, and 3. That I would definitely want to live in the "cool" diplomatic enclave near the Embassy which turned out to be neither cool nor a place I would ever live.)

That is why I titled the blog "Cheeseburgers in Pakistan." (Also because of that Jimmy Buffett song.) I had no idea what to expect, I was willing to give up all the normal comforts of home including American food, and I was ready to have an adventure. It turns out, after two years, my house in Islamabad, boisterously full of dogs and housekeepers and guards and geckos, was a place where I was totally comfortable, happy, and made only a normal amount of crazy by beeping UPS batteries on their last leg or the occasional lack of hot water.

Pakistan was like nothing I expected in many ways, even though I tried so hard to prepare thoroughly before I came. I did in fact use the karaoke machine I brought to town with such high hopes for various raucous and hilarious get-togethers. I never once plugged in the fancy "Progression Alarm Clock" that I bought specially for Pakistan so I could be gently awakened by a simulated dawn, because once I understood the electricity situation I feared it would blow a fuse (I was awakened by squawking crows instead, mostly). I was wrong about being able to buy live chickens off the street in front of my house (lots of guardshacks and shotguns, but no hen vendors), and I was also wrong that I wouldn't see any marshmallow peeps in Islamabad (the Embassy commissary specializes in processed American seasonal food).

I never once used the hand sanitizer I so carefully packed, I skipped all the recommended vaccinations and didn't come back with any strange illnesses, but I did learn through a few battles with food poisoning the truth of that saying "the most dangerous thing in Pakistan is the food." I consumed an average of three cheeseburgers a month since my arrival of varying quality, happily none of which made me sick, and finally settled on the one from Mocca Cafe as my favorite, even after Salman Taseer was assassinated right in front of the restaurant a few months ago. (This did make me veer more frequently towards take-out rather than eating in).

It has been a little over a month since I left Pakistan and came to the U.S., which means right about now I would usually be heading back to Islamabad. But this isn't my regular home leave or vacation situation, and I'm not returning; I'm staying in California this time. My house with its breezy terrace, my daily breakfast mango smoothie made with care, the overgrown vegetable garden, and my stacks of messy paperwork about outreach campaigns to the Pakistani public...they're all gone, packed up, or inhabited by someone else now.

I learned a lot in the last two years: how to flourish in a developing country, how to work around government bureaucracy (sometimes the government of Pakistan's but much more often our own), how to say "No problem!" in Urdu (pronounce it "coy baat naHEE"), how to make your own fun on lockdown weekends (answer: DVD marathons of "The Office," Domino's pizza, and buying a kiddie pool for your puppies to swim in), how to make your bodyguard double as a dog-sitter/casserole holder/personal shopper, how to get used to being stared at constantly all the time in public without getting creeped out, and how to wrap a silky dupatta over your head, neck, and shoulders in the most flattering way (Okay, I'll admit: I never really did get the hang of this one. Usually I would go a few steps and turn around to see the scarf lying mangled a few feet behind me in the dust so generally I left it at home.) I starred in a sitcom called "Welcome to Pakistan" (which sadly never aired since I moved before we could finish taping more episodes), I sang in a band, I threw lots of themed parties.

Most of all, I made a home. I made friends--not just with other Americans--and learned how easy it was to accept the hospitality and graciousness of my Pakistani hosts. I was invited to weddings, went on weekend trips, learned to blow shisha smoke rings, and was honored to be brought into people's homes and lives.

Which brings us back to cheeseburgers. I can confidently say I am the world's foremost authority on the range and quality of cheeseburgers in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. At one point I even considered starting a website called "islamabadeats.com" to review the city's restaurants since I frequented them so much, and of course there would have been a special cheeseburger section. (Feel free to poach the idea now that I'm gone.)

In the beginning, I stuck pretty close to Nirvana, the trendy salon/cafe frequented by expats which was located near my first office. It offered a strange but fairly yummy burger (hallmark qualities: cucumbers instead of pickles and an artful smear of ketchup and mustard diagonally across the plate for the sake of presentation). Nirvana was the only restaurant to stay open during Ramadan and also had the most delicious smoothies in town, including the Triple Strawberry which one of our consultants on the project called "better than sex." (I am only quoting here.)

In time and with the greater courage to bend security protocols, I branched out. I tried Cafe Lazeeze (two thin patties stacked on top of the other to form the burger, an incomprehensible choice that luckily didn't affect its taste), the Serena Hotel (burger best enjoyed by the fancy pool but most often eaten during rushed work meetings), and the Great American Steakhouse (Two words: stay away. Neither American nor great.)

The trajectory of my burgers followed my greater familiarity with Islamabad and my process of settling in. Eventually I was having Sajjid the cook make burgers at home, although more often than not they were veggie versions made from chickpeas or pinto beans. New restaurants opened, new discoveries were made, takeout menus picked up, and even occasional sabbaticals occurred. For brief periods the cheeseburger was abandoned as a staple food, like during the Great Equinox Detox of the fall of 2010, or the long winter of 2009 when a hot wing streak pushed out all other competition for a time.

But the cheeseburger always came back. A few weeks before I left, when winter had given way to a typical 85-degree spring day, I was invited to do something very normal: go over to a friend's house for a barbecue and to watch the game. The game was cricket and the friend and his family were in Islamabad, but other than that it was exactly like what you have done yourself a hundred times: our host presiding over a smoking grill in the front yard, kids running around shrieking and getting ketchup on their clothes, mustard and tomatoes lined up on a side table and liters of soda condensing in the sun ready to pour.

On that day I sat in the breeze, loosely fitted in a Pakistan-appropriate outfit but wisely having left the dupatta at home, and chatted with our friends. I knew I would be leaving soon, so I soaked up every detail of that peaceful, sunny, normal afternoon. It turns out the best cheeseburger in Pakistan can't be easily ordered in an expat restaurant on your first weekend in town. It is earned in a different way, through months of immersion in a culture, a city, and the process of making a home and a life.

Charbroiled, slightly misshapen, helpfully topped by one of the kids with a slice of cheese, and offered with hand-made secret sauce, my last delicious cheeseburger in Pakistan was eaten in the intimacy of someone's home, surrounded by great company, in the relaxed vibe of good friendship. I thought if I moved to Pakistan I wouldn't get to eat cheeseburgers while I was away. I was wrong about that and lots of other things. I got plenty of cheeseburgers, and much, much more.

Thanks for reading.

Pregnant in Pakistan

2011-05-06T21:07:00.008+05:00

A few months ago, I faced an interesting dilemma. Laid out on the couch with a sore throat so painful I could barely swallow, I tried to decide which was worse: hauling my sick body out of the house for the first time in a week to accomplish an important errand, or sending my housekeeper, driver, and/or bodyguard to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test. I didn't love either of my options.

With my significant other in the U.S. (nice timing!) I decided to take the "do nothing" approach and wait for the throat infection to pass. Five days later I made the trip to the drugstore myself, with driver and bodyguard in tow of course. There was nothing I could do about the entourage, but at least going myself spared me from having to pantomime "pregnancy test" to two gruff-looking Pakistani ex-military men.

I chose my most conservative Pakistani outfit for the errand: full shalwar and long sleeves. For some reason this made me feel better braving Shaheen's Chemist. At pharmacies in Pakistan, a line of male employees stands six-deep behind the register watching your every move. Don't bother trying to figure out how all of them are necessary for the ringing up, packaging, or payment of your order: they are just there, and always will be. The drugstore is also so brightly lit one could perform surgery on the counter.

I blew by the freezer case of Snickers ice cream bars (my normal reason to visit Shaheen's) and entered the shop, accompanied only by the bodyguard lurking by the front door and the driver idling out front, to ask for a pregnancy test. I half expected the Counter Men to demand a marriage license, a man, or at least a wedding ring. They did none of this, and instead one of the twenty men behind the counter promptly walked me over to a corner and rummaged around in a box. He handed me a test and said, "How many?"

"Um, probably just one is enough?" The stoic look on his face told me I was wrong about this. "Okay, then maybe three?" This was met with approval. As the tests were 70 rupees each I figured I could swing it. Then he reluctantly pointed out a different brand and mentioned that it too was an option. "What's the difference?" My drugstore guide explained to me that the first brand required the use of a syringe and carefully orchestrated drops. The other was even more complicated.

Upon returning home and inspecting my purchase, I discovered that the code for deciphering the tests was more complicated still. There were options for dark lines, light lines, dark lines on top + no line on bottom, light line on top + dark line on bottom, no lines on top or bottom, and one that had a tiny smiling picture of your future baby's face. Okay, not really that last one.

After wrestling with a syringe the size of a toothpick and following the directions exactly as written, I found myself two minutes later, alone in my house, staring in wonder at the tiny stick. How could my test possibly result in the one combination not listed on the test key? How could my particular combination of line length and color not correspond to any of the seeming 100 options posted? As it turns out, it merely needed to marinate a little while longer before giving me the good albeit surprising news. But for those first few minutes, I confronted what was to be only the first of many befuddling questions about being pregnant in Pakistan.

Here are some others:

Why can't women be trusted to handle their own doctor's appointments? When the clinic had to change the date of my ultrasound, they called Drew. He looked amused and then handed his phone over to me.

Why does every (otherwise hard-ass) security officer in Islamabad completely fold at the checkpoint and wave you through when you pat your belly and say you don't want to go through the scanner...and why doesn't every woman do this just to avoid the hassle?

Why is it so difficult to figure out exactly how to make the big announcement? Hint: the following two ways are not acceptable: 1. "I'm pregnant." (Why not: Nobody in Pakistan uses the word pregnant. "In the family way" and "expecting" are possible alternatives.) 2. "We're having a baby in October." (Why not: No one would ever say this because it is presumptuous to say exactly what is going to happen in the future. Babies will only be born insh'allah, if God wills it.)

And, I know I'm back there again, but: why the syringe?? What happened to good old fashioned peeing on a stick? This is classic Pakistani over-engineering at work. I wish I could show you a picture of this delicate plastic instrument that would work well as a prop in a doll hospital, is only in use for about 2.5 seconds, and requires manual dexterity at a time when your thoughts really are elsewhere. Why Pakistan, why?

But I don't want to make it sound all bad: there has been some serious upside too. Shalwar kameeze are roomy and billowy, making maternity clothes unnecessary for at least a while and ably hiding the bump until you're ready to tell the world. Each doctor visit at Islamabad's premiere maternity clinic costs less than $20, paid straight out of pocket, with no pesky insurance forms to fill out and including a nice ultrasound every time for your viewing pleasure. (Yes, every time. I have already had five ultrasounds.)

Given Pakistan's family-oriented culture, your big news is always greeted with the utmost excitement and delight, and people's reactions make you feel like you are the luckiest person in the entire world. And finally, your entire retinue of staff, drivers, guards, etc. continue to make life easier so you can relax and not worry about doing dishes, laundry, housecleaning, driving, parking, grocery shopping, or cooking while doing the job of growing a baby.

So, why not stay? Why not live out the nine months in Islamabad, soaking up the sun on the terrace while being brought healthy smoothies on trays and indulging in endless ultrasounds? My yoga teacher does pre-natal classes, any tailor in town could easily whip up maternity shalwar to clothe an expanding frame, and I've already developed relationships with all the staff at the maternity clinic (although they all still look at me funny, as if to say: why aren't you using the Health Unit at the Embassy? Answer: I don't have access privileges).

Pleasant as it all sounds, there are some flies in the ointment, such as being on the other side of the world from my family, facing language barriers and total uncertainty about labor and birthing procedures in the hospitals of Pakistan, and the fact that 35 of the "100 Healthiest Foods to Eat During Pregnancy" aren't available in Islamabad. Coupled with my job ending, the news seemed a clear sign that it was time to head home for awhile.

Still, I will miss almost everything about living in Pakistan, and most things about being pregnant there. I will miss being the only pregnant American woman in town (in the country?). I will miss my guards' extra special solicitation when I get out of the car, holding the gate open for me gingerly while watching every step of my progress up the driveway with care. I will miss all my friends and their good wishes, their excitement to be the baby's aunties and uncles, and their rock-solid belief (predicated on nothing as of yet) that she is sure to be especially good-looking.

As one of my going-away presents, I received a tiny shalwar kurta in baby-size that I carefully packed away in my suitcase. Even if she isn't born there, insh'allah our baby will always be a little bit Pakistani.

Weekend Away

2011-04-15T13:16:00.000+05:00

One of the cool things about living in Pakistan is that you are smack in the middle of South Asia. What this means is that if you want to get away for a few days to celebrate a friend's birthday, you can easily jet off to the Himalayas, Dubai, Thailand, or Sri Lanka. Dubai is boring unless you like wandering around cavenous, freezing malls containing only stores you can't afford. The Himalayas are awesome but you are definitely going to be delayed by an extra day or two when you try to return (due to "weather" "overbooking" or "computer problems": thanks PIA), and Thailand is a dream but was hit by severe rains a couple weeks ago.

That left Sri Lanka! Our group of three cancelled our tickets for flooded Koh Samui and made new ones for Colombo with only four days to spare. We got hotels, ordered taxis, packed our beach bags, and in one short flight from Karachi we were there.

The trip was special because I will be leaving Pakistan in two weeks and returning to the U.S. My job has finally ended and it's time to go. I hope that I will be back, but for now it is goodbye, and goodbyes always make me sad. So I couldn't pass up the chance to go away with two of my best friends that I made over the last two years here. I also found out I don't get any compensation for unused vacation days: perfect time to go!

We stayed one night in busy, bustling Colombo that didn't seem all that different from Lahore or Karachi but offered a gorgeous old colonial estate-turned-hotel that made us feel like Mick Jagger. We took advantage of the jacuzzi on the porch and the 20 foot ceilings before heading down the coast to Bentota.

Sri Lanka is lush, green, and bursting with fresh fruit like papayas and sweet bananas. The people are friendly and hospitable and the prices are good. Our hotel in Bentota didn't have air conditioning or a TV, but had a gorgeous open-air bathroom and the lovely, relaxed vibe of a fancy spa with flowers at every turn and palm fronds in the shower.

We talked and laughed, reminisced and predicted, drank fresh pineapple juice, played Ludo, went snorkeling and ate grilled prawns on the beach with Sri Lankan flatbread slathered with tomatoes and onions. I didn't think about having to leave in two weeks, about saying goodbye to so many wonderful people, about the movers coming and getting my security deposit back and closing out my work files, and about starting over to build a home somewhere else. It was a good vacation.

Upstairs, Downstairs

2011-03-27T19:25:00.013+05:00

There is one specific feature of my life that makes it really different from yours, assuming you are living any kind of typical American or European existence. It is not what you think: it is not the threat of terrorism, it is not living on the other side of the world from my family, it is not living in a Muslim country where I hear the Islamic call to prayer five times a day, it is not my residence in a city full of wild boars and monkeys that often feels one step removed from the jungle. This feature is servants.

Servants! The very word conjures up an 18th-century manor, scullery maids in the kitchen, footmen in the stables, and a butler hovering with a silver tray. At least it does to me. In Pakistan, this word means something completely different, something standard and normal even for the middle classes.

When I moved here and started searching for a place to live, I would go around with a realtor every Saturday to tour houses all over Islamabad. They all had the same basic amenities: more rooms and bathrooms than I would ever need (for the same rent as my apartment in the U.S.), cool smooth tiling in every room to keep down the heat, high ceilings, and "servants' quarters," which the realtor would helpfully point out at each location. He would always point them out...I would always look away uncomfortably and mumble that it wasn't important. We would never tour the servants' quarters, but he would always take care to highlight them as a useful feature of the property. After a while this also explained why, in houses where each room was routinely the size of my entire apartment in Boston, the kitchens were invariably cramped, dark, and without air conditioning. I soon realized no one expected me to spend any time in there.

At that point I didn't know if I was ever going to get a housekeeper. I didn't think I needed one. After all, hadn't I always done my own cooking, cleaning, and general house management in every other place I had lived my entire life? What was all of a sudden about to change? As it turns out, everything.

The slippery slope began as a gentle curve. Right after I moved into my new place (selected as a result of its relatively small rooms, large kitchen, and huge yard), one of the drivers at work shyly presented his wife to me as someone who would make an excellent housekeeper; she was very hard-working, honest, and furthermore had three children to feed so could I maybe considering hiring her?

At the offered rate of 7,000 rupees a month (about $80) for daily housekeeping, this seemed like a good deal and I went for it. It turned out to be an even better deal than I thought, since Zafer always accompanied Musart when she came to clean (to protect her honor) and made himself useful while he was there. His usefulness included mopping all the floors and picking all the hairs out of my hairbrush every day, a real shocker the first time I saw it happening. All of a sudden I had two "servants," a word I still shunned in politically-correct horror while using the word "staff" instead.

It wasn't long before we added Adeel to the mix. Adeel (or "Roger," his Christian name) was another driver from work who got fired when he discovered that the security manager was having an affair with the lady searcher. This incident alone and the phrase "lady searcher" is worth an entire post but sadly must be glossed over here. I quickly realized that I did not have time in my ten-hour workday to wait 45 minutes in line to pay my cell phone bill; go to separate stores for meat, bread, cheese, and apples; that my lovely house would be afflicted with at least one major upset per day involving water, sewage, electricity, and/or general breakdown; and that I needed Roger.

In the U.S., you don't need Roger, because there you don't have to fill a water tank on the roof to take a shower, keep the generator stocked with fuel every day, make almond milk from scratch by soaking the raw nuts for three hours, procure avocados only by developing a special relationship with the vegetable vendor, make sure the batteries on the UPS stay charged, buy stablizers for all your electrical appliances, get mineral water delivered twice a week in huge barrels for drinking and cooking, or have someone drive by your house in the middle of the night to make sure the guards aren't sleeping. Yes, Roger does all these things, and many more. Turns out, in Pakistan you need ~~servants~~ staff.

Obviously, with my huge yard I also needed a gardener. I figured I would recoup this cost in the abundance of fresh vegetables and herbs that would soon be produced, and furthermore the flower beds could use a little landscaping, couldn't they? Two security guards were required and paid for by the company, as were drivers, but as the guards were paid approximately $70 a month for grueling 12-hour shifts guarding my life, they got kicked a little extra by way of bonus every month and of course they get Eid cash gifts twice a year like everyone else for Pakistani's major holidays, so let's go ahead and add them to our staff calculations. The guard bonuses were Roger's idea. It was my idea to call Roger our "Chief of Staff," since by this point an important part of his job was managing everybody else.

But what to do with all those glorious vegetables that started popping up in the garden courtesy of Pakistan's amazing climate? And did it really make sense to keep ordering out expensive food from restaurants night after night after arriving home late from work and flopping on the couch too exhausted to even make my standard quesadilla? Time for a cook! Sajjid was added to our happy band, three nights per week, and started churning out pesto lasagnas, mushroom risottos, biscotti (did I mention Sajjid used to work for the Italian Embassy?), lamb skewers, coconut curry, and any other recipe I would pull off cookinglight.com and present to him at the beginning of the week.

I didn't think we could add anyone else to the mix, but then I brought the puppies home, who soon needed to be walked every day and taught how not to be crazy undisciplined animals. Enter Shahzad, dog-trainer! He came highly recommended as the trainer of General Musharaff's dogs, the former President/military dictator of Pakistan, but this wasn't really a selling point in my book as I was hoping more for cuddly, friendly labs as opposed to lean, mean attack dogs. Nonetheless, he did a good job. Shahzad contributed even more crew to our operations: apparently he was too senior to actually walk the dogs himself so he outsourced the walking and shampooing to underlings while taking on the training alone.

At this point the house was bulging: no one was living in the "servants' quarters" except one of the guards, but somehow I had gone from Low-maintenance Girl who Cleans her Own Toilets to Woman who Has Someone Brush her Dogs' Teeth Every Morning. As lovely as it sounds, it took a little getting used to. At first I could never find anything. Zafer and Musart had particularly strange ways of deciding where things went: I found sports bras hanging up in the closet next to my cocktail dresses and a box of Christmas ornaments in the kitchen, my favorite sweater used as a drape for the dog crate. One time I discovered half a rotten watermelon that I had set on the counter to be thrown away two weeks later, in the freezer. At first it was unsettling to be sitting at my desk checking email and having someone come sweep a broom under my feet, or to stumble sleepily into the kitchen in pajamas to find two Pakistani men rearranging the entire contents of my refrigerator.

But after the initial adjustment period, I got right on board. It is hard to explain the glorious feeling of deciding in the morning that you would enjoy some homemade pumpkin bread that night, that the terrace would really look better with five more potted palms on it, that you needed the black pants dry-cleaned before the weekend, that some fresh flowers in the dining room would be nice, and coming home after work to find all of these things done and delivered, as if by magic fairies. No, it is not a perfect system: the grater still ends up in the laundry room sometimes, when the shopping list specifies spaghetti sauce I might get a can of stewed tomatoes, and my extra fancy artisanal olive oil has been used by the cupful for frying cheese fritters. But really, I can't complain.

A few years ago, when I was still in Boston, a friend of mine remarked that, had we all been born several centuries earlier in European feudal society, she felt sure that she would find herself the hard-working, curly-haired wench while I enjoyed the pale and quiet life of luxury as lady of the manor. This was not based whatsoever on our financial circumstances at the time (both of us being broke grad students), nor on our abilities or refinement, but simply on some other kind of gut feeling she couldn't explain.

I thought her prediction was ridiculous. I had never even had a once-a-week housekeeper, let alone a retinue to manage. I scoffed at the idea of depending on other people to take care of my basic needs. Promoting outmoded values of social hierarchy! Acting like Marie Antoinette!

Cut to this moment: a tray of pancakes and scrambled eggs has just been delivered upstairs to my desk so the lady of leisure can write in peace while listening to Debussy. Sajjid is downstairs making appetizers for tonight's party while elsewhere laundry is being done and sinks scrubbed, the almonds are soaking for tomorrow's detox smoothie, the dogs are trotting happily around the neighborhood with shiny coats and glistening teeth, and Roger is out buying ice and gladiolas. Welcome to Pakistan.

Take Away

2011-02-28T22:19:00.005+05:00

There is a new Thai restaurant in town called "Mango Tree," and I tried it for the first time on Friday night. I didn't go there though: I invited a few of my closest friends over and had the food delivered so we could sit in a cozy room, spread the feast out over a long table, fill our plates, loaf around on the sofas, and catch up. Delivery is called "takeaway" here, not take-out, one of those sneaky remnants of British culture that linger in Pakistan like driving on the left side of the road and the popularity of teatime.

We had satay and green papaya salad and tamarind red snapper and curries and noodles. We had chocolate cake for dessert and I steeped a pot of hibiscus tea from Vietnam, the tight buds turning into loose, floating flowers in the hot water. There is only one other Thai restaurant in town, and it is at the Marriott, which has good food but lost its atmosphere after the bombing in 2008. We exclaimed over the peanut sauce, decided we ordered way too much, and pronounced Mango Tree a success.

There was one thing we keep saying as we ate: how long it had been since we had seen each other. Obaid, still a newlywed; Umayr, gone to Canada for a few months; Fahim and Natalya busy with work and salsa dancing lessons and the million other things to do in this small, supposedly sleepy town. If you don't do it, plan it, make the time, these nights don't happen. You become engrossed in work, flop on the couch afterwards, get lost in the routine, skip the important things.

A friend who used to live in Islamabad asked me recently what three things I would do right now if I knew I was leaving Pakistan soon. One of the things on the list was to spend more time with this particular group of friends, this special group of people who make this country feel like home, who tell me the truth, who I trust absolutely.

When I do leave here, I want to take these times with me. I will remember nights in like this one, taking the back gate into the French Club, our bumpy drive to the highest plains in the world, a brilliant thunderstorming night high on a hill in Nathiagali, lounging on red cushions on my terrace.

After my friends left, I packed up the leftovers, put them in the fridge, making a little stack of perfect boxes you could take on a picnic, on a drive, up a mountain, to a party. I always want to take things with me, but that is so seldom possible. You can only call your friends over, ring up for some food, spend the night laughing, and eat as much as you can.

The Hen Experiment

2011-02-15T23:10:00.007+05:00

It has begun. I've lived in Pakistan for almost two years: a country so full of chickens that you couldn't walk into a village without stumbling into a squawking pack of hens. A country so full of chickens that even my house guards can tell me about the three most common breeds of hens in the country and a proper feeding schedule. And yet every week I have eaten pale, perfect, sterile-looking huge eggs in a styrofoam package from the expat grocery store that I'm sure are flown in from Dubai or someplace equally ridiculous.

I'm also sure the word for a group of hens is not a "pack," but this is exactly my point: I don't know these things and haven't taken the trouble to learn. (Flock? Clutch? Let the education begin.) For two years I have paid the price of my ignorance with tasteless, watery and rather expensive eggs. I said as much at work the other day, and a woman on my team turned around immediately and said, "Well, how many hens would you like?" I was headed more towards the where-can-I-get-local-organic-eggs? question, but apparently that was the wrong question.

The right question was where-can-I-get-local-organic-chickens-to-lay-eggs-for-me? and now I have my answer. My first two hens were deposited yesterday, much to the wired, intense interest of Marlo and Kima who looked at first like it was Christmas (chickens arrive) and then like I had cancelled Christmas (dogs are told that the chickens should under no circumstances be played with or eaten). Two more hens are coming later in the week to make a merry little band of four.

Today my throat felt a little less like a raw cutting board for the Devil's Ginsu knives so I left the house for the first time in five days. By "left the house" I mean I stepped into the front yard and felt the unfamiliar sensation of sun on my shoulders. As I always do, the first thing I surveyed was the big side yard downstairs and the garden, to see how the wild thicket of arugula is doing.

There they were, pecking away like they had always been part of the landscape: soft and tottering, two hens minding their own business. I was both enchanted and floored: what do I do with them? What do they eat? Do they need a warm place to sleep at night and maybe a slug of whiskey to settle their nerves when the dogs get too close? When will I start getting my breakfast eggs?

Luckily, I have in-house hen experts. Aforementioned guards apparently used to live on a farm with 300 chickens and can even make the hens come right up and eat from their fingers. You haven't lived until you've seen my colossal, 6'5" guard bending low over the grass, his AK-47 propped up on nearby tree an appropriate distance away, making delicate clucking noises with a weedy morsel in his outstretched hand.

The big talk around the henhouse now is the need for a "male hen." I explained the problem with this phrasing to no avail. I'm certainly no expert, so I'm inclined to believe the guards (and the gardener, and the dog-trainer, and the housekeeper: yes, everyone got into the act around here today on the chicken question) when they say no rooster = no eggs. But I say, no rooster = no 5:00 am cock-a-doodle-do. Thus we are at an impasse. Do I bring a cock into the flock and risk alienating the neighbors? Do I set up an elaborate rooster stud session by day and whisk him into a sheltered, sound-proof boudoir by night?

This question will be resolved. But for today, there was only rejoicing. As the hens made themselves at home, the dogs looked on and licked their lips, and one of our newest arrivals produced one, small, brown, perfect egg like a charming hostess present. I'll be having it for breakfast.

The Art of the Chick Flick

2011-02-11T17:10:00.006+05:00

I'm afflicted with what may be strep throat, tonsillitis, or just punishment for something horrible I did somewhere, at some time in my past. It feels like gravel or tiny shards of glass are going down every time I swallow, so I try to do it as little as possible. However, I have discovered that telling yourself "not to swallow" is like trying not to think about a pink elephant. It makes it irresistible to do so.

Tylenol, ginger tea, and gargling with salt water have only gotten me so far. During this bleak time, especially in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, I have found my greatest comfort in an unlikely place: the Romantic Comedy. Being out of the U.S. for two years and not a huge movie watcher even before then, it turns out I have missed hundreds of them!

Hundreds of movies with cheerful upbeat music, situations that always resolve themselves positively, and lots of cute handbags and shoes. After 20+ hours of exposure to the genre, I can state with confidence the few basic requirements of the formula in case anyone is interested in writing their own to great profit and acclaim. I'll make it easy for you. Based on my research, a successful romantic comedy should:

Be set in New York City.

There's not a lot of room to maneuver on this one. The glittery high-rises for the opening sequence, the bustling, the taxicabs, and the impossibly huge stylish apartments with views of the Park prove too much for the genre to resist. The only acceptable alternative is a quaint and rustic small town setting into which heroine is dumped to her surprise and discomfiture (See: "The Proposal," "New in Town," "Leap Year," "Did You Hear About the Morgans?") Bonus points for hitting New York City + rustic small town in the same film (See almost all of the above).

Give the heroine a very cool job.

Specifically, one of the following two jobs that almost no one has in real life:

1) Owner of a fancy food/flower/pet/stationery store with an adorably creative name despite only being in her 20's or early 30's (See "Life as We Know It," "The BackUp Plan," "Love Happens"), or

2) A super high-powered position such as working at the New York Stock Exchange or at a slick fashion magazine. (See "What Happens in Vegas," "13 Going on 30," "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days") Bonus: this job includes a prerequisite bitchy boss role to toss older actresses a bone (i.e. Candace Bergen or Frasier's mean wife from "Cheers").

Make sure the heroine's past includes something sad.

This makes her more "interesting," quickly gives her depth and personality, and gives the male lead the opportunity to show how he really understands her. Parental death is the easiest way to get this one done, as it serves as easy emotional shorthand (See "27 Dresses," "The Back-Up Plan," "50 First Dates," "The Proposal," and every single Disney princess movie ever made). This is my least favorite part of the formula, as it is lazy and mildly manipulative storytelling. But what can you do: nobody's perfect.

Give the heroine a less attractive but funny friend.

The heroine herself usually isn't very funny: this task is left to her wise-cracking best friend, who is usually the actress Judy Greer (See "13 Going on 30," "27 Dresses," "Love Happens"), but if she's not available any sarcastic, spunky foil will do.

Cast Matthew McConaughey as the male lead.

I know there are other actors out there willing to engage in the mild acting and manscaping that the role requires, but Matthew's track record makes him king of the genre (See "Fool's Gold," "The Wedding Planner," "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," "Failure to Launch," about a million others). This is because it is imperative that the suitor at first repulse the female lead. There are no exceptions to this. The eventual apple of her eye must at the beginning fill her with revulsion, disgust, disapproval, and distaste. I don't know why it has to be this way, but it does. Don't even question it. And McConaughey has that roguish, needling quality that can magically turn into charm and appeal by the movie's final third.

Finally, if you really want to make sure you've hit the ball out of the park...

Cast Selma Blair in an unflattering role.

It will only help your movie if you can shoehorn Selma Blair into a role where she is a witchy ex-girlfriend, witchy current girlfriend, small-minded colleague, or general loser. (See "Legally Blonde," "A Guy Thing," pretty much any Selma Blair movie.) I can't help but think Selma Blair needs a new agent.

I myself may need a new hobby, as Apple TV will at some point run out of romantic comedies to download and my current state of sickness will reject all but the lightest, airiest fare (no Oscar nominees or foreign films here, thanks). But for now the player is all queued up with "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "The Ugly Truth," (the latter starring the rom com's latest queen, Katherine Heigl), and I have research to conduct.

Meanwhile, there is talk of the US suspending bilateral relationships with Pakistan (if you don't know why, read up on the incident that occurred in Lahore), the weather is gray and moody, and I can't taste the chocolate chip pumpkin bread I pulled out of the freezer to cheer myself up. Until everything gets better, I'm staying on the couch and burying myself in the tried-and-true formula. This is at least one thing we can count on.

The Town

2011-02-06T18:04:00.009+05:00

On this lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon in Islamabad, I got around to watching the movie "The Town." You know, the one where Ben Affleck finally decides to do a movie in/about Boston just to shake things up a bit? (Sorry: too easy a target, Ben.)

Once you've lived in a place, it is imprinted on you. I know a real Boston street in my bones: I know the specific blue and white striping on the police cars, the sound of Joe Castiglione calling Red Sox games, the smell of roasting sausages at Fenway. I know the brick-paved sidewalks downtown, the exact look of a T stop sign, a Southie accent, and the newsstand in Harvard Square. I lived in Boston for ten years before moving to Pakistan, and watching the movie was like having a two-hour visit with an old friend, because "The Town" got all the details right.

Most movies manage to flatten out the quirks of a city into an easy blandness that could be Anytown, USA. But no one can fake the details of a place you know well. Say what you will about good 'ol Ben (who also directed the film), but he has Boston down: the security guard sitting in the armored van reading the Herald, how beautiful the Zakim Bridge is at night, the hoop earrings on the trash-talking townie girlfriend, and of course, a scene in a scruffy Dunkin' Donuts.

Of course it makes me wonder what details will stick out most vividly about Islamabad when I eventually leave here. I have a few guesses: the guy who bikes around the neighborhoods all day yodeling for everyone's old newspapers and rags. The faint white haze when you drive down the wide avenue of the Blue Area, or the hawks that slowly circle out of the Margalla Hills over the rooftops into human territory. The whiff of burning trash, and the smell of the guards making roti outside for dinner. Of course, men in shalwar walking together in the park, the stately streetlights on Seventh Avenue, stray cats, and the occasional, acrobatic monkey on the terrace next door.

Blood Orange

2011-02-03T16:08:00.003+05:00

I hosted a bloody brunch over the holiday weekend a few weeks back. That sounds gruesome and terrible, but actually it was social and pleasant. Along with waffles and eggs, guests could take their pick of breakfast beverage from a Bloody Mary or a Blood Orange Mimosa. (Only the hardcore chose the Bloody Mary at 11 am on a Monday and you know who you are.)

This is the kind of thing you can do in Pakistan, where you can buy an entire bag of blood oranges for $5. And by entire bag, I mean, a hoist-it-over-your-head, have-it-ride-sidesaddle-on-your-motorbike bag of 100 oranges. My housekeeper was bound and determined to go all the way to Khanpur, an hour away, to buy our bag of 100 oranges because in Khanpur a bag of 100 oranges is only $3. I told him we were going to let that $2 go.

At Whole Foods in the U.S., at least last I checked, one blood orange was $3. On the rare occasion I would buy one, I would carefully select the best, plumpest, most perfect-looking specimen, take it home, and carefully slice it paper thin to use as a garnish for a fancy cocktail or to float on top of simmering cider.

Now I could gargle with the stuff, but it is still a thrill to (have my housekeeper) juice 100 oranges so we can all slosh back pitcher after pitcher of sticky red juice while downing homemade chocolate donuts and handfuls of pomegranate seeds (another perk of the season).

Yesterday it was sunny as usual but the air felt warm, like winter was ending, which means blood oranges and pomegranates are on their way out. Good thing we had one last friendly, bloody bash.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

2011-01-03T20:35:00.004+05:00

My long visa saga over, I finally came back to Pakistan, exhausted but happily clutching my stamped passport in hand, just in time to celebrate Christmas.

Last year at Christmas I felt very far from home, as the holidays can make you feel when you're living abroad. I had a lovely dinner with some American friends, but the city seemed a little cold and empty (even though it was 65 degrees) and definitely lacking in the "festive" factor. No presents and no tree: it seemed like any other day.

Being stuck in the US for a month changed all of that this year. Trying so hard to get "home" to Islamabad made me love and appreciate my life there all the more. The long journey back was sort of like an international "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," but picture Christmas instead of Thanksgiving, Islamabad instead of Chicago, and recalcitrant government bureaucracy instead of a rental car on fire.

My 14-hour layover in the most boring airport in the world (Frankfurt, Germany) intensified the feeling, especially after I walked out of customs in a sleep-deprived haze only to realize I couldn't get back into the main terminal for another seven hours with only the unwashed masses and a German internet console for entertainment. (Try typing emails without using the letter "y." Just go ahead and try it.)

Just the sheer act of getting back into the country felt festive and put me right into the holiday spirit. A tree (small and fake, but still) and presents followed, as well as peanut butter dog treats for Marlo and Kima. You can see where the tree came from in the photo above: it's Kohsar Market, all decked out for the holiday-celebrating Christians on Christmas Eve, which was also a Friday, which is why you can also see people headed to Jumah prayers at the mosque just behind the Santa. Who says we can't all get along?

No snow, no carols, and still far away from family, but this Christmas it felt really nice to be at home.

Ten Cities, Two Weeks, and I'm Still an Illegal Alien

2010-12-01T23:30:00.001+05:00

(15 days ago) My two-week vacation to Vietnam drawing to an end, I take a slow, bumpy car ride past hoards of motorbikes and market stalls of dragon fruit to the capital city of Hanoi, with the taxi driver honking his horn every 20 to 30 seconds the entire 4 hour trip. Luckily it is a pleasant, jaunty trill that sounds like a little song to wake birds up. I need to get back to the big city so I can...

(14 days ago) ...Spend the entire day at the Pakistani Embassy in Hanoi. This is just as boring as you would imagine, and does not result in the visa back to Pakistan I was hoping for so I have to...

(12 days ago) ...Head to Saigon for one last day feverish day of shopping, sightseeing, and a relaxing massage and mud wrap to prepare me to...

(11 days ago) ...Get on a plane to Doha, Qatar and spend a day in the Middle East just killing time before I...

(10 days ago) ...Board yet another plane for a 14-hour flight to Washington DC since I have no visa for Pakistan and am not in the mood to be detained at the airport in Islamabad upon arrival. In addition to being extremely bummed by this, I also decide to concentrate on the positives, which include me getting to...

(9 days ago) ...Spend two days in DC seeing fun people, eating great food, and applying for a new visa before I...

(7 days ago) ...Hop on a plane to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Palm Springs and...

(3 days ago) ...Drive up to Santa Barbara to hang for a day with the adorable Demmon and Lee families in the beautiful sunshine which fortifies me to...

(Yesterday) ...Withstand a sudden drop to 28 degrees and a trip through icy Chicago to Frankfort, Michigan to...

(Today) ...Wish my grandpa a very happy 90th birthday in person and witness the huge, surprised smile on his face when he sees my face which by all rights should still be in Pakistan. Silver lining indeed.

Do It Yourself Flood Relief

2010-11-04T19:53:00.012+05:00

After my blog post in August on Pakistan's flood crisis, you responded. Six of my friends back in the U.S. wrote in to ask how they could help. There are tons of great relief organizations working in the area of course, but my friends were looking to do something a little more "hands on."

Enter our grand plan: collect some funds, gather supplies, and get the stuff driven to the flood relief areas ourselves to deliver items by hand to families there. A wee bit more ambitious, but totally do-able with the support of a few friends stateside, a rented car, and my energetic house guy who took three days off from managing my life in Islamabad to launch operation flood relief.

The flood-affected families have been receiving a lot of food and water, thanks to the aforementioned flood relief organizations, but it's starting to get cold in Pakistan (yes, it gets surprisingly cold here) and warm clothes are an unmet concern for people who have lost everything. So we concentrated on getting as many fluffy sweaters, comfy sweatshirts, and woolly pants in the hands of people who would be needing them soon.

Our stash looked pretty good before send-off, in Islamabad, complete with (subtly American color-coded) sign. Coming Next: Part II, Handing Out the Clothes. Thank you, everyone who pitched in!!

Sunday Afternoon Observations

2010-10-24T11:20:00.003+05:00

Fall has come to Islamabad. You hardy East-Coasters and Midwesterners will scoff, but after spending 18 months in Pakistan including monsoon summers, the low 60's feel chilly and yesterday I hauled all of my boots and sweaters out of the closet.

I met the Swedish Ambassador to Pakistan and she is HOT. How does Sweden do it?

A large strip of my lawn has been removed to extend the vegetable garden; there are now 20 different items planted, getting me one step closer to my goal of turning the house into a commune where we can all live off the land. The snow peas are already 5 inches tall after their first week.

I made my debut on Friday night in local Islamabad band "Gigistan." I sang an '80s classic, "Time After Time" and got a lot of kind comments both on my singing and on my rhinestone-studded True Religion jeans. Sometimes I think the most important thing is looking the part.

My vacation to Vietnam starts in two weeks. I still need a visa, but luckily I can see the Vietnam Embassy from the terrace of my house, and will be popping over there tomorrow. I am most looking forward to the food and have heard that Saigon is a foodie paradise.

I love the green smoothies from my detox so much I am continuing to have one every morning for breakfast. I am also, however, eating pizza on the weekends. Here's to everything in moderation!

Detox

2010-10-03T11:49:00.006+05:00

I am one week into a three-week detox. That's 21 days of no caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy, no eggs, no sugar, no wheat. And a few other random no-no's, like tomatoes, citrus, and soy sauce.

No, I have not gone insane and no, I am not hungry all the time, to answer 99% of the questions you will immediately be asking about this process. I got inspired to do the cleanse after months of feeling tired, stressed out, heavy, and headache-y. Would surviving on a liquid meal for breakfast and dinner and a small, wheat, dairy, and sugar-free lunch do the trick? That was the experiment.

I have to say so far it has been fantastic. I miss coming home to a yummy dinner (cold carrot ginger soup, anyone?), but I have twice the energy, none of the headaches, and am almost completely relaxed even though work continues to be hectic, stressful, and speed-of-light fast.

So it may not be crazy to do a detox, but what about doing one in a country without salad bars, health food, or the concept of eating dinner before 9pm? A breakdown:

HURDLE: My detox book ("Clean" by Alejandro Junger) includes 21 recipes at the end for all the smoothies, cold soups, and healthy lunches you will need to make on the cleanse. The recipes are full of ingredients like quinoa, buckwheat noodles, sprouted chia seeds, and blueberries. Yeah, right.

ADVANTAGE: The recipes are also full of ingredients like mango, coconut water, and nut milk. Instead of spending lots of cash on packaged, stale versions of the last two, I turn the bounty and resources of Pakistan to good, detoxing use. That is why my dining room table is filled with a mound of actual coconuts and bags of almonds, from which my housekeeper painstakingly extracts pure coconut water and sweet nut milk every evening in time for the morning shake. I cannot picture this scenario in the United States, for lots of reasons.

HURDLE: Social activity in Pakistan, as it does around most of the world, centers around eating. (Expat social activity for the most part centers around drinking, which is why I had a lot of quality time with my puppies this weekend). Showing up at a luncheon buffet at a work function in Peshawar with all the business leaders of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and refusing the food is a no-no. Filling your plate with banned items, picking at it convincingly, and then stashing it somewhere uneaten is not the way I'd ideally like to spend this moment. But there you go.

ADVANTAGE: I am already a foreigner in unfamiliar territory, so is it really going to shock people when I exhibit weird behavior? When I whip out my green smoothie on the way to work every morning or scour the city looking for liver support pills, I don't have to worry about my driver thinking I am strange. I already have dogs in a Muslim country, take photos of goats on the street, and furtively slurp noodles in the back seat during Ramadan. That ship sailed long ago.

HURDLE: Sticking to a plan is all about setting your life up so it's easy to follow. There is very, very little room for improvisation here, as I cannot breeze into Whole Foods and pick up a detox-approved lunch, or head to a smoothie bar so they can whip up my breakfast. Everything has to be planned out meticulously in advance so that each meal is actually possible.

ADVANTAGE: Did I mention I have a housekeeper, cook, driver, and a staff manager? Having this kind of staff to oversee and wrangle is actually much less appealing than it seems, and that's the subject of another post altogether. But, it must be said that, even with the hiccups, putting out a list of groceries alongside a recipe in the morning and coming home from work to find it made and stacked in little containers in your fridge is heaven. And a godsend when you're not really allowed to eat anything else. I don't have to rely on Whole Foods and smoothie bars: I have Adeel, Adil, Nisar, and Sajjid.

HURDLE: I'm living in a stressful environment. I work super long hours, the job is often exhausting, I travel with a bodyguard for security reasons, and I'm very far away from family and lots of my friends. This makes it seem like doing a detox and giving up all those comfort foods is just too difficult.

ADVANTAGE: The opposite is true. Unless you have your health on your side here, you just won't make it very long. This gives you the urgency and the resolve to stick with a plan: the intense environment requires intense focus on strengthening your body and mind so you can handle it and flourish anyway. Oh, and a couple more things that make it easy, recommended strongly by the detox book: deep tissue massages for $30, private in-home yoga lessons for $15, and a great sauna at the Serena Hotel if you can sneak in to their gym. No excuses.

Vacation by the Numbers

2010-09-11T19:37:00.000+05:00

My three week vacation in the U.S. has come to an end, so it's time to do the numbers:

Books Read: Three. The first was How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. This was okay, kind of funny, but not memorable. It lacked much heart, and the plot line--that all contemporary fiction that sells well is calculated drivel made up to push sales--made me really cynical about the ability of current novels to inspire or elevate. After studying Ulysses for two years to write my dissertation I started to think that already a few years ago, so this is not a good direction for me. Next came Making Your Dog Your Best Friend by the Monks of New Skete. Non-fiction, fabulous book from the '70s from a monastic community who raises German Shepherds and their advice on how to have a great dog. I loved this book and read it all in one windy day on the beach, which the library probably won't appreciate because sand in every single page may have fluffed it up permanently. Finally, the perfect quick plane read, My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler. Hilarious, bawdy and totally inappropriate account of the author's history between the sheets. Midgets included. I read basically the entire thing from Doha to Islamabad. I like memoirs about 100% more than I like fiction at this point.

Trashy Magazines Read: Seven. So I am totally up-to-date on pop culture now. I used to turn my noses up at stuff like US Weekly and Star. That was before I moved to another continent and felt lost and confused when hearing about things like Kendra Wilkinson, Demi Lovato, the people with 19 children, any of the Kardashians, Ashley Tisdale, or Mike "the Situation" Sorrentino. It took plowing through the first three magazines to understand who all these people are, but now I am firmly in the know.

Farmers' Markets Visited: Three. If you live in the U.S. and are not going to farmers' markets all summer, what could possibly be your excuse? It is one of the things I miss the most. I was especially delighted by heirloom and yellow teardrop tomatoes, wax beans, corn on the cob, and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Movies Seen: One. Just "Eat Pray Love." I didn't have much time to go to the movies but made an exception for this one. It was fun and made for a perfect girly outing. Julie Roberts pulled off a tough role, because really how fast could the plotline of an upper middle class woman traveling to (mostly less developed) other countries to find herself get annoying? I'm far from the first person to make this observation. But the filming was spot-on, in real locations, and the hectic cab ride in India scene made me think of home. Meaning, Pakistan-home, my adopted home for the time being.

Trips to McDonald's and/or Starbucks: One. Seeing as these two things are some of the most American things I can think of, I am proud of this number. The exception was made one early morning for a roadtrip Sausage Egg McMuffin and hot chocolate, and it was delicious.

Dips in the Water: Too many to count. Yes I grew up in California, went to college in Santa Barbara, and had a pool in the backyard during high school. But I never cared about getting in the water then; I guess it was too easy. Now that I have moved to landlocked Islamabad it is apparently the right time to start loving pools, lakes, and the ocean. I jumped in Lake Michigan a few times (surprisingly warm this year!) and stayed at three hotels with pools.

Number of meals with bacon and/or avocado in them: 22. This just goes to show that you can accomplish anything if you set your mind to it.

Buying Like an American

2010-09-01T09:35:00.006+05:00

Last night I went to Walmart for the first time in my life. As I guess every single person in this country already knows, you can buy anything you want at Walmart, including oregano seeds for $1, karaoke CDs of Lady Gaga's latest, and a pre-faded red tee shirt that says "I'm a Pepper." This is awesome, any way you look at it. Draw a veil discreetly over that rather compelling documentary I watched a few years back about how bad Walmart is.

My visit to Walmart was so unusual that my credit card company immediately suspended my card for suspected fraudulent activity. Remember that I live in Pakistan, charging up electric generator sets and tiki torch fuel cans left and right and no red flag is raised. Re-examine your screening process, Capital One.

I restored my credit card privileges in time to do some damage at the mall today, the next stop on my consumer tour. I don't like shopping at the best of times, but cramming six months' worth of essential purchases into one day is especially icky. Random sampling of my list of must-haves today: sneakers, "Game Change" book about the 2008 election, sports bra, organic mascara, yoga block, 2011 dayplanner, pastry cutter, silver polish, and sesame oil. I should have bought the sneakers first and then put them on for the 6-hour mall walking marathon that commenced.
Shopping by yourself is weird. You have to depend on the fawning opinion of the commissioned saleswoman about the black leather and velvet leggings/ankle boot combination that you want to believe could work on the Islamabad party scene this fall (solution: go with your gut when it says "no.") You have to stop for lunch (and dinner) alone at sad food court eateries and look forlornly at the Cinnabon lady when she says they don't come in a mini size. Who can eat a whole Cinnabon after a full lunch without a friend to share? Those suckers have definitely grown more massive since I've moved away.

I drifted into the Sony Vaio store, and then into the Mac store, begging fate to settle my question about which laptop I should buy before I return to Pakistan. I was ignored in both places. This may be because my "research" consisted of limply picking up laptops to judge their weight and growing bored when I realized I couldn't open a browser online. I hate computers, I hate the Mac vs. PC debate, and I hate that I have to pick a side before this Sunday.

I also hate carrying around a growing load of heavy shopping bags, each one with a cute twine handle that cuts into your skin like a medieval restraining device by the time the day is done. Why haven't malls started popularizing shopping carts?

I should stop complaining. Some people love shopping, and would love the idea of doing six months' worth in one day. It is fun to get stuff that isn't available in Pakistan, and I did come home with lots of good loot that I am excited about. (And some stuff, like eye makeup remover, that is just deadly dull.) Friends in Pakistan, if you want me to bring you back anything from the U.S., you'd better tell me quick, and it'd better be available at the airport gift shop, cause this little mall shopper isn't going back.

Flood

2010-08-14T13:43:00.010+05:00

Right now where I live, in Islamabad, the wide, clean streets are dry as a bone, the air is clear, and the sky is sunny. In the rest of Pakistan, massive and continuing floods are threatening to take over the whole country. It's been raining a lot here in town over the last few weeks too, but Islamabad is in a secure little spot nestled right at the foot of the Himalayas so we're on high ground. The most flood-related inconvenience I've had to endure was stepping in heels over a 4-inch deep puddle in the driveway of my office, which disappeared pretty quickly.

Does everyone around the world know how bad the flood disaster in Pakistan is? It has already affected more people than Haiti's earthquake and the Asian tsunami combined, but maybe because it is a slower disaster, it's a less exciting story for the media. There isn't one, dramatic moment of destruction where the buildings fall or the wave hits the shore. Just hour after hour of unrelenting monsoon rain, water inching up slowly and then faster to cover people's homes, possessions, and millions of acres of crops. The death toll will climb more slowly as well. The first case of cholera was reported today, and children are already dying for that slow, very undramatic reason of lack of clean drinking water. The aid pledged for Haiti and the tsunami victims was in the billions; here the total pledged is about 209 million so far.

It certainly doesn't seem fair that Pakistan has to face this, as if natural disaster ever is fair. (Although how "natural" is this, or the Russian heat wave and mudslides in China that are also happening at the same time? Massive drought, flooding, and other erratic weather disasters have been predicted by climate change specialists for years and now we are watching it happen. It was also predicted that it would hit developing countries with large populations the hardest.) Pakistan and its 180 million people have already been through enough, I would say, but the flooding is now putting the country back 100 years by some estimates.

My project was in the middle of rehabilitating fish farms in Swat, the region damaged in Pakistan's conflict with the Taliban last year. In the spring of 2009, the Taliban came into villages, killed "resistors," destroyed buildings, and dumped poison into trout and carp farms. One of the fish farm owners told us how the Taliban came into his home, killed all his fish with poison, and cut off his arm. But he didn't want to give up on his farm, so we were working with him and 39 other fish farm owners to rebuild the fish raceways, get high-quality fish feed, and get the industry going again. The flooding washed away ten of the 40 fish farms completely. Many more are damaged, but because so many bridges are out, we can't even access all of them to find out how badly.

Boston.com has done a great series of photos on the flood; I've been very proud of the newspaper of my adopted hometown and their coverage. Here are also a few photos taken by someone I know here who organized a collection to buy food for displaced families.

My impression from my friends in the U.S. is that overall this isn't getting a lot of attention. Or not as much attention as say, the quitting Jet Blue flight attendant. This is strange. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

Eureka!

2010-08-04T21:07:00.004+05:00

I finally figured out why I am having such a hard time putting up a post lately. It isn't the new puppies, or the fact that I've been sick pretty much the whole month, or the oppressively hot weather that makes me want to lay around like a vegetable, or the news of catastrophic floods all throughout Pakistan that is just more and more depressing each day.

No, it's because I've been here too long. I don't mean that I want to leave or that I don't like it anymore. What I mean is that I've been here too long to give snapshots of what life is like in exotic Pakistan. Pakistan isn't exotic to me anymore. It feels, in a lot of the ways that count, like home.

Here is a list of things that I am totally and completely used to: machine guns, mosques, fancy Pakistani clothes, women carrying large loads of things on their heads. At one point all of these things seemed the height of exotic and cool. After living here for one and half years, I have even caught myself saying "we" and "our" and "us" on occasion when referring to Pakistan. This is the kind of stuff that gives the US government nightmares and is the reason they insist that their diplomats go back home on a regular basis to connect with America.

Because of this adopted ownership and my appreciation for the real Pakistan, I now also feel like I have the right to voice complaints about "my" real Pakistan too. But I really don't. At the end of the day it isn't actually my country. So here I am, stuck between not being a tourist anymore (oooh, donkeys! shalwar! shisha!) but still being an outsider who has to be polite and maybe not tell the truth every time. It may be that to keep the blog going I just have to start getting real anyway, and hope that I don't offend anyone. We'll see how that goes. (First topic: why don't landlords feel responsible for repeated incidents of open sewage in the backyard?)

A good friend of mine who used to live here in Pakistan recently moved to Bogota, Colombia. She started a blog and she's been posting, like, every single day. The scene is fresh, her energy is high, and everything about her new world sounds exciting and invigorating. She hasn't been there long enough to see all of the warts yet, to get a deep sense of the particular drawback of that particular country, which every single country has. Reading her posts is like going on a great vacation.

Cut to me, laying on my couch at home for the last week googling "parasites," wanting to strangle my landlord, and wondering when the Apocalypse Now re-enactment outside is going to end. (Monsoon season = numbing, endless rain.) And yet, I just said "at home." That's the truth too.

Posting a Photo Every Single Day is Hard

2010-07-13T14:47:00.003+05:00

It doesn't seem like it should be, but it is. Here are some of my lame excuses:

My camera battery died, and I couldn't find my charger. I think it is stowed away in one of the suitcases from my trip to the U.S. in May that are even today laying on my closet floor, still packed.

Things have been busy with work. See sad italicized statement above.

I started to doubt the whole enterprise. Do people really want to see a photo everyday of my occasionally glamorous but sometimes it must be said mundane existence, even if it is in exotic Pakistan? And don't I have the responsibility to say something profound with each posting? The combination of artistic (get a good photo!) and literary (say something meaningful!) pressure proved to be my undoing more than once. And, is anyone actually going to check in once a day, every single day, to see the day's submission? I have my doubts.

The new puppies have added about three hours a day to my responsibilities, and cut my REM sleep in half. I am beat. (But I love them.)

Okay, that's about it for lame excuses. Any words of encouragement for me out there? Are you checking in? Were you bummed when there were no posts for two weeks? Are you tired of seeing photos of fruit?

P.S. No, I did not take this photo. But I like it.

Fashion Show

2010-06-28T22:28:00.003+05:00

Today's picture of the day explains in part why I haven't been posting any pictures of the day lately. All my energies were a little wrapped up working on the event in the photo, which went well. Who says fashion shows can't come to Islamabad?? Check out the U.S. ambassador in the front row. I'm hiding right behind the model and her abundant hair.

The event showcased 25 women-owned businesses who underwent a months-long training program to get their products ready for the international export market. 14 international buyers attended the show to place orders and bring these fabulous clothes to the U.S. Look for them to appear soon!

Book Reading

2010-06-23T18:53:00.003+05:00

People sometimes complain that there isn't anything to do in Islamabad (no bars obviously, no movie theater, not a ton of restaurants or shopping, and not nearly the night-life of Lahore or Karachi). But this week I did something that felt so normal and fun, and also reminded me of college. A book-reading!

My friend is writing and editing "God's Goldfish," a collection of short stories about Muslims by Muslims. The reading was at the hippest coffee house in town, with free cookies and coffee cake for all. Everyone lounged around by the tealights for the reading of two stories, one about the wedding between a London-raised Pakistani girl and her village husband, and the other about an office romance. Yes, the stories were about Muslim experiences, but so easy to identify with. Maybe that is the point. Other than the carrot cake having raisins in it, the reading was a perfect way to spend the evening. I look forward to reading the rest, S!

Puppies!

2010-06-22T20:19:00.005+05:00

Yes, the picture's blurry but they barely ever stay still long enough for me to get the shot. (See exception below.)

So, finally the explanation for why I have all of a sudden decided to only post on weekdays. First: what do you expect? I need to reserve my weekends for sleeping in, going to the spa for my $10 pedicure, and putting in a full day's work on Saturday. But really, it's because I want more time to spend with the puppies. Yes, there are two puppies in the house now, and every minute of their furry, wriggling little lives is teaching me how important it is that the word is plural. Despite an array of fun little toys, they are each other's favorite plaything, and I can't imagine just getting one of them.

They are adorable, loveable, engrossing, and exhausting. We are getting used to each other, getting used to going outside and not on the carpet, and getting used to the look on my groggy miserable face at the crack of dawn when their little bodies and yipping voices wake up and so do I. For all of you who wondered what it would finally take to make me a morning person, here's your answer.

Finally, any tips? All are welcome: your nugget of wisdom on housebreaking, crate training, inside/outside, treats, tricks, anything. All you puppy people, please come out of the woodwork. They are eight weeks old and already bursting with personality. I'm exhausted, haven't changed my shirt or showered for ages, could barely find time to eat today, and couldn't get it together to brush my teeth until three in the afternoon. Is this what being a new parent is like?

Al Fresco

2010-06-21T21:33:00.004+05:00

This time of year, it is hot. Hot hot hot as in tropical, humid. Apocalypse-Now-hot. And it's only June. There are two things you can do this time of year if you want to be outside: 1) Wait until after dark 2) Go up the mountain. Or both.

The Margalla Hills start right at the edge of Islamabad and are the wee beginnings of the Himalayas. The air gets cooler almost as soon as you start your ascent, up lots of curvy roads and past only slightly frightening sheer drops off the side (guard rails optional). For some reason the drivers here always insist on passing other cars on the curves. I think they are doing this to show off their driving skills. I would prefer a show of safe, calm driving. But here we differ.

Once you get up there, you can relax at Monal, one of Islamabad's most popular restaurants. It has a view of the city, and looking down on the city's neat, even grids you can pick out your neighborhood and even the red sign on the Marriott Hotel. Monal is known for its barbeque, its shisha pipes in lots of different flavors, and the view. It's almost worth death by cliff drop to get there.

A Little Game for Ya

2010-06-18T18:58:00.001+05:00

Today's photo is more like a puzzle, called "What is this?" Free samosas for the first person who guesses right.

Gup Shup

2010-06-17T14:34:00.005+05:00

Everyone says that Islamabad is a sleepy, quiet little town. Compared to Karachi and Lahore, that's true. But compared to say, Whittier, California or Brighton, Massachusetts, it isn't. This is because every single night of the week you will find people up late, eating dinner, having shisha, and of course chatting. Another way to say this here is "gup shup," a Punjabi term that means something like chit-chat, but encompasses more than that. Gup shup is friendly, open, relaxed conversation and hanging out, and Pakistanis excel at it. It is one of the reasons I feel very at home here: what is better than staying up late at night, eating yummy food and chatting?

Today's photo is of one of the many places you can go for some good old fashioned gup shup in Islamabad. And also, as it turns out, stroganoff pasta, which was the special of the day. I ate dinner there at 10:00 pm (I know, Oprah recommends no eating after six, but I haven't started my detox yet). My friend had grape shisha and a cappuccino, and a lovely time was had by all.

Loaded Down

2010-06-16T17:28:00.004+05:00

Yesterday I spent the day driving back and forth from Islamabad to Lahore, which is like driving back and forth from Boston to New York City (4 1/2 hours each way). I could probably post all 40 photos I took en route on Pakistan's major highway as they were all so interesting, but the rule is one photo a day so I will comply!

As much as this photo says something compelling about the state of highway regulations in Pakistan, the upper limit of engineering and physics, and most of all, the question of WHAT is in those bags, it is also impossible for me to post a photo like this without drawing some metaphor out of it. As the truck rolled by, laden with as many goods as I have ever seen on a truck, I happened to be reading a book called "Clean" about doing a three-week detox.

The author of "Clean" was making a persuasive case that the continual and repeated onslaught of toxins we ingest through our food, water, and environment loads your body down, becoming a burden that makes you tired, cranky, and miserable. His evidence and argument really made me want to do the detox, despite the fact that I will be eating quinoa for breakfast and something called a "Green Drink" for dinner.

Watching this truck roll by just in the middle of this dramatic passage really reinforced the message. Anyone else feeling loaded down? Want to do the detox with me? I could use the moral support. And someone with whom I could compare the finer points of green drink dinners.

Lychees!

2010-06-15T23:53:00.004+05:00

It is lychee season in Pakistan so they are everywhere. They are one of the things I remember most about first moving here a year ago...everyone in our temporary office used to walk around, peeling and eating them, while we made start-up decisions and tackled the work issues involved in launching a new project. Sometimes we would be too busy to eat lunch right away, so we would subsist on lychees for a few hours instead.

Lychees are a very sweet little fruit, a clear-ish white color inside once you peel off the thin scaly skin, with a pretty big seed. So not a lot of fruit for your effort. But they are delicious once you get there.

Also just now noticing the fingerprints in the thick layer of dust in the fruit bowl. Try not to judge the housekeeping.

Bird Flu

2010-06-14T19:31:00.004+05:00

Now we know that Pakistan is prepared! Today's photo is from the avian influenza lab at Pakistan's National Agricultural Research Council in Islamabad. We got the full tour of the lab, saw lots of complicated machines that spin DNA and so forth, and heard about how the lab is working to prevent outbreaks of bird flu. It was pretty impressive. The colorful display of chicken fetuses and bacteria in the hallway outside the lab was pretty impressive too, just in a gross way.

Chapati

2010-06-13T18:49:00.003+05:00

Lately I've been using chapatis in place of the flour tortillas that you can't get here. They're along the same lines: round, floury, good to make quesadillas with. Perhaps every culture has its version?

Anyway, chapatis come freshly made right from the bakery, only cost about 10 rupees each (12 cents) and come wrapped in the newspaper of the day, offering a little leisure reading while you eat. I have to admit that I don't read the newspaper here very often, but it's nice to catch the headlines when you unwrap your bread.

The headline peeking out from under the chapati--"Who killed BB?"--refers to Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated in December 2007 right before she ran for re-election. The investigation into her death, which occurred during a rally in Rawalpindi, Islamabad's sister city that's about half an hour away, is Pakistan's version of the "who killed Kennedy" conspiracy. Although here, of course, the crime scene was hosed down immediately after the shooting. So, there's that wrinkle.

Working from Home

2010-06-12T14:03:00.002+05:00

The terrace is my favorite part of my house. It has a nice breeze, a great view of the mountains, big scary birds circling around and landing on the railing every so often to keep things interesting, and occasionally the sight of monkeys climbing around the balcony next door. The cot is called a charpai, very popular in Pakistan but especially in the villages for lounging and sleeping. I love it.

The Punjabi (dialect) word for this small cot is manji (sounds like "mungee"), but when I say this word my guard and driver laugh. I think it is funny for them to hear random Punjabi words coming from a foreigner. It has also occurred to me that I am accidentally saying something like "I enjoy kissing horses." You never know.

You will notice the ashtray on the second shelf of the little table. It's not for me: I don't smoke, but you have to have one for visitors. You will also see an empty smoothie glass. The terrace is the best place to enjoy smoothies. All of this helps when you are working 12-hour days.

Boredom is Universal

2010-06-11T18:18:00.004+05:00

On my commute home from work, I saw this commute home from work. Isn't it great how they have to stop at the red light too?

A Photo Every Day

2010-06-10T14:29:00.000+05:00

I'm back! My trip to the U.S. was exhausting and invigorating all at the same time, and now I'm officially back in Pakistan for Year 2. In honor of the new start, I would like to announce a new change to the blog. I like to call it, "Quantity, not Quality." Just kidding. Hopefully we can do both.

Every day, I will be posting one photo of my life in Islamabad so you can see what it's really like for me to live here. If you're like most people around the world, all the photos you have probably ever seen of Pakistan involve heads of states/terrorism/war. I haven't seen any of those things here firsthand, happily, so I'll be able to show you a different side. I hope you enjoy!

Today's photo is of my vegetable garden. You can grow food here year-round, because the climate is amazing and the soil so fertile you/your gardener can basically just throw seeds in the ground and huge bushes will appear a few weeks later. The lettuce, cabbage, radishes, and peas are all gone now, and have given way to eggplants, tomatoes (still green but coming), and lots and lots of basil. I'm planning to make vats of pesto as soon as I have a chance. Pakistan friends: should we have a pesto-themed dinner party?

Return Flight

2010-05-07T18:53:00.004+05:00

So I'm in the U.S. for the next few weeks before I return to Islamabad on June 1. The last month or so of work was insanely busy, which was why I didn't get it together to post a new blog since celebrating my one-year anniversary with Pakistan.

It was definitely time for a break. Living in another country where just about every single thing is different than you're used to is tiring in a very specific, particular way, and the only method of finding relief is to get away for a little while.

I'm most excited about the food. It's crazy how much I miss things like avocados, blackberries, Fage yogurt, and whole wheat hamburger buns. I went to Trader Joe's within one hour of landing in DC, mostly just to wander the aisles, mouth agape, before picking up items from the aforementioned list, as well as pumpkin granola, an adorable bag of clementines, and butternut squash.

The next few weeks are not so much a "vacation" as they are a time to recover, regroup, and get refreshed for returning to my stint in a foreign country. Exercise is super important, as is a lot of sleep, good eating, and good conversation with a few friends. So I want to apologize right now, in advance, for the fact that I will not be seeing most of you while I'm in the States. There just isn't time, unless I want to turn my relaxing break into a breakneck social whirlwind, which my energy levels cannot afford at the moment.

The trip here was a little bumpy, which refers not only to a very turbulent flight over from Qatar (fourteen hours, yikes), but also to the fact that I had to leave at 2:30 in the morning from Islamabad, deal with hoards of people at an airport where cutting in line is a way of life, and explain to the woman sitting next to me on the 14 hour flight how to put her tray table down, how to turn on her overhead light, how to use her little TV screen, and what the eye mask was for ("You put it over your eyes, to sleep.")

The one thing I didn't have to teach her how to use was her barf bag; she got the hang of that all the way from Doha to Dulles. She also, inexplicably, decided to seat right next to me in the middle seat, even though the aisle seat was available. This was especially great during all the vomiting. You try to concentrate on eating parmesan chicken and watching "Quantum of Solace" with that going on in the next seat. Quantum of Solace is not that good, it turns out.

The funniest thing about this trip to the U.S. is that it's the first time I am coming here where I really feel like a visitor. When the stern lady at customs in Washington DC asked me "Did you bring any food back?" my first thought was that "back" wasn't right. This isn't a trip "back": I don't live here anymore. So it's actually a trip away from home, which right now is Pakistan. Actually, that was my second thought. My first thought was whether the wild organic honey in my suitcase that I brought back as a present counted as "food." Whoops.

Anniversary

2010-04-10T23:52:00.005+05:00

How do you celebrate an anniversary with a country? It certainly feels like a serious relationship that I am currently in with Pakistan, so reaching our one-year mark felt like something to acknowledge with a nice dinner. The answer was to go to the Treehouse, a new-ish Italian restaurant up on the hill overlooking all of Islamabad. I went with a group of close friends; we ordered fancy pasta dishes, molten chocolate cake, and two different shisha pipes to enjoy after dessert (double apple and strawberry mint).

In the cool breeze, with all the twinkling lights, in the company of good friends and good food, it was hard to look down at the city below with anything but a feeling of peace. It was hard in that moment to remember all the different stressful high points of the last twelve months: the crazy work environment, a steady stream of people leaving or getting fired, projects shutting down, going to the hospital for dehydration, my first bomb blast experience in Kabul, lizards on the walls and roaches on the floor, no salad for six months, etc.

That's what anniversaries are all about, I suppose. Remembering the good stuff, skipping lightly over the bad, and eating cake. I'm looking forward to Year #2, Pakistan. If I make it to our next anniversary, I want champagne.

Better Homes & Gardens

2010-04-04T05:21:00.002+05:00

The pursuit of domesticity continues! Having installed curtains, a new bathroom, and scary gas heaters that would be illegal in the United States in every room, I turn our attention now to the garden, and my desire for fresh vegetables and herbs that I can pick and eat just outside the front door.

Am I allowed to call it "my" garden when it is actually my gardener who gets the seeds, plants the seeds, waters the seeds, weeds everything, and all but hands me local, seasonal eating on a silver platter? I'm going to anyway. And I do often insist on doing the fun part myself: skipping out into the garden with a colander and a knife to harvest what I need for the dinner salad. The gardener thinks I'm weird for doing this, and everyone seems vaguely uncomfortable that I'm not having staff cut lettuce and pull radishes for me. But this is the beauty of being a gentleman farmer, right? Someone else does all the work and you get to walk around and enjoy the fruits of their labor?

Speaking of fruit, I never found my orange thief from last winter, but the tree is in blossom now and smells amazing every time I walk out the door, reminding me to forgive and forget, and also to tell the guard to be on the lookout for citrus felons. Who are we kidding, it was definitely the guard who ate them.

Also speaking of fruit, it is strawberry season again, like it was when I first arrived here last spring, and it is heaven. Strawberries in Pakistan are delicious red little jewels, and they are only available for 2 months. They are the best-tasting, most vibrant strawberries I have ever eaten, anywhere (with the exception of Stearns Farm, Framingham, MA). There's an organic strawberry farm outside Islamabad that I now have the hook-up with, and I am determined to put the waffle maker that I bought in Bangkok to good use every single weekend, piling fresh hot waffles high with juicy strawberries and whipped cream from now until the last sad berry in Islamabad drops from its plant and we all have to wait another 10 months for the next.

Here's to the New!

2010-03-27T22:23:00.008+05:00

What better holiday to celebrate while living in Pakistan than...Persian New Year's! (Otherwise known as the first day of spring.) I think Persian culture gets it right: starting the "new" year in icy frozen January doesn't exactly engender the right feelings of growth and beginning. Spring does though, especially here in sunny Pakistan, where my orange tree is already covered in fragrant blossoms and little baby birds have suddenly appeared all over the hills.

Friends of mine here in Islamabad celebrated Persian New Year's in style last weekend, ordering tons of food from the local Persian restaurant (Iran is right next door, so it's really not that big of a surprise that there's a good Persian restaurant in town) and having everyone over to stuff our faces and jump over fire. The goodies on the table all represent blessings and wishes for the new year: coins for prosperity, vinegar for wisdom, eggs for fertility, pomegranates for more fertility, an orange suspended in water to signify the earth suspended in the universe, dried sweet fruits for (I think?) love, rosewater for...something good that I can't remember, a goldfish for something else that I can't remember (but how cool that you can get goldfish in Pakistan!) A mirror to see yourself clearly, flowers, sumac (if I knew what that was I would tell you), and I'm sure I missed a few more. Anyway, it's a lovely tradition and I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

The best part was jumping over the fire before dinner. Granted, it was really more like a "tray of candles," but you really got that fire feeling. It is supposed to burn off all the old, bad feelings from last year and clear the way for the goodness ahead. It's hard not to get on board with something like that. Celebrating the "new year" feels appropriate since in a few more days I will have reached the end of my first year living in Pakistan. The old season is ending, a new one is beginning, and I'm still here. Jumping through the fire indeed.

Make It a Foot Long

2010-03-04T09:58:00.003+05:00

The Subway addiction continues. Today I had the WORST craving for another Subway sandwich, so I went to the franchise down the street from the office. (There are seriously like 20 Subway stores in Lahore; they're like McDonalds in New York City.) Based on my two visits in the last 24 hours, here are the following recommendations I will make should you ever find yourself inclined to visit a Subway in Pakistan:

The quality of the veggie toppings is quite high: the tomatoes a deep red, the green peppers positively shining with color, and the red onions sliced fresh and looking vibrant. This may be because the franchises are not importing their produce, but are getting it locally. This seems like a good place to ignore that warning about not eating raw fruits and vegetables in Pakistan.

The high quality of the veggies helps make up for the somewhat dubious quality of the meat. I wouldn't say it's bad, just that it's like nothing you've ever seen at an American Subway. I ill-advisedly ordered a meatball sub last night. When he cut open the meatballs to put inside the bun and I saw that they were white inside (chicken meatballs??), I quickly ordered a 6-inch veggie sub on the side. Good move.

On the other hand, the tandoori chicken is delicious. And there are about 15 different sauces you can put on your sandwich. Although, maybe it is already this way in America now too? I am old enough to remember when you could only get mayonnaise and yellow mustard on your Subway sandwich. And oil and vinegar, of course. That is the special dynamite secret of the franchise, and always has been.

The "small" soda size is a legitimate small, not conforming to the gross garantuan sizing of the U.S. The white-chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie is also small. This I am less enthusiastic about.

How cute is the Ramadan Subway sandwich special:
For your chips on the side, your choices are Lay's in French Cheese, Salt & Vinegar, and Sour Cream & Onion. French Cheese is better than it sounds.

The employees wear those little plastic gloves like in the U.S. I have never seen these gloves anywhere else, at any restaurant in Pakistan. Full hand touching is the norm.

No ice in the soda machine. But the soda comes out cold, so really, who needs it?

Retail Therapy

2010-03-03T09:45:00.000+05:00

Tonight in Lahore I checked out a fashion designer's latest collection at her house, picked out some great fabric to have stitched into a fancy shalwar kameze, and bought a pair of shoes at Charles & Keith (flat, shiny, greenish-black, for work). The shopping choices are much more plentiful in Lahore than in Islamabad, so I have to take advantage of that when I am here on business. Before going out shopping, I went to Subway to pick up a quick veggie sub and white chocolate macadamia nut cookie, which all tasted pretty close to how Subway tastes in the U.S., and reminded me instantly of road trips, since that is pretty much the only time I go there under normal circumstances.

To sum up: the evening was nice and normal, not loud, not dangerous, and involved cookies. More points for Pakistan! (Sorry, Kabul: give it a few years and maybe I could try you again...)

Weekend Trip

2010-02-26T20:12:00.010+05:00

Here is a list of great places to go away for a weekend trip: the Hamptons. Cape Cod. Santa Barbara. Hilton Head. Mackinaw Island. Miami. You will notice that Kabul, Afghanistan is not on that list.

But I'm all about experiencing a little adventure, and I already live in Pakistan, so when I got the chance to go to Kabul, I thought...Afghanistan: can't be that much more dangerous than Pakistan, right? An opportunity came up to go to check out a development project for the weekend, so I took it. I mean, you can handle anything for a year...would it really be so hard to live here? (Also, it is hard for me not to try anything once.)

Everything went fine for the first 16 hours or so of my trip: I met a lot of nice people at the compound, I had a nice lamb dinner, I went out for martinis at a bar called "Martinis." (Not so much with the inventive names here, apparently.) I saw some cool huge Afghan dogs, everyone was paying for things in American dollars, which I hadn't seen for months, and there were tons of expats running around looking like they were having fun. It made it a little easier to overlook all the barbed wire.

After getting to bed not so early, I was awakened at 6:30 in the morning by what sounded like the loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard in my life. I am never great in the morning at the best of times, but this rude awakening in a foreign country and unfamiliar bed (and the smoky smell) left me even more disoriented than usual. I wasn't too out-of-it to stumble to the window, grabbing my camera as I went, to see what had happened. Just a few houses away, all that remains of what used to be a nearby guesthouse hotel is now a crater in the ground, and 16 people are dead from a car and suicide bomb attack.

Needless to say I didn't leave my own guesthouse again all day, which means I didn't see much of Kabul other than the inside of my room, and I will be leaving first thing in the morning. (You won't see me shedding any tears about my quick departure.) So. What's the message here. I would say I have learned the following important lessons in the last 24 hours: Afghanistan is a war zone. It IS, in fact, more dangerous than Pakistan (even if Pakistan isn't exactly Poughkeepsie). Martinis in Kabul are very expensive. I like getting danger pay, but I don't want to earn it. I miss Islamabad: my vegetable garden, my soft bed, my quiet neighborhood, and loud cracks of thunder that are really just thunder, rolling off the beautiful mountains.

Ten Days of Movies

2010-02-06T00:58:00.000+05:00

It turns out you CAN go to the movies in Islamabad. There are still no movie theaters here, but for ten days a "film gala" is running at the Pakistan National Council for the Arts. The PNCA is housed at a beautiful building right by the Parliament in downtown Islamabad, the film nights are free and include an extensive buffet of tea and fried things (samosas, egg rolls, fish fingers) before the show. I couldn't pass it up.

I went to the opening night of the festival with a group of friends. The movie was "Tin Cup," telling you right away what kind of film festival this wasn't (artsy, independent, serious) and what it was (sponsored in part by Pakistan's new movie cable channel, "Filmax"). Even still, I thought "Tin Cup" was a strange choice. I happen to like the movie, and I know at least one person who considers it his absolute favorite, but a golf movie starring Kevin Costner from 1996 is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think "film festival in Pakistan." Looking at the brochure, I realized the movie choices only got weirder. Girly teen flicks seemed to predominate, with "What A Girl Wants" and "A Walk to Remember," but the festival redeemed itself by ending on a high note with "The Wedding Singer."

On Night One, the crowd seemed excited about doing something a little different on a Thursday night in Islamabad (Hong Kong or New York, this isn't), pleasantly stuffed with fried food, and ready to settle into the adventures of Roy McElroy and his leggy love interest. Things hit a small snag when the disc turned out to be defective and the host had to entertain us for 45 minutes with impressions in Urdu of famous Pakistanis while his cohort ran out to Radio City to buy a new disc. None of this was surprising in the least, and all in all, I'd say the night was a success.

I hit up the film gala again a few days later for the most respectable movie of the lineup: last Tuesday's "Casablanca." Sandwiched between Sunday's pick "Breaking Up" (I thought this was a typo for the Jennifer Anistan/Vince Vaughan flick but I was wrong) and Wednesday's tearjerker "City of Angels," the Bogart-Bergman classic seemed a bit out of place but welcome. The movie was garishly colorized (horrifying to purists and a little unsettling even to me) and the sound pretty echo-ey, but I had a good time at the movie and eating chocolate waffle ice cream cones afterwards.

Even more entertaining than either of these movies themselves was my first exposure to Pakistani censorship. The film gala was sponsored in part by the government, an announcement that meant nothing to me until partway through "Casablanca," when Rick and Ilsa are rapturously falling in love in Paris, clutching each other under the Eiffel Tower as their faces draw close in a passionate...pixellated murk. Censored! Fifteen minutes later, Victor Lazlo moves in to plant a decorous kiss on his wife's forehead...pixellated! Even this tepid marital peck was deemed too racy for the suggestible masses, even though those masses were decked out in jeans, texting on glowing cell phones all through the movie, and in every other way behaving exactly as moviegoers do all over the world. Sometimes I forget I am living in a conservative Muslim country.

It's hard to have any complaints though, when the movies are free, the tea is pink (special Kashmiri style), and the samosas plentiful. Sign me up for next year!

HGTV Pakistan

2010-02-01T19:50:00.002+05:00

I'm redecorating. After living in Pakistan for nine months(!) I guess it's finally time to really settle in: hang curtains, paint rooms, remove old cabinets, get new lighting, replace an entire bathroom. Somewhere along the way, while trying to entertain myself in a country without bars, malls or mini golf, things may have have gotten a little out of control. But you know how it is with home improvements.

I got the landlord to let me renovate the upstairs bathroom in lieu of paying rent money for a little while. It's a good deal for him: I do all the heavy lifting of finding a contractor, designing the bathroom, picking out the fixtures, finding another contractor after the first contractor turns out to be sketchy and incompetent, managing the second contractor, making the second contractor go back and fix all his mistakes while he tries to blame them on first contractor--you know, the usual.

Perhaps home improvement is always an adventure. I don't know: I've never tried it in the United States (I'm a renter, not an owner.) But let's just say putting in a whole new bathroom in a country without access to Home Depot, IKEA, the Yellow Pages, the Better Business Bureau, or the ability to speak Urdu offers a whole new set of challenges.

There was the tussle over where to put the Muslim shower (if you don't know what that is, google it). There was trying to figure out how much a reasonably-priced toilet should cost in Pakistan. Or calculating how many ceramic tiles I would need for the floor in meters, when math isn't my strong suit on the best of days. Or the morning I realized I was brushing my teeth in a pool of water (the new sink was draining directly onto the floor). Or the shower floor that slopes away from the drain, leaving a perpetual mini lagoon in one corner. Or finding scratches on my brand-new mirror left by the housekeeper's overzealous scrubbing. Let's just say the bathroom, now finally completed, feels like one of my most incredible accomplishments since moving to Pakistan.

Another huge personal accomplishment was getting curtains up. I've been talking about needing them since July. After all, the guardshack is directly outside my front window, and I'm sure the last thing the guard needs to see is me lounging on the couch eating bon-bons in comfy pajamas as he comes off the 12-hour overnight shift protecting my life for $1 an hour. My point is that a little discretion seems called for.

In the U.S., if you want curtains, you scoot over to Target (recession) or West Elm (if you're still living large), plop a few rods and some pre-measured, clearly labelled curtain panels in your cart, and throw them up on your walls when you get home. What is it, a 3-hour job, max? That's not exactly the case here.

After living in Islamabad for a few months I tried going to the "curtain store," which was a huge warehouse room full of bolts of fabric and about ten men sitting around drinking tea. Was there something for sale here? It was unclear. How would this fabric become cut, stitched, united with rods and hardware, and installed on the walls of my house? It was unclear. What was clear was that the tea-drinking men didn't like their party interrupted by some girl yammering in English. At that point the power went off and the store went dark, putting the damper on my curtain hunt for another few months.

Next I tried a new curtain store that came highly recommended as being posh and helpful. Too posh and helpful, it turned out. The store very helpfully sent men to measure all the windows in the house, offer fabric suggestions and swatches, and then very poshfully (is this a word) wrote up an estimate of 260,000 rupees. (That's $3,000!) After blanching white with shock, I said no thank you and pictured living exposed forever, like a living art installation or a damning example of American failure to be modest.

Ultimately, like everything in Pakistan, it took word-of-mouth, insider knowledge, and the dedicated and vigorous efforts of a crew of locals to get curtains up on the windows and decorum back to the neighborhood. (Thank you, Pilar, for hooking me up with your powerful underground curtain-making operation). There was measuring, there was scribbling, there was Mr. Moktar taking a bus to Charsadda in the NWFP (the part of the country I am not allowed to visit), there was picking up 9 gaz of hand-woven cotton linen panels made with wooden looms on the river by Pakistani women (I really wish I could have gone on this part of the trip), there was washing what felt like 3 tons of hand-woven cotton panels in hot water and picking what felt like 6 tons of the lint it made out of the dryer, there were multiple hunts for rings and curtain ends, there was spraypainting of curtain ends to match the rods, there was more measuring, there was hand-stitching by Mr. Abbas, there was inserting of rings, there was installing, there were curtains. It feels like a miracle.

So, whenever you picture my dangerous life in Pakistan, dodging bullets and living on adrenaline, and that makes you nervous, gently replace that vision with reality: me hanging curtains, thanking Mr. Abbas, picking lint out of the dryer. Definitely my biggest rush of the month.

Chatuchak

2010-01-13T10:29:00.004+05:00

I can now report back to all of you that I have found the place in the world where you can buy anything.

It's the Chatuchak weekend market in Bangkok, and it's amazing. I spent 5 hours there the other day, and I can confidently say I probably saw about 10% of it. Prized items in my haul include: a super cool string of lantern lights for the terrace, candles in the shape of orchids, a woven purse, a huge bag of saffron for about $2, a cute white linen dress for $9, enough Masaman and red curry paste to make a lot of Thai dinners, woven placements, handmade chopsticks with tiny knife and fork decorations on them (utensil irony), and a beautiful painted ceramic tea set.

But those things were far from the weirdest or most exotic wares available in Chatuchak. After seeing whole stalls delivered exclusively to the following: silk flowers/snow globes filled with Disney princess dolls/life-size bronze elephant statues, I thought I had seen everything. Then I hit the "puppy" row. That's right, an entire endless chain of stalls devoted to selling every kind of adorable, wriggling puppy available in Asia. If I thought I could sneak a dog through Pakistan customs, I would have bought one on the spot. (Not that I support keeping little puppies in cages.)

Oh, and I also got to drink coconut water out of a coconut they hacked open in front of my eyes, have a surprisingly accurate cartoon of myself done in 6 minutes, and shovel down delicious pad thai from an outdoor makeshift set of "restaurants" in the center of the market that beat the pants off any food court I have ever seen. (Picture little old ladies manning huge wok-like pans sizzling with food that is scooped out and put directly on your plate. Why is the food SO GOOD in Thailand. Everywhere.)

Some estimates put the number of stalls at Chatuchak at 15,000, but no one really knows for sure. And don't go there when it rains unless you want to wade through water up to your ankles, apparently. (Good shopping doesn't always come with good drainage.)

Yeah, you're sweaty, yeah it feels like you're lost in a maze of endless products only some of which make sense to you (an entire stall of fake plastic fruit? spicy cuttlefish tentacles?), yeah you have to be okay with no personal space, quick currency conversion math, and a murky pricing structure, but it's something you definitely don't want to miss if you ever have the chance. Viva la Chatuchak!

Cheeseburgers in Thailand

2010-01-06T12:13:00.006+05:00

So: it's paradise here.

I know, I know--everyone told me a million times before I came: Thailand is the coolest, the best, most awesome vacation ever. But I always go into those kinds of things with a wee bit of skepticism. How can you, oh rapturous Thailand-traveler, guarantee that I will like it as much as you did?

The answer is because who wouldn't like the following: pristine beaches, fresh tropical fruit of every description, perfect sunny 75 degree weather in January, delicious spicy brothy curries and noodle soups, friendly hospitable people, easy motorbikes to rent at all hours, a continuous sweet and gentle breeze, gorgeous rolling waves, hour-long massages on the beach for $9, and all manner of other wonderful things to do at what seem like illegally low prices.

I have been wanting to come to Thailand for about 10 years now. That's about the time that Thai food became my favorite kind of food, and when photos and stories of friends' backpacking adventures starting trickling in. (Oh shoot, and that terrible Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Beach." I wish I didn't have to count that among my influences.) One of the best things about living in Asia is how close you are to a bunch of countries that are really too far away to visit regularly from the U.S. A direct flight from Islamabad to Bangkok is under 5 hours and is fairly reasonable if you book early.

Being here--not worrying about my security, not walking through metal detectors, being able to wear a dress in public, eat food from street shacks without fear of dysentery--feels like a real vacation. Pakistan is a wonderful adopted home, but it is still a foreign and sometimes difficult place: it's still hard for me to figure out how to get things done, to buy stuff I need, to get where I want to go, to navigate an alien and (at times, though only occasionally) hostile culture. It will probably always be like that. Relaxing in a place where everything is simple and easy and warm and light and breezy makes that better. If I stay in Pakistan for a long time, I will think of Thailand as my recuperating pod: a warm and delicious little place to fortify me for a return to whatever comes next. And to eat as much papaya and pineapple and purple dragonfruit as I can stuff in my face.

(Yes, that's the view from my hotel room. Or, more accurately, it's the view from the personal reclining outdoor lounging hut outside my hotel room. Seriously, come to Thailand.)

The Year in Cheeseburgers

2009-12-28T19:25:00.006+05:00

I feel like I should say something about Christmas...about spending Christmas in a different country for the first time in my life, about spending Christmas in a Muslim country where they don't celebrate it, etcetera. But instead I am just so excited I am going to Thailand on Friday that I am feeling over Christmas. (Quick highlights version: it was very nice, I had a few lovely holiday events with the other random few expats still left in town over the holidays, I didn't buy one single Christmas gift or hear one single Christmas song in an elevator or store. Certainly a first.)

The end of the year (decade!) is almost here and it has certainly been one of change for me. A year ago, I had no idea I would be moving to Pakistan, would be starting a new career in international development, or would know how to say "I'm hungry" in Urdu. I didn't know any of the many people I now know in Islamabad, both friends and colleagues, and I had never even been to Asia.

I went from never having paid anyone to clean my house--ever--to having a housekeeper that comes in almost every single day and even does the dishes. I also have a gardener, a driver, a guard, and a house manager to keep this massive effort together. This is worthy of an entire post all by itself, titled: "Move to Pakistan and Ruin Yourself for a Return to Middle-Class America Forever."

I went from eating a nearly-vegetarian, largely organic diet of mostly salads and whole grains to eating the kind of thing that most Americans eat: refined flours and sugars, meat, and not that many vegetables (this is one thing I am determined to change in the new year).

I went from being worried that I would not find any cheeseburgers in my new country of residence to eating them more than I ever have before (it's research).

I went from doing Pilates twice a week at my Brighton gym to doing yoga whenever I can fit it in at a random empty house in Islamabad that is hot as a furnace all summer (we just call it "bikram") and chilly in winter. (Mostly I am just grateful that great yoga classes exist in Pakistan and are even free!)

I went from being acronym-averse to using the following a million times every single work day: USG, GOP, COP, PSD, AIP, PMP. (Yes, I'm annoying.)

I went from thinking of Pakistan as a very far-away, very dangerous place troubled by conflict and violence to thinking of it as normal, as mostly peaceful, as home.

I went from being a committed environmentalist to someone who gets all of my water out of plastic bottles (granted, tap water's not safe) and throws each one right in the trash when done with it (granted, there's no recycling here). It still hurts me a little every single time.

In addition to traveling to Asia, I've also done the following things for the first time ever this year:

Wore shalwar kameeze
Saw the Himalayas
Had meetings at a U.S. embassy
Went to Dubai
Had visa trouble
Went horseback riding in heels
Tried a shisha pipe (I recommend double apple flavor)
Attended a Pakistani wedding
Witnessed a Presidential inauguration
Appeared on Pakistani television
Found the super-secret sneaker shop in Boston
Took a golfing lesson
Had my own orange tree
Had all the oranges stolen off my tree (This too is worthy of a whole other post as I am still mad about it. Title: "Bitter: I Will Find My Orange Thief")
Shipped 11 boxes of health food internationally
Ate chicken karahi eleven thousand times (it only felt like that)
Visted a Pakistani emergency room
Broke security protocol to see a movie (Star Trek)

Bought a plane ticket to go to Thailand. Finally.

All in all, it's been a good year and certainly one to remember. I hope you have enjoyed reading about it here, and I hope you'll continue in the new year: I promise new adventures, new near-calamities, and new cheeseburgers to write about. Have a lovely ending to 2009, everyone!

Kheer

2009-12-22T13:47:00.005+05:00

One of the most common desserts in Pakistan, kheer is a smooth rice-based pudding, quite firm, that is served in little clay pots. It's delicately spiced, with cardamom usually, and a thin layer of beaten silver is often laid on the top for decoration. (Yes, real silver!) Or sometimes nuts.

You can find kheer at many restaurants, but I think the best versions are homemade. The kheer in the photo was from a dinner party that one of my former staff members had for a group of us at his family's home. There were about 15 delicious dishes to choose from for the main course (I kid you not), and three desserts, meaning that I only had room for one small pot of kheer.

"Almost Every Single Night": A One-Sided Conversational Piece

2009-12-11T01:27:00.000+05:00

Hi.

Can I put in an order for take-away, please?
Hello?
Yes. Can I have one Mongolian Beef Noodle please.
Uh-huh.
And one order of chicken wings.
The six, not the twelve.
Six, please.
Yes.
And the Thai Noodles, you know the one that's like Thai noodle curry, it's not curry but it's like vegetables and pasta, noodles?
Thai chicken pasta!
But no chicken just vegetables please.
NO chicken.
Right Thai Chicken Pasta no chicken.
Yeah, Thai pasta, right.
And...Also one piece of Mudd pie.
MUDD PIE.
Okay. Can I actually make that twelve chicken wings, not six?
Yup.
Uh-huh.
Yup.
Yes.
No drinks.
Sara.
Sara.
S-A-R-A.
Zero three hundred eight double one xxx xxx xxxx.
And the driver will be Nisar picking it up.
And how much time?
20 minutes, okay.
And how much money?
(Four minutes pass.)
Two thousand nine hundred rupees?
Thanks!

Eid Take Two

2009-11-30T14:50:00.003+05:00

Pakistan is now celebrating the second Eid holiday of the year, which is a little quieter than last time around and has a lot to do with goats. This Eid marks the end of the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and commemorates the sacrifice of an animal that Abraham made instead of his son (thus the goats).

The most interesting thing to me about this Eid is the way that old religious traditions adapt to a new, urban environment. The point of the goat is to make it feel like a real sacrifice: you're supposed to bring it into your home, love, feed, and pet it, let your children grow attached, and then kill it. Letting the butcher do it someplace far away is a no-no. Thus last week, Islamabad was a city of goats. Goats tied up outside apartment buildings, in parking lots, being walked around the neighborhood at dusk by groups of kids. Like a final week of fun before the end.

My friends who grew up here talk fondly of Goat Week and how much they enjoyed having their goats as pets before Eid, and how much they cried when the goats were killed. Apparently the system works. Once the deed is done, one-third of the meat goes to the poor, one-third to relatives and neighbors, and one-third to your own family. This ensures that the poor get to eat meat at least once a year.

You might say that the goat tradition seems a little sad and cruel, except that it totally reminds me of our own annual festival of turkey sacrifice that occurred just a few days ago. The only difference is we don't give our turkeys that week of love first, and we make sure they meet their end far away on a poultry farm, where we don't have to mess with it. From that perspective, the Eid way comes out a little on top, I think.

The Thanksgiving Experiment Begins

2009-11-23T16:10:00.004+05:00

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. I have an extensive list of favorite recipes I like to use, and I am in full support of a holiday whose sole purpose is gathering together to eat yummy food and feel grateful.

Things may be a little different this year. Not because I don't feel grateful, but because I live in Pakistan where our quaint American Turkey Day ways don't apply. Here is a short list of things I am most worried about sourcing in time to cook the big Thanksgiving feast I am planning:

Cranberries
Fennel
Sausage (we're in a pork-free country, remember)
Butternut Squash
Goat Cheese
Apple cider (to brine the turkey)
About 100 other essential Thanksgiving items

Things I am not worried about:

Turkey. Thanks to my friend Jamie who is working at the Embassy, I scored a nice Butterball from the commissary that even now awaits the big day in my freezer. Thanks Jamie!

Pomegranate seeds (for my famous goat cheese & pomegranate salad). It is pomegranate season here, and the big, fat pomegranates that lie in heaps on every corner put all of our sad little American versions to shame. I drink fresh pomegranate juice here almost every day when I am traveling.

Ginger, oranges, cloves, peppercorns (key ingredients for turkey brine). They do spices well in Pakistan, and we're coming into citrus season now.

Update: I went to a highly-recommended veggie stand in F-10 today and found the following treasures--shallots! arugula! And a large gourd like none I have ever seen that nonetheless should stand in nicely for the butternut squash. We're in business.

The New Normal

2009-11-18T18:50:00.004+05:00

Sometimes I am shocked by how normal my life is in Islamabad. Go to meetings, work in front of a computer, hit the gym, run by the grocery store for a dozen eggs and some broccoli. On these days I think, other than wearing pants under all my dresses (=how to turn American clothes into shalwar kameeze) and having my own driver, I could almost be living in a U.S. suburb.

Except for nights like Monday, when I had dinner with Eve Ensler at my friend Dania's house. Ensler was visiting the region as she often does as part of her campaign to end violence against women around the world. She is most famous for writing the play "The Vagina Monologues" and, although I did not ask her about them, is friends with all sorts of famous women like Susan Sarandon and Oprah who star in productions of her play. She is an extremely cool woman and someone you would definitely want in your bookclub, your yoga class, or your extended family (although it rarely works out that way).

After dinner, Dania gave us all an impromptu belly-dancing lesson and I had an extra thick piece of delicious date cake with custard for dessert (okay, so some things remain constant).

To Brush or Not to Brush?

2009-11-12T22:49:00.009+05:00

I've always said the most dangerous thing in Pakistan is the food. But perhaps it is time to also add "the water."

First of all, let's be fair: it's been a long time since I've gotten sick from any cause at all in this country. (Why do I tempt fate like that? why?why?) Ever since I've arrived, I've examined every stick of celery, every unwashed apple, and every dish containing mayonnaise with an eagle eye of doubt and mistrust. All the while, however, I have been blithely filling my mouth every morning and every night with something that I have recently been told is far more dangerous: untreated, unchlorinated tap water.

There is a cute little notice in one of the hotels I frequent that says "Tap water is unsuitable for drinking." This is putting it mildly. Like those college trips you took to Mexico, you're not supposed to drink the tap water here. Or eat lettuce that is wet from being washed in it. Or let a piece of ice float in your drink that has been made with it. I totally get it, and I have been diligent. Except for one exception: I brush my teeth with it every day.

No, I don't swallow it. But doesn't a teeny tiny little bit of it go down in the process? And is it possible that, perhaps especially during monsoon season when waterways flood and septic systems run haywire, a little bit of that teeny bit might have nasty things in it? This is the question I am thinking about today, when what I should be thinking about is the media outreach workshop I need to put together for next week, or how I can quickly get hold of an entire Pakistani winter wardrobe (all of a sudden it is cold here).

But today I am thinking about waterborne bacteria instead. And about clean water in general. And about how this is a problem in Pakistan and how to solve it. The other day I saw a cute ad for "Global Handwashing Day" on TV here. It had cartoons, and smiling children, and a happy little song. I'm thinking jettison all of that, and go with a picture of teeming, crawling bacteria under the microscope. Then show how soap and water kills it. Wouldn't that do it?

A friend of mine who lived in Pakistan for three years kept a pitcher of filtered water in her bathroom next to the sink to rinse her mouth out after brushing her teeth. I always thought this was overkill. Picturing my fictional crawling bacteria advertisement has got me wondering if I was wrong.

Friends who live in Pakistan: I need to take a poll. Do you brush your teeth with tap water? Please advise. I need guidance.

And yes, I'll admit I used that picture of the cat because it is just so darn cute.

Perplexing Question of the Day about Pakistan

2009-11-09T19:02:00.005+05:00

Why is it, in a country often lauded as being as IT-savvy and advanced as India or the United States, THAT I CAN'T PAY MY BILLS ONLINE IN PAKISTAN?

This is a mystery to me. No online bill payment, period. Not your phone bill, not your electric bill, not your rental car, not your gallons of clean water to drink bill, not your super cool Wi-Tribe bill. What is Wi-Tribe, you ask? Just a great little service that lets you connect to the internet anytime, anywhere in Pakistan's major cities using just a little gadget on your laptop for only about $15 a month. Cool, right? Progressive, cutting-edge, technologically modern and up-to-date? Until you have to march down to the store to wait in line for 40 minutes to pay your bill, in person, in cash every month. What?

Does anyone have any answers to this one?

McPakistan

2009-11-02T16:26:00.006+05:00

One thing that is the same all over the world? McDonald's.

Well, kind of. The ubiquitous McDonald's sundae is actually a hundred times better at its Islamabad outpost: the ice cream is creamier and the whole thing is drowned in hot fudge (U.S. franchises being stingy when it comes to toppings for some reason).

There's another difference: remember when Big Macs came in styrofoam, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper were battling it out for supremacy, and you had never heard of global warming? You don't have to imagine that here. Except for the Cyndi Lauper thing. Pakistan is very up-to-date when it comes to pop music.

And finally, there's one item on the menu that lets you know you're not in Kansas anymore: the "McArabia" sandwich. McDonald's answer to local ethnic food is a vaguely Middle Eastern chicken wrap. I haven't been brave enough to try this yet.

Of course, these days I don't know if I'm brave enough to go to McDonald's. It has, you guessed it, recently been added to the list of places likely to be blast targets. I'll be finding my cheeseburgers elsewhere for awhile...

Wednesday's Lunch

2009-10-29T11:28:00.006+06:00

In some ways it is getting harder to write about pound cake and muddy feet and the search for a good cheeseburger these days in Pakistan. These are still the things of daily life that are on my mind, but in the background is news, lately every single week, of terrorist violence.

Close as it is in some ways, this violence still doesn't touch the routines of my daily life; I don't go to the kinds of places that are being attacked, and I am not one of the many Pakistanis who have lost family members in the last few weeks. When you see reports on the news of violence in Pakistan, please don't be alarmed for me; my insulated bubble is holding up just fine. But of course we think about it.

Yesterday an attack in a crowded market in Peshawar killed over 100 people, many of them women and children. Americans generally aren't allowed to go to Peshawar anymore, and I have never been there. I've heard it is a beautiful, historic city. Even though it is only a two-hour drive from here, it seems like a different world, and these days not the safest place to be. This week the Taliban is targeting Pakistani citizens, normal, everyday people, in an attempt to unsettle the government and the nation. Last week it was college students in a cafeteria at an Islamic university. Before that it was an army headquarters building, and before that a UN food program office. I think these things make all of us want to work harder and do more to support stability in this country in any way we can.

But I plan to continue writing about cheeseburgers. The things I notice most about Pakistan and that I write about--the fresh juices, the red carrots, the weather, weddings, potatoes cooked in tomato sauce for breakfast, the everyday features of being and working in Islamabad--are the real things that make up a life, and for that reason I am going to keep writing about them. They are also the things most under attack by the Taliban in this country at present. For most people who live here, Pakistan isn't a country of violence and terror, it is just a place they want to live: a normal, familiar hometown or neighborhood where they want to go about their day with their family or friends, picking up vegetables at the market and enjoying fresh air on a Wednesday afternoon.

Yesterday, on my own Wednesday afternoon, I had lunch at the employees only cafeteria of the hotel where I am staying this week, which is quickly becoming my favorite (secret) place to eat. On the menu was chanay, whole boiled eggs in a mildly spicy chickpea stew, on the side a nice crunchy cabbage and tomato salad with yogurt, and lots of hot roti coming out of the back kitchen every two minutes to help scoop everything up. There was also always a special semi-hidden pan of rice at the women's only table, from which I snuck a spoonful. Then halwa for dessert and green tea, and the whole thing finished up in ten satisfying minutes so you can get back to work. It absolutely beats the pants off any of the food you can order in room service upstairs, and it's a bargain at 100 rupees ($1.20).

A post like this should most probably include a picture of the devastation left by the bomb in Peshawar yesterday. But there are plenty of photos of this, all over the news. Instead I include a picture of lunch, that nice, normal thing that I do in Pakistan, along with the other 160 million people who live here. I think we'd all like the chance to continue just doing that.

Update

2009-10-23T18:39:00.010+06:00

It's like someone at the Avari Hotel has been reading my blog. This time around when I checked into the "Lady Avari" wing, there was my pound cake, snug in a little box waiting for me to devour. It's the little things that make my stay in the woman-only floor worthwhile, Avari. Good work.

I was in Lahore for half the week on a short-term assignment. The work was good, even if the beginning of the trip started inauspiciously. Here I am seconds after stepping into a huge, squelchy, and deceptively innocent-looking pile of mud upon arrival at the Lahore airport. I survived with the aid of my very helpful driver who tracked down a bottle of water and helped me wash off my foot and flip-flop, though the latter will never be the same. This photo also shows way more skin that can ever be shown appropriately in a public place like the Lahore airport. But, ah, American habits--like showing flesh above the ankle--die hard.

As for Pakistan these days, it feels a bit crazy. The terrorist attacks have ramped up since the beginning of the month, and it seems every week there is some fresh and terrible news. I continue to feel insulated from the danger (please continue to worry only minimally about me), but it is horrible to see Pakistani lives being lost in these incidents. The one on Tuesday at Islamic University in Islamabad was especially awful: targeting college students, including ones at a women's cafeteria. There was also an earthquake last night, although I slept right through it. (Benefit of growing up in California.)

But the work here continues to be interesting--development in Pakistan is a hot topic of news even in the US these days, and you can't turn on the news here without seeing footage about the Kerry-Lugar bill recently passed by Congress and speculation about the new gajillion dollars that is going to be spent here in the next five years. Of course it is going to affect all the work being done here for quite some time.

I'll end with the one thing that makes everything better: that's a care package of course. I got a fabulous one from my sister last week that was like autumn in a box: pumpkin bread mix (one of the many things you can't buy at Kohsar Market), fall leaves, Charlie Brown Halloween stickers, and some perfect escapist reading for those early-darkening autumn nights...

Red Carrots and Other Small Pleasures

2009-10-04T12:33:00.013+06:00

It's felt a little different for me to be in Pakistan lately. This is probably due to the looming specter of my unemployment starting on October 17. It turns out it is slightly more anxiety-producing to be here in the land of the foreign and the unfamiliar without the reassuring comforts of company-sponsored security detail, visa sponsorship, and danger pay. This is the case even though I will be working as a short-term consultant and things are not as grim as this paragraph makes them sound. Short version: despite my griping, it's not time to worry about me yet.

In the meantime I am taking the opportunity to do all of those things in Islamabad that I could never do when I was working 12-hour days. This week that included: Sleeping in. Getting 8 pairs of pants hemmed. Trying a new restaurant other than Nirvana. And most importantly, attempting the grand experiment of cooking for myself.

There are all sorts of obstacles to cooking my own meals here, even though cooking is one of my favorite things to do. First there were the rumors of bacteria run amok on everything raw--various sources made me fear for my life were I to get crazy and do something like, say, eat lettuce. I have decided these fears are overblown.

Then of course there was the issue of living in a guesthouse for three months. During that period any personal "cooking" was relegated to burning popcorn in the conference room microwave or spraying fresh cherries with a hydrogen peroxide solution before gingerly eating them one by one (see above, dire fears re: bacteria).

After getting my own place, there was still the matter of unpacking dishes, pots, and pans so I would have something to cook with. That took about 2 months. Which just left me with the matter of groceries.

Like many European cities and Boston's own North End, Islamabad requires you to go to lots of little shops to get all the things you need. I always thought this was quaint every time I went shopping in European cities or the North End. When it is the only way to get your food, it is less "quaint" and more like an ordeal. But I like the idea of small and local, so it's good that living here is forcing me to practice what I preach.

Yesterday I went to the market, rupees in hand, to rustle up enough ingredients for a relatively healthy home-cooked meal. I settled on one that was Mexican-inspired, both because there is a dearth of Mexican food here and because it is always my go-to. (So easy!) I found whole-wheat tortillas (whole-wheat anything here being cause for celebration), a great block of mature cheddar cheese from England, a jar of exorbitantly-priced imported salsa, and a can of corn. I bought all of it. The plan was black-bean quesadillas, using my favorite Annie's organic refried black beans that I brought in my 739 pound shipment from the U.S.

I also wanted a side dish, so I went to the fresh vegetable stand and found a lovely bunch of red carrots and some green beans. You never know what you are going to find at the vegetable stand. Sometimes they have pomegranates and kiwi fruit and you think you are in Whole Foods. Other times you are lucky to find potatoes. But this was a good day.

It took way, way more work to cook this meal than it would have to eat at one of the restaurants in town that has provided the bulk of my sustenance since I moved here. This dinner involved knives, and potato peelers, and using up 3 bottles of mineral water to wash and boil the vegetables, and turning the gas burner on the second I got home in case load-shedding started at 9pm and I would no longer have electricity to start up the stove. In short, an adventure. But the feeling of sitting down to a meal I put together myself felt worth every ounce of extra effort.

The can of corn turned out to be baby corn, adding a strange, slightly Asian flair to the Mexican meal. I didn't have any fresh herbs to toss in the vegetables, and I couldn't find the black pepper. But the carrots were glossy red and sauteed up tasty and buttery with the green beans, and the quesadillas were crispy and melty with that great meal equalizer, cheese. The yummy yogurt they have here made a good substitute for sour cream, and the pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked ice cream that I dug out of the bottom of the grocery store freezer was the perfect ending to Experiment #1. Let the cooking begin.

Eid Mubarak Means Merry Christmas!

2009-09-29T17:28:00.002+06:00

No, it totally does not. But that's the best I can do at an American equivalent. In fact, Eid is actually more like Christmas and Easter rolled up into one. Most significantly (for a hungry expat such as myself), Eid signals the end of Ramadan, a month of religious observation that includes fasting during daylight hours. Ramadan is a little rough--Muslims don't eat or drink during the day, but then stay up late into the night breaking the fast with an iftar dinner. You can imagine the effect this has on worker productivity.

My team was in fact a little groggy all month, but were still so cheerful I could not believe it. Anyone who has seen me delay breakfast by even 30 minutes knows what a grumpy, rotten mess I would be if I had to fast for a whole month. As it was, what Ramadan meant for me was feeling guilty mowing down Chinese noodles in the hallway every day at lunch so my staff couldn't see or smell them.

So that's all over now, and all the restaurants are open again for lunch. (yay!) Since there are only about 7 restaurants in Islamabad that I go to on a regular basis, having most of those cut out of the mix during Ramadan really hurt.

Maybe it is the month of fasting beforehand that makes Eid seem especially joyous and welcome. It lasts for two days, has something to do with a new moon sighting, and is a general time of religious celebration and eating and gifts and spending time with family. (See? Sounds like Christmas.) Women decorate their hands with henna like at weddings, and most people go home to their villages for the holiday, which leaves Islamabad a little empty (like Washington DC, very few people are actually from Islamabad).

Being in someone else's country on their holiday is a strange experience. This is especially true for a holiday that is family-centered. It is easy to jump right on board a good ole independence day celebration anywhere. On Pakistan's independence day, August 14, we joined in simply by roaming the streets, enjoying the fireworks, and avoiding the small pockets of anti-American sentiment. New Year's Eve and even St. Patty's Day are global in lots of ways. But a religious-oriented, gift-giving, family hoopla type of holiday doesn't leave much room for outsiders.

It makes me think about Thanksgiving, and how much I enjoyed hosting Thanksgiving dinners in Boston over the last five years. We always invited our British friends Paul and Julie and had a great time introducing them to the "overstuff your face for two hours and then lie around the couch" joys of that particular holiday. And teaching them the importance of turkey, and cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie, and flourless chocolate cake (well, we just added that one in to be respectful of our gluten-free guests). But it was lovely to share our traditions with new people who hadn't experienced them before.

My Eid in Pakistan was a little less festive. I mostly celebrated by stocking up on canned goods and bottled water like there was an earthquake coming (I was told all the stores would be closed for the holiday weekend), and watching pirated DVDs. I think my real celebration came on the day after Eid, when my favorite coffee shop was open again for brunch and I could chow down on a real green salad and a frothy frappuccino-like drink. Every good holiday is about the food.

Surprising Scoop

2009-09-20T17:15:00.001+06:00

I've been back in Islamabad for 10 days. During that time, the following things have happened:

The development project I work on was denied funding by the U.S. government and has been told to close down.

I accidently bought a $15 pint of ice cream.

Now to explain. I know, it's shocking. But the groceries aren't always well-labeled at Esajee grocery store and it wasn't until I got home that I looked at the receipt and saw that my tiny carton of ice cream cost 1195 rupees. (A solid week's salary for the average Pakistani domestic worker.)

The pint in question was Haagen-Dazs "Reserve" in Pomegranate Chip, and it seemed like just the thing to have after the Lebanese take-out that my friends and I would be ordering for dinner later. The funny thing is, it's the same kind of ice cream that was sent to me for free on dry ice in the mail two years ago when the company rolled out the brand and wanted to get attention. The lesson here is that nothing--ever--is free. You'll have to pay for it eventually.

You're probably waiting to hear more about that other thing too. Yes, development work in Pakistan is a little volatile these days. Sometimes it's unclear who's calling the shots, exactly. Don't worry about me though: there is still significantly more employment available for Americans here than in the U.S. these days, and I've already received offers to transition to other projects to do basically the same thing. But of course it's rough when something ends that you have worked hard on for months, and I am especially concerned about my staff (hired only 3 months ago) and helping them find new jobs.

But I'm not ready to give up on my Pakistan adventure just yet (certainly not before I get the full year in on my resume), and I'm still firmly adhering to my lifelong motto, "Everything works out in the end." Oh, and the ice cream was delicious. Just the thing.

America

2009-09-12T08:29:00.007+06:00

I have just returned from the U.S. after spending three weeks there on my annual R&R. I can't remember what "R&R" stands for. It's either Rest and Recuperation, or Rest and Recreation, or Rest and Recovery, or...really I'm just not sure. At any rate, I am entitled to one per year and for sure I am not going to miss a free vacation.

If you work directly for the U.S. government abroad (which I don't), they actually make you take these trips back to the States on a frequent basis so that you don't lose your patriotism. I would say that living in a place where you're not allowed to walk around by yourself or wear skirts accomplishes that patriotism all by itself. The thing is though, I missed Islamabad while I was away and am happy to be back in what is starting to feel like home.

After three weeks as an ex-pat in America, some observations:

Traveling to all three regions of our great nation in a three-week period (East Coast, Midwest, West Coast) is sort of crazy. However, knowing that I won't be back until after April at the earliest makes this kind of schedule feel like a necessity. Get everything in while you can!

I thought I would enjoy the prevalence of legal, widely available alcohol more than I did. I enjoyed a lovely margarita outside on a patio, several tasty martinis at a Boston bar's trivia night, and a boatload of champagne at a wedding in Seattle, but most of the time I just felt like drinking...water. Am I becoming Muslim?

There is a LOT of stuff to buy in the U.S. It made me a little dizzy. Steel trash cans that pop open when you step on them, work shirts from Banana Republic, raspberries, strapless dresses, fish oil capsules, appetizers with bacon in them, boyshorts. I did some serious consumer damage while I was there.

People's interest in the details of my life in Pakistan is directly proportional to how well I know them: perfect strangers being highest on the list of most curious. There were exceptions, of course, but by and large my friends were only sort of interested in the blow-by-blow. Mostly we just talked about the things we always do.

I didn't realize how much staring there is in Pakistan until I walked down a street in Boston and realized how weird it was that no one was looking at me. It was like being granted the superhero power of invisibility.

It was nice to understand everything everyone was saying around me, all the time.

It was nice that, when I got a little stomachache, my mind didn't immediately go to parasites, bacteria, and imminent hospital stays. Just indigestion.

I missed the fresh juice, the Mongolian Beef Noodle at Nirvana, and my interesting friends and colleagues in Islamabad.

I really wanted a massage but could not stomach paying $80 for it.

If there was a Whole Foods in Islamabad, I really could stay here for years and years. I love that place so much, I went a couple times just to aimlessly wander the aisles and gawk at stuff.

There is something deeply satisfying about the beach, sunsets, ice cream cones, and blackberry-picking. Thank goodness for Michigan.

I wish my Grandpa lived closer to Islamabad. (Yeah, I'm not sure how that would happen, either.) It was so great to see him.

Netflix, cable, hulu, pandora. We are so media-rich in the U.S. it is surprising we ever get anything done. I enjoyed watching baseball highlights and reading US Weekly the most. Let's pretend I never got that PhD in English literature.

And...Business class rocks!! (Unexpected upgrade from Abu Dhabi to Islamabad.)

Thinking about America, and patriotism, and the great things about home seem fitting today, on September 11. After five months of living abroad, I'd say my patriotism is still intact, although it's good to be back in Pakistan. If I missed you in America this time around--which I probably did, as I spent the vast majority of my time flying from coast to coast or in a desperate search for clothing and household items I can't purchase in Pakistan--I'll get ya in April. Islamabad friends, I'm looking forward to brownie sundaes, mixed fruit smoothies, and that beef curry at The Royal Elephant, soon. (Yes, it is as usual, almost always, about the food.)

Illusions

2009-08-23T22:48:00.016+06:00

Most things are cheaper in Pakistan. Fresh-squeezed sweet melon juice (.80 cents), getting a couch delivered to your house ($2.40), a housekeeper to come in and clean once a day ($50/month), pedicures ($6.50). Nowhere, however, is this more true than in the realm of home entertainment.

Every expat in Islamabad knows about Illusions. It's an unassuming 2-story storefront in Jinnah Market crammed with a wealth of the latest in movies and TV shows, always guaranteed to be busy on a Saturday night. It's where you can pick up the entire "Six Feet Under" series for $10, or "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" for 100 rupees (barely more than a buck). The only catch is a certain lack of, how shall we say...legitimacy. The covers do an adequate job of keeping up appearances, but once you pop them open, the plain DVDs numbered in black magic marker inside do little to pretend that the bootlegs you are buying are the real deal. And yet the lack of formality doesn't affect the viewing experience one bit.

This state of affairs utterly changes your relationship to American entertainment. On one hand, I couldn't tell you on pain on death any movies coming to the screen anytime soon. (I haven't seen a preview for 4 months.) On the other hand, I'm more caught up on Californication and Weeds than anyone I know because there is only a week lagtime between when episodes air brand new on Showtime and appear in their shiny ghetto packages on the other side of the world at Illusions. I'm both saturated by media and totally out of the loop.

Occasionally the gamble does not pay off. While on vacation in Skardu, a group of us gathered around the TV all hopped up to watch "The Hangover" (based on Facebook status update buzz, I had high hopes), only to sigh heavily 30 seconds into the movie as the silhouette of a man walked across the grainy opening scene. Yeah, we were slipped a mickey: a recording off the screen by someone sneaking in a camcorder. You could practically hear the popcorn crunching. Most of the time, however, the "Illusions" experience is real enough to be satisfying.

It turns out that the expat-in-Pakistan experience means indulging in a few other illusions as well. For example: that the 200 lbs of food staples from the U.S. sitting in my pantry means I'm not going to miss Mexican food or my local farmers' market. That running up and down the stairs at my office 30 times a day counts as exercise. That the purpose of the armed guard sitting outside my gate all day is to let the cable or water delivery guy into the house when I'm not home. That working 12 hour days or six-day weeks is normal.

What I've decided is that some degree of illusion might be necessary when you find yourself in an utterly different environment, one with its fair share of challenges and stress. A friend who once spent a year in Japan recently mentioned to me the Months 4-8 rule. In his opinion, these are the hardest months to live in a new place. After four months, the novelty has worn off (donkeys! samosas! Urdu!), but you haven't settled in sufficiently to feel truly at home yet. Your friends back in the States no longer miss you at weekly happy hours, but your new friends won't be broken up if you don't show up at theirs. After 8 months, you've developed a groove, familiar traditions, and a real place to call home. At 4 months, you're not quite there yet.

I agree with the Months 4-8 rule. And hearing it allowed me to relax. It helped me understand why I was feeling every so often like I was going just a little crazy, or why a few things that were so cute just a few months ago now sometimes make me want to hit something. It made me realize that during the 4-8 month window, retaining a few key illusions will help you survive so you can get to the next phase of loving Pakistan again. And it reminded me that it's okay that so many things in life can be helped by buying an entire, illegal set of your favorite show on DVD, for the bargain price of a few sweet melon juices.

Paradise, Lost

2009-08-18T22:52:00.000+06:00

No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I just took a vacation, had an especially crazy month of work, and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to do very simple things like 1) get rid of the ants in my kitchen and 2) figure out why the internet hasn't worked at my house for 6 weeks. So at present I'm short any substantive update about the grooviness of life in Pakistan over the last month. But I figured at least I could show you a few vacation pics!

The idea was radical: take a long weekend off in a place with no cell or functioning internet service, where no one could do work of any kind and everyone could relax. I got away from the city, gulped down a ton of fresh air, visited the highest plains in the world, and read two books front to back. After four months of working weekends, putting in more than the occasional 12-hour day, and living and breathing my job, getting away felt like a long drink of water in the desert: much needed. The only bad news is that I got trapped in the mountains and started to despair of ever returning to civilization.

A ticket to Skardu will cost you about 8,000 rupees, (or 14,000 rupees if you're an American and don't have one of your Pakistani friends pick up the ticket for you which luckily, I did. Thanks Fahim!!) Either way it's a steal. The only downside is that the sole air carrier to the mountain towns is PIA, the government-owned airline of Pakistan where service is indifferent and your trip home is sort of optional. What can you reasonably expect from an airline whose baggage claim looks like this?

But the bottom line is that one of the best perks of living in Pakistan is that you are close enough to the Himalayas to go for the weekend. This means that from my house in Islamabad, it costs about $100 to get to the most famous mountains in the world. (What about the Alps, you say? They are the Himalayas' scrawny little sister. The Rockies? Please.)

After a bumpy, five-hour trip made more eventful by frequent stops to fill our wheezing Land Cruiser's radiator with water, I got to see the Deosai Plains in bloom. Much of the year the plains are covered in snow; for a few short weeks they are covered with delicate little blossoms instead. I found it the perfect setting for forcing one's traveling companions to belt out highlights from the Sound of Music soundtrack while fighting back high-altitude dizziness.

We stayed at Shiga Fort, the old home of the Raja of the territory, where the Raja's families have traditionally been living for centuries. The latest Raja got wise, sold the fort to the Serena hotel chain, and now lives in a fancy house next door after pocketing his cash. Shiga Fort is, as a result, the perfect combination of 5-star hotel (strong, hot showers and toilets that work) and stripped-down, zen peace retreat with a zesty sprinkling of history. I highly recommend.

One of the best things about the Fort is the huge garden that wraps all the way around the grounds and is liberally covered by large lounging divans. On my favorite day of the trip, I read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, drank sweet mixed tea all afternoon, and laughed and talked with friends as ripe apricots fell out of the trees and split neatly into our laps, reminding us that even the effort of peeling would be unnecessary labor in this paradise.

One day we took a dusty walk down to the little town of Shiga to search for provisions, which we found in the form of ancient packets of cookies and mango juice boxes. There was a 350-year-old mosque in town which I didn't visit, being neither male nor Muslim, but I did see the town mullah while I was there and a bunch of cute kids.

After two days of delayed flights home (airline strike! weather! computer problems! No one will ever know for sure...), I started to get a little nervous even in the most relaxing place on earth. Even the best long weekend away has to come to an end sometime. On the third stolen day of vacation, this one finally did. So I packed up my extra juice boxes, came down from the mountain, and returned to "ordinary" life, whatever that means these days...

Strawberry Juice, Watermelon Juice, Mango Juice

2009-07-18T15:46:00.007+06:00

For the last two years, I have made an effort to eat with the seasons. That means no strawberries in October, no apples in April, no tomatoes in December (when they are hard and smell vaguely like plastic...big sacrifice). If it isn’t immediately clear to you why those items don’t go along with those months, it only means that you live in the U.S. or a similarly developed country and you are a product of your Costco, have-everything-now, big box store environment. It's true we can certainly have everything now. If by “everything” we mean perfectly shaped, tasteless fruits and vegetables and the crazy desire to fly asparagus in from Chile in August even while a bounty of sweet corn, rich red peppers, or juicy cantaloupes are easily plucked right in your own state or even town during that same month.

I understand you’re pretty busy and just reading this blog may count as your requisite non-fiction for the month. You're probably not overly interested in reading "Omnivore's Dilemma" or any of the other excellent books on this subject. In that case, just trust me when I say there’s a better way.

As soon as I realized that the way we eat in the US is crazy, I decided to stop. I became a member of a collective farm so I could be assured of a hearty share of fruits and vegetables from June to January even in climate-challenged New England. Eating produce in season instantly transformed me into a magically fantastic cook and a very, very happy eater. It just smells and tastes way better, like someone took regular supermarket food and turned up the volume. I started to eat lots of squash and sweet potatoes in the fall, which happen to go great with the onions and garlic that are ready to eat then, and the apples and pears that are at their sweetest, fullest best. I ate pomegranates and cranberries in early winter, and stuffed myself with asparagus and delicate baby greens in the spring. Sure, I cheated some of the time: I could never get into the habit of making smoothies without bananas (which are never in season in Massachusetts), or occasionally being lured in by the gleaming displays of non-seasonal whatever in the Whole Foods super-lux produce section. But I tried, and it was good.

What does this have to do with living in Islamabad? Like everything, another surprise. Even though in the U.S. eating locally and seasonally pretty much brands you as an over-educated, privileged member of the intellectual/liberal elite, it turns out that this new "trend" in the U.S. is the only way to eat in Pakistan. Despite that whole untreated tap water and occasional scary bacteria thing, the people in this country actually eat less crazy than we do. If it isn't in season here, don't bother looking.

When I first arrived in April, fresh strawberries were everywhere. It was "strawberry festival" time at every restaurant, every waiter started his spiel with, "Would you like a fresh strawberry juice?" and a local economist we know here loaded our team up with a crate of fresh berries to take back to the guest house when we visited his farm. By mid-May, they had disappeared.

Next came watermelons. Piled up on every dusty corner and available for ridiculous prices like a buck apiece, big fat dark green melons were all over Islamabad in May and June. And not your sissy little seedless varieties, either. Juicy, red hunks of melon with jet black seeds became my favorite afternoon snack in the office, and it was a tall, cold glass of watermelon juice that I started drinking every night with dinner. Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, watermelons were gone too.

Now we're firmly in mango territory in Islamabad, and it is heaven. I didn't like mangoes until about two years ago, because every one I had ever encountered was stringy, hard, and pretty tasteless. Then I received a lesson on how to cut one up (thanks Anna!), tasted a good one, and fell in love. Pakistan has very strong feelings of pride about its mangoes, and with good reason. They are so sweet they taste like cool, orange candy, and in the humid hell that this country has turned into as of the beginning of July, they are a saving grace. I just polished off a mango tart for breakfast, yesterday I had a mango shake after lunch, and tonight I am definitely going to cut a few up for myself and eat them in chunks in an air-conditioned room. I will eat mangoes until I practically turn into a mango, because I know, like the strawberries and watermelons before them, they will soon be gone.

I could weave some elaborate metaphor here or throw in some carpe diem type phrasing, but I think the message is pretty obvious all on its own: enjoy what you have while it lasts, experience life fully, eat all the mangoes you can.

Independence Day

2009-07-03T22:21:00.007+06:00

So, it's the Fourth of July! Well, almost. Though if all the buzz on Facebook is to be believed, everyone in the U.S. got a healthy head start celebrating the holiday weekend. Here in Pakistan, things are a little less festive, seeing how they're not celebrating anything here. It's not that Pakistanis don't recognize the significance of a group of people shaking off the chains of colonial oppression from Great Britan and becoming their own country. It's just that they did it themselves 60 years ago, and they're understandably a little more excited about that.

Let's see what that super reliable source Wikipedia has to say about it:

Pakistan's independence day (also known as Yom-e-Istiqlal or یوم استقلال ) is observed on August 14, the day on which Pakistan became independent from British rule within what was then known as the British Raj in 1947. The day is a national holiday in Pakistan, celebrated all over the country with flag raising ceremonies, tributes to the national heroes and fireworks taking place in the capital, Islamabad. (oooh, goody!) The main celebrations take place in Islamabad, where the President and Prime Minister raise the national flag at the Presidential and Parliament buildings and deliver speeches that are televised live. In the speech, the leaders highlight the achievements of the government, goals set for the future and in the words of the father of the nation, Quaid-e-Azam, bring "Unity, Faith and Discipline" to its people.

So I have that to look forward to.

In the meantime though, I'm trying not to forget my roots. In the America that I remember from the distant past of three months ago, we don't go in much for fancy presidential speeches, but we certainly do have traditions of our own. I'm talking about The Fourth of July Barbecue, a tradition I really, really love, which is why I'm throwing one tomorrow. Call me the patriotic ex-patriate.

Here is a simple list of things you need to throw your typical 4th of July barbecue, like the ones millions of people will be enjoying all over America tomorrow. It isn't a complicated list, and yet somehow I have this sneaking feeling that, like many things in Pakistan, unexpected difficulties will beset me from every angle as I try to accomplish something that seems easy. Here it is:

Grill.
Hot dogs.
Hamburgers.
Condiments.
Buns.
Coleslaw, potato salad, or pasta salad.
Paper plates and cups, preferably in red, white, and blue.
Beer.
Ice.
Swimming pool. (optional)
Fireworks. (necessary)

Let's take them one by one:

GRILL. Quite surprisingly for a country in which "barbecue" is basically the national dish, this is maybe the hardest thing to get on the whole list. The thing is, I think they do barbecue too well here. And by "barbecue," I mean a huge, cast iron behemoth that looks like a prop off the set of a torture movie and is the absolute norm in Pakistan. This is a piece of equipment that you wouldn't dream of moving three inches, let alone from the garage onto the patio, into which coals are poured by the bucket and a dedicated crack team of laborers sweat over its angry-looking embers for hours. Barbecue in Pakistan isn't recreational cooking, it's dead serious work. (Dead serious work, by the way, is also what's required to eat the huge hunks of meat on sword-sized skewers that come off this monster.) Looking for your nice, civilized gas or charcoal Weber? Keep walking. My only hope is to find one at the "China Market," which is the secondhand furniture warehouse where all ex-pat furniture goes to die. It will probably be shelved with the toasters.

HOT DOGS. Pork is illegal here, and Israel isn't exactly a friend to this country, making both your classic Ballpark Franks and Hebrew Nationals very, very scarce. I heard a rumor that Kohsar Market carries hot dogs. We'll see.

HAMBURGERS. It's the quest that drives this blog, and yet I haven't had a fantastic cheeseburger yet in the whole three months I've been here. This is my chance to make it myself. Ground beef should be aplenty, and my super secret ingredient of minced onion also shouldn't be a problem.

CONDIMENTS. I have yet to see mustard, but ketchup is ubiquitous. The only problem is it's super sweet and never gets refrigerated. This doesn't seem to gross anybody out but me.

BUNS. I could always serve my hamburgers folded up in naan bread if necessary.

APPROPRIATE SIDE DISH. All the options I mentioned are available here, and all the options I mentioned have mayonnaise in them. This is not so great when the power (and thus the fridge) go out 3 times a day and it's 95 degrees outside. I just got my generator yesterday but is a house full of guests a good time to test this out?

PAPER PLATES. These exist, and will be used, as tomorrow is also the day I'm (finally) moving into my new house and I don't have any plates yet. All of my environmentalist ideals out the window (Sorry, Earth).

BEER. Beer is illegal here. There are bootleggers, but you saw what happened last time we tried to mess with this. (Jail.) However, it is tough to honor the classic Fourth of July traditional barbecue tradition without beer. We are going to see what we can do. (This is a hint, oh ye friends with Embassy commissary privileges).

ICE. Yeah, they don't do ice here. Remember that thing about the fridges going out all the time, and about how only Americans really like their drinks super cold, and about the tap water here being completely undrinkable. The last party I went too, we all stood around drinking lukewarm vodka in leaking Dixie cups with a tiny 7Up floater. The lesson: accept room temperature.

SWIMMING POOL. This is optional even in the States, but it is fantastic when you can get it. There is a little soiree over at the Embassy tomorrow afternoon in honor of the holiday (where there's a pool), but I'll most likely be in the middle of a sweaty hunt for hot dog buns all day and will miss it.

FIREWORKS. In this part of the world, fire in the sky and loud bangs are seldom welcome. Let's say we're better off without this little tradition, and I'll just wait for August 14.

What my barbecue tomorrow will have that I can only get in Pakistan:

A shisha pipe. A beautiful view of the Margalla Hills and the spires of Faisal Mosque. The call to prayer in the background at sunset. All my new friends in Islamabad.

Happy 4th everyone!

Illegal

2009-06-25T10:05:00.013+06:00

Today I am enjoying the feeling of being a law-abiding citizen. It may be the last day of that for awhile. I entered Pakistan on a three-month business visa that expires tomorrow, at which point I have no official documentation to demonstrate my authority to remain in the country. Good times!

It's not like I didn't do everything I could to follow the rules. I turned in the proper forms, signed the proper stuff, and endured an awkward visit from an agent of the Pakistan government's Minister of the Interior (MOI). He stopped by our offices a month ago to check me out, presumably to verify that I was, in fact, a development professional and not a high-class Russian hooker. (After the Avari, I feel anything's possible.) He was then supposed to forward my application to the proper authorities so they could issue me a nice, shining new two-year multiple entry visa.

Our office has worked to renew my visa through all the proper channels. So far, they have not been successful. As I contemplate the kind of living quarters one would be assigned should one find oneself on the Pakistani government's bad side, let's do a quick scan of my office's efforts to keep me legal:

June 2:
Dear Miss,
With regard to your visa, MOI will send a reminder today to the agencies and have asked me to check with them again on Thursday.

I'm thinking my new, Pakistani-assigned living quarters upon detainment probably won't be an overly large living space. Perhaps just a small room, shared with one or two other charming occupants?

June 4
Dear Miss,
After calling the MOI today came to know that they did not hear from the concerned agencies so far. Will call them again on Saturday.
Cheers!

Lately I have been doing a lot of shopping for furnishings and accessories to get ready to move into my new house in Islamabad. The good news is that I won't need to do that once I am offered my replacement, Pakistani-sponsored accommodations. The bad news is that these new digs may not be totally up to snuff when it comes to my stated requirements of a powerful air-conditioner, a comfy couch to watch TV on, and a queen-sized bed with organic bamboo sheets.

June 11
Hi,

Spoke with MOI they have not received so far the clearance from the agencies. The reason was told is that they all are very busy with high security alerts and its after effects. Was told to call again next week.

Come to think of it, I bet we don't have to worry about the limitations of this living space as I probably won't be in it for long. Let's imagine, instead, the nice flight back to the US that will be efficiently arranged as part of my deportation.

June 11

Ma'am there is no alternative we have to wait and they are aware of the expiry of your visa and said that they will hopefully get the NOC early next week. We have no choice than to wait.

I remember the food on Qatar Airlines was not half bad.

June 17
Dear Miss,
Just so you know that I am constantly following up with MOI with regard to your visa extensions. They have already sent 2 reminders to the concerned agencies but no clearance received so far from them. MOI will send another reminder today and I shall call again on Friday to check the status. They were quite apologetic for the delay which is happening due to the security situation as the personnel are deputed to other tasks of the said matter.
Cheers

And on the plus side, it's been a long time since I've had a chance to say hello to all of my lovely friends and family in the United States. Turns out you may be enjoying the pleasure of my company sooner than you think, as long as you don't have any reservations about fraternizing with deportees and those living outside the law. Cheers!

My First Wedding

2009-06-20T23:00:00.005+06:00

Even before I got here, I was told it was important that I get invited to a Pakistani wedding. The social scene in this country revolves around private homes and the family structure, and if you're a foreigner moving to town, you've got to break in somehow. Otherwise, your life is limited to the circle of embassy clubs, one of the two expat coffee shops in town, dinners in the sparsely populated restaurants at the Islamabad Marriott, and, of course, working 12 hour days. So I was happy to be invited to my first Pakistani wedding last week, even though it was, ironically, at the Marriott.

Pakistani weddings take something like four days to complete, and I don't understand them at all. Actually, it's about time for a disclaimer. Disclaimer: This entire paragraph and pretty much the remainder of this post is a mixture of hearsay, limited personal experience, and inference, and I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of the information. (Go to wikipedia if you want to become even more seriously confused on the subject.)

But from when I've gathered: Each night has separate rituals, separate bridal outfits, and separate things that all the guests do. I attended Night #4, which is the night where, apparently, all the guests sit and watch the bridal couple and their families up on a dais and then disperse to eat a lot of food. The bride wears a really ornate (and very heavy) gown and is supposed to keep a downcast face as she enters and exits. Brides do not generally wear white as that is associated with funerals rather than marriages. Usually they are in red or yellow instead, and the clothing is beautiful. The bride's hand are elaborately painted with henna for some of the nights, but not the one I attended. I heard that the bride's hands were still henna'ed on Night #3, which is also where I heard all the crazy dancing happened. I am obviously sorry to have missed Night #3.

The elephant in the room for any American attending a Pakistani wedding is whether they are witnessing an arranged marriage or a "love marriage." Arranged marriage is still quite common in this country, with the couple's families getting together in advance to determine suitability and decide if their children make a good match. I have no idea how this works out in real life, if marriages here are generally better or worse, or more or less fulfilling than they are in other countries because of this tradition. I would imagine the answer is (as it is so often when discussing anything about marriage in any country)... It depends.

This particular bride certainly didn't have a hard time putting on that downcast look required by tradition, and in fact that look was pretty much in evidence for the entire night. I concocted an elaborate private theory that her somber face was the result of the sudden discovery that her brand new arranged-marriage husband hated dogs and children, or had monstrously bad breath, or something else awful that you would not want to spend the rest of your life with. My alarmist expat fictions ground to a halt when I discovered that, a) it wasn't really an arranged marriage and b) she pretty much wore that face all of the time. Oh, and c) she'd had a little dustup with her new mother-in-law before the reception. Very normal stuff. By not "really an arranged marriage" I mean they were introduced by their families but then had a lot of time to get to know each other and fall in love on their own. Can we call this an "arranged love" marriage?

I'd like to tell you more: how cute all the little girls were in their flower girl dresses or shalwar kameeze, about the live music and professional dancers, the adorable grandmother of the groom who had a hibiscus in her hair, the buffet that I laid into like a champion, and the seven different kinds of mousse on the dessert table, but you'll just have to take my word for it that I had a good time. Leave the rest of it to your imagination, or until you experience your first Pakistani wedding yourself. (Remember that you always have a place to stay if you want to come visit!)

L'Whore

2009-06-12T17:16:00.017+06:00

So, they put me on the whore floor.

Let me explain. It started out as innocently as any other business trip: board a plane in the morning, arrive in the not-too-distant city of Lahore armed with a full agenda and a small suitcase of hopefully not-too-wrinkled suits. It wasn't until reaching reception at the hotel after a full day of meetings that things turned a little strange. The front desk cheerfully and efficiently checked in my boss and then turned to me and said, "You'll need to check in on the third floor."

Confused but ever courteous, I decided to go with it and headed up the elevator alone. Upon arrival on the third floor, I suddenly found myself in a very different environment: one with lots of flowers, soothing music, and the presentation of a glass of cool, sweet melon juice. Third floor check-in isn't so bad, I thought to myself.

It turns out I had arrived in "Lady Avari" land, which is the name the Avari Hotel has given for their women's only wing of the hotel. The reception desk on the third floor already had a print-out of my passport (weird), but they asked me all the right questions, as in What newspaper would you like delivered in the morning and Do you know about all the different restaurants in the hotel and What is your bust size. Wait, no they didn't ask that one. But it was starting to feel like it was possible.

I was escorted to my room, which was pink and girly and full of small bud vases. It was pointed out to me that all my calls would be screened, and then it was demonstrated (with energetic physical action) that the door to the room next door was securely locked and could not be opened. Um, okay.

Before leaving, my host informed me that only female housekeeping staff would be attending to this room, and should I need anything I should request it immediately. I then turned my attention to eating the little plate of fancy cut fruit laid out on the end table and rifling through the array of free stuff that appears in Lady Avari land: small decorated soaps, a loofah, a manicure set complete with filing boards of various sizes (Is this where I should tell them that I usually cut my fingernails with a toenail clipper and call it a day?), and perfumey beauty lotions of every description.

Why all the fuss? For starters, women don't travel much on their own in Pakistan (remember, if you will, the special "Unaccompanied Ladies" line at airport customs). I decided that perhaps Lady Avari is designed to counter the horror of the single woman forced to look after herself in a culture where husbands or male relatives are generally around to deal with things. It was only later that I found out several pieces of disturbing information:

The other rooms of the hotel come stocked with a full pound cake.
Just to pour salt into the wound left by the pound cake, the other rooms of the hotel come stocked with a box of cookies.
The other rooms of the hotel come stocked with a huge platter of uncut fruit (apparently men can use knives).
The Avari Hotel is on guard for prostitutes.

According to my super secret local source, luxury hotels in town used to be ground central for the set-up and management of a complicated call-girl service. Something about a lot of Russian hookers newly arrived in Pakistan. I couldn't quite follow everything except the salient piece of information that maybe the figurative steel curtain separating Lady Avari Land from the rest of the hotel wasn't so much for my protection as it was to keep single women "travelers" away from the other guests. Granted, this hooker would have a laptop and a business suit to go along with her heart of gold, but I guess anything's possible.

On the same night I was enjoying my cut fruit and screened call service, a different 4-star hotel in the city of Peshawar was bombed by terrorists. As a friend back in the States wrote on my facebook wall re: the news headline she saw, Bombing at Luxury Hotel in Pakistan: "They really should be more specific when they post things like that for the public... WHICH hotel in WHICH city and was my friend affected in any way?" Yeah, I wish they could. At the very least, it certainly does make one happy about only having to deal with weird patriarchal hotel policies and people thinking you might possibly be a prostitute.

I'll leave it to you to decide the true Lady Avari agenda: thoughtful mitigation of a cultural reality (a safe space for single women so their families feel okay about them traveling alone), offensive perpetuation of sexist stereotypes, or the calculated prevention of an elaborate Russian mafia-run prostitution ring. And no matter which option we land on, would it kill them to give us a little pound cake?

Real World Islamabad

2009-06-06T01:30:00.007+06:00

I finally found a place to live. After hours of driving around Islamabad's various sectors, tramping up lots of stairs, and poking in corners of countless empty houses, I have found a spot to call home. It's totally unfurnished, which is crazy because this means I have to buy everything, including such luxuries as a refrigerator and heaters. But it was either this or live in a cramped apartment with furnishings that resemble brothel decor or rejects from a seedy motel in Reno. I just couldn't do it. This does mean I may be sleeping on the floor for a little while.

As I imagine a near future that doesn't include me living in a hotel room surrounded by 739 pounds of my personal effects in cardboard boxes, let's take a moment to look back and reflect on the guest house that has been my home for two months. After all, this is the place I have spent the vast majority of my hours upon moving to Pakistan: living upstairs, working downstairs, and trying not to eat anywhere due to my deep suspicions about the sanitary conditions of the kitchen.

We've all made the joke a million times: "This is the true story...of seven strangers...picked to live in a house in Islamabad, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting Real." Other than the "taped" part (well, I got what I could on my little Flip camera), that's scarily accurate.

And we've managed to have some fun along the way. In addition to putting a roof over my head, this guest house has been good for more than a couple of laughs. There was the Roach Incident, the Pilates Session, the time one of our guards accidently discharged his machine gun in our courtyard at 7 am (perhaps that one's not so much "funny" as "terrifying"...), Red Wine Night, the ongoing antics of the staff, and many other moments of comedy that made the days go by faster.

There will also be some things I won't miss. The smell of dead lizard emanating from the air conditioner in Office #6. The toxic little white balls the cleaning staff puts in all the sinks for no apparent reason (you've seen them before, in urinals). The reception desk ringing my room at 11:30 at night out of a sound sleep to take the breakfast order I already gave them for the next day. The awesomely horrid 1970's comforters in taupe with geometric shapes. The Cadbury milk chocolate bar and bag of potato chips that refreshes daily as if by magic in my minibar fridge. [No, I will miss that.]

But I'm ready to start fending for myself, remembering how to make my own hot water and clear up my own dishes. It will be weird not to pick up the phone and expect a hard-boiled egg to appear 10 minutes later, but I will learn. It will be strange to find that my bed no longer makes itself and damp towels aren't mysteriously replaced every day with nice fresh clean ones, but I'll adjust. As much fun as it's been to eat breakfast simultaneously with a roomful of colleagues, I'm probably ready for a little alone time. And I'm definitely ready to start making a home here, rather than just occupy Room #8.

What happens when you spend every waking moment of your life with the same people, in the same guest house, sometimes under lockdown? In our case, we got a lot of work done, amassed a lot of inside jokes, tried not to get unnerved over the latest security threat or sinister warning from the embassy about beheadings, ate a lot of dal and chapati. We had a surprisingly low number of brawls or catfights (unlike the real Real World). We also didn't have a hot tub, although the nice open terrace on the roof would have made a great spot. Maybe for the reunion show...

Of course, it feels callous to talk about housing without mentioning the more than 2 million Pakistanis recently homeless and displaced from the NWFP as a result of the upheaval there. For you non-CNN types, NWFP stands for the North-West Frontier Province, a region of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan and is the scene of the ongoing US drone attacks targeting terrorist leaders. Like usual, I have nothing to complain about.

Stir-Crazy

2009-06-01T22:52:00.005+06:00

Or, When the Guest House starts to look like Prison.

Because of the security situation, we're not really allowed to go anywhere this week. No restaurants, no hotels, no public markets, no crowded places, nowhere much farther than the few thousand square feet of this guest house that I could now describe in painful detail even with my eyes shut. This means we're forced to get a bit creative when it comes to entertainment. We've already compared and swapped all the DVDs we brought from home (oddly, no one seemed very interested in my collection of sustainable agriculture documentaries. ?!). We've sent the drivers out to pick up watermelons so we can remember it's summer here even though we're in an air-conditioned cave all the time. We've checked out despair.com's collection of demotivators and picked out our favorite. Mine, most definitely = "It's Always Darkest Just Before It Goes Pitch Black."

To make things even more boring, today is the day that pandora.com (free, perfectly customized internet radio that I love and am addicted to) decided to stop working in Pakistan. Something about not being "licensed." Tell it to the shops with the thousands of bootleg DVDs! Since when do we care about licensing around here when I can get a copy of "I Love You Man" for $3? Anyway, my source of hip-hop is now shut off and it looks like I will have to start buying music like everybody else.

We can't go to the gym to work out, so today I decided to solve the problem of the lack of exercise AND the lack of entertainment in one fell swoop. After the "workday" was over (I put "workday" in quotes because when you're locked down, there really is no end to the workday...all the hours just flow together), I pulled out the video I made of my favorite Pilates class in Boston before I left and projected it on the big screen in the conference room. The entertaining part is that I made two of my colleagues do the video with me, one of whom is a self-admitted exercise-phobe whose grunting and heavy breathing noises made me laugh so hard it was difficult to do my ab work. Thank you, Imran. I'd take you to Alcatraz with me anytime.

Still About Cheeseburgers

2009-05-31T19:40:00.003+06:00

Things are getting a little hairy in Pakistan these days, you may have noticed. The government's attempt to retake Swat Valley back from the Taliban is supposedly only two or three days from over, and fighting is heavy. The last six days have seen a massive suicide bomb detonated in front of a police station in Lahore and seven more throughout the rest of the country.

Islamabad has so far remained peaceful, or as peaceful as a city swarming with police checkpoints can be. We were restricted from visiting certain places this weekend, so we spent the last two days holed up in the guest house ordering take-out and...working. Apparently security threats are good for business productivity.

So no need to worry about me just yet; I continue to live quite calmly in the bubble that is Pakistan's capital city, my main personal worries still almost exclusively related to food, sleep, and getting work done--a far cry from the concerns of the people who live near the border, most of whom have been displaced by the violence. We all have our eye on the situation, even as we mow through boxes of Lebanese take-out and I tell the team about the latest candidate for best cheeseburger in Islamabad. (Current favorite: the Bacon Cheeseburger at the American Club at the Embassy. That's real bacon, cheddar cheese, a nice bun, and pickle--especially good with the macaroni and cheese I strongly recommend you order on the side).

I'll keep you updated!

Incident at the Guest House

2009-05-26T11:40:00.012+06:00

In lieu of a thoughtful, substantive statement about my life here or conditions in Pakistan, all I've got today is a cockroach story. Hey, it's been a busy week.

Yesterday, while thinking about the different steps needed to design a communications strategy for US government audiences, I looked over and noticed a cockroach the size of a small child crawling along the floor of my office. Attempting to make use of the head waiter that hovers around all day offering diet Cokes and being very disappointed when I refuse (I'm still trying to ixnay the caffeine), I pointed to the roach and asked if he would mind killing it for me. Well, to be honest, what I actually did was point to the roach and make insect-murdering noises and motions to communicate this request (my Urdu not as yet including the words for "cockroach", "kill", or even "please." Yes this is embarrassing). I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that a roach of this size would pose no undue trouble for a local. I figured it is normal here to have insects that could double as small pets, and that he would know right away how best to dispatch it.

I was surprised when he ran out the room, but heartened when he returned almost immediately with a big can of bug spray. I am usually extremely opposed to bug sprays as they are toxic, and what's the point of getting rid of bugs only to give yourself cancer? But I kept my mouth shut and figured he knew what he was doing. A full 60 seconds of direct spray on the roach later, I began to doubt. I thought maybe he could just walk over and step on the roach instead. I suggested this. More spraying. I tried to convey once again my idea for vanquishing our sturdy intruder by securing eye contact (with the waiter, not the roach) and then making an exaggerated stomp on the ground. Head waiter responded by performing a little minuet near, although not quite on, the limp cockroach's body. Picture a ballet dancer dipping one pointed toe toward the ground for a quick développé.

Not surprisingly, the roach remained groggy but undead, and started to make a super slow break for it. Alarmed by the movement, the waiter abandoned his delicate technique and stepped on the roach. Dead. End of story. Except that he then turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving the smashed roach like a hideous Rorschach on the carpet. I thought perhaps hotel policy dictated that guests are on their own when it comes to dead roaches of enormous size. I moved to grab a piece of tissue and scrap him up without getting roach gook on my fingers. My resolve was interrupted by the return of the head waiter, who had brought with him the head housekeeping person and an industrial vacuum the size of a small house. Picture the head of the head housekeeping person basically obscured by an armful of complicated hosing attachments that took the work of both parties to wrestle into the room. After setting up this tremendous vacuum, our heroes sucked up the roach carcass and then cleared out. What does this have to do with Pakistan, a communications strategy, or living abroad? Not sure, except that it is just one more example of how they do things a little differently here.

Issues

2009-05-17T14:37:00.009+06:00

Yes, I’m a sci-fi geek. I’ve been looking forward to the new Star Trek movie since I heard internet whisperings about it early last year. I got all hopped up after I saw the special trailer that has Leonard Nimoy at the end. I love the director, J.J. Abrams (Lost!), I love the original series, hokey uniforms and all, and I’ve loved watching Star Trek movies in the theater ever since I snuck out of "An American Tail" to go watch Star Trek IV back in 1986. (Trek. Time Travel. Whales. That movie will be hard to top.)

So in putting together my mental list of “Pros and Cons of Moving to Pakistan,” I have to admit that “missing the release of the new Star Trek movie” was sort of on it. But like so many things I thought I would have to sacrifice when I became a resident of Islamabad (Italian food, driving, jeans) it turns out I can get Star Trek too. However, there are a few issues.

Issue #1: Film Quality. If I wanted to, I could be watching all the geeked out action this very second. This is because Pakistan has a healthy and flourishing trade in bootlegged DVDs, and all the big movies basically become available immediately upon release for like 50 rupees (about .60 cents) at Jinnah Market. However, quality varies widely, from a shaky recording of someone who snuck their camera into the theater to a movie you can actually watch. And I don’t want to risk it where Star Trek is concerned.

Issue #2: Safety. So this brings us to watching the movie on the big screen, the way God intended. The nearest Cineplex is in Islamabad's sister city, Rawalpindi, about 40 minutes away. Apparently it’s quite nice, has a full array of snacks and sodas, and only differs from its American equivalent in that there is assigned seating and they check your bags thoroughly upon entrance (meaning you can’t sneak in any candy). So what’s the problem? Our security team doesn’t want us to go to the following locations: 1) Places with crowds of people. 2) Rawalpindi. That makes the Cineplex two-for-two on the Not Allowed list.

What’s a geeky expat to do? Certainly James T. Kirk wouldn’t be hampered by a little thing called “rules”: we all know the total disregard he showed for the Prime Directive in “The Return of the Archons,” and “Friday’s Child.” (And by “we all,” I mean my fellow nerd brethren and you know who you are.) On the other hand, Captain Kirk wasn’t having to think constantly about probable suicide bomb locations.

As I take you through this careful thought process, it occurs to me that it’s possible you’d rather hear an informed analysis of the political situation in Pakistan than a description of my quest to watch the Star Trek blockbuster. I totally sympathize—the country is in the news all the time, there are lots of conflicting reports coming out of the area, and it’s fairly pivotal as far as foreign policy and, like, global stability goes. It might be nice to have a source on the ground giving you hard-hitting reports and an insider’s view so you’d know exactly what to believe. I wish I could be of service, I really do. Once again, there are a few issues.

Issue #1: I am pretty far from qualified to talk about it. The complicated history, subtle allegiances, and shifting alliances of Pakistani politics would take a few years to understand well. No one wants to hear the uneducated opinion of the Girl who Just Got Here on what should be done in this country.

Issue #2: There is no dearth of folks already talking about it at length. Google “Pakistan” and “blog” and you’ll see what I mean. You'll find hundreds of hours' worth of reading on the subject. On the other hand, I don’t see a lot of people ranting about cheeseburger availability or what it is like to actually live in Islamabad. There seems to be a niche for someone inordinately interested in food who just moved to Pakistan, and that niche has my name on it.

Issue #3: I live on the island that is Islamabad. (Note: it's not an actual island, for those of you who are geographically-impaired. This is a metaphor.) When you send me text messages and emails wondering after my safety because you just heard an especially terrifying report about Pakistan on NPR, I say thanks! but don't worry: as I stroll to the gym through the lobby of the Marriott hotel, past lovely potted palms, smiling staff, and fancy restaurants, everything looks just fine here. That's not to say that it is just fine, only that sometimes I feel the people who live here are the last to know. Really you should probably be updating me on the political and security situation in Pakistan on a daily basis.

Isn't this always the way? We all live in a bubble of our own making, carrying on with our habits and preferences, with the frustrations of traffic or the delights of a good dessert defining our daily routine whether we are in Islamabad or Indianapolis. The thing is, you just can't live an exotic life all of the time. So you'll have to forgive me for failing to bring your attention to the U.S. ceding partial control of the drone campaign over to the Pakistani government or the hoards of refugees apparently descending on Islamabad even now. And I'll try not to feel too guilty about the decidedly pedestrian conflict most on my mind today, the same one many of you back home may be pondering as well on a Sunday afternoon...Should I catch a movie?

Last Night, in a Hospital in Pakistan

2009-05-07T06:55:00.002+06:00

Turns out my "I'm feeling better!" celebrations from the last post were a little premature. I thought I was basically cured, but as we know by now Pakistan is full of surprises. Instead of that 100% recovery I was expecting, I had a little relapse. It turns out that having a stomach bug for six straight days is the best way to become dangerously dehydrated and get people really concerned. This is how I found myself at one o'clock in the morning last night being hurtled toward the emergency room of Shifa Hospital in downtown Islamabad with an entourage of four: my driver, my boss, my colleague (and acting translator), and our security chief. Overkill? Maybe. But it was really nice of all of them to come to the ER with me. And know we all know how to get there for next time!

So, What is the Emergency Room Like in Pakistan?

Pretty much like in America, except that it is way better. This particular ER had the huge plus of no waiting. I was ushered right in immediately to my little curtained-off bed and saw the doctor within 3 minutes. When I went to Boston Medical Center in 2001 with what turned out to not be appendicitis, I waited for six hours in the ER with no water or pain meds before anything happened to me, unless you count being poked by med students on their first day of school "anything." Granted, BMC is in Dorchester, and it is hard to pay much attention to the girl with the tummyache when all the gunshot victims are being wheeled by on gurneys. Advantage: Pakistan.

What's the one thing you have to do a bunch of when you show up to an American ER? Fill out a form. Fill out another form. Sign stuff. Show them your insurance card, if you have one. What do you have to do at the ER in Islamabad? Show up. Have your colleague Kashif explain to the staff in Urdu what your symptoms are. Go lay on the little bed and get treated. I didn't ever touch a pen, a form, or have any conversation with anyone about a financial transaction of any kind. (Come to think of it, who paid for my visit to the ER and all those antibiotics? I certainly didn't pony over any cash. Maybe it was someone in my entourage.) Advantage: Pakistan.

Because I had been drinking water like a fiend all day, I was on a strict peeing-every-2o-minutes schedule, meaning three times in the course of my adventure at the Pakistani ER. The bathroom was just off the main room, quite clean, and well-stocked with germ-killing soaps, but the room was stripped of paper products of any kind, as if toilet paper and paper towels were dangerous implements and we were all on suicide watch. I mean, no paper products whatsoever. Not in the stalls, not on the counters, not even in the huge storage closet that one might be tempted to root around in were one on a dedicated hunt for toilet paper. I found this a little odd. Advantage: U.S.

It may be that the key to a good ER experience is going to the hospital in the wee hours. The last time I did this was after a night out at the Rum Line in Beverly, MA, and I had an entourage that time too. (Although this time instead of colleagues and security professionals, it was a bunch of scantily-clad girls ripped away from their whisky sours--some of whom started crying when they came in and saw me hooked up to an IV. Ahhh, Boston in your 20s.) I realize it's starting to sound a bit like I make a habit of going to the ER. Anyway, the staff demeanor in the middle of the night was so great in both Beverly and Islamabad: it's almost like everyone is happy you came in because it gives them something to do. In Beverly, they put me in a wheelchair to bring me in from the car (plus), but they also gave me overzealous ex-rays and I'm not crazy about the unnecessary radiation (minus). Advantage: Push.

But back to Pakistan. Upon my arrival, the doctor immediately wanted to stick me with an IV to get my fluid levels up. I hate needles, even the tiny little IV kind. I suggested maybe he should check my blood pressure first, and if it was okay, he could possibly consider not giving me the IV. I told him I had been very, very good at drinking lots of water and taking lots of mineral-packed salts and sugar to replace what I was losing and that I could basically promise him I wasn't dehydrated. (Does it sound like I was begging a little? I guess that comes across in both English and Urdu.) He said he would give it a try, checked my blood pressure, found it fine, and said no IV. I really like people who will hear out your argument on why that needle is unnecessary and who are also responsive to a little begging. Advantage: Pakistan.

They are nothing if not thorough at the ER in Islamabad (and, apparently, needle-happy). After the aborted IV, and the symptom check, and the antibiotics were prescribed, I figured it was time to go home. Instead the nurse pulled out large vials that he intended to fill with my blood, so I urgently had Kashif communicate the crucial information that my veins are the size of eyelashes and I have been known to pass out with all but the most expert of blood-takers (and even then sometimes I get a little woozy). The vials were put away. Some people might say the ER should tell the patient to shut up and do the blood draw. I am not one of these people. Advantage: Pakistan.

Then I really did get to go home, all fixed up with a prescription for Cipro (so much for my attempts to avoid antibiotics in Pakistan) and a bottle of nasty Pedialyte that I didn't drink (don't tell the doctor; he already thinks I'm difficult). I do, finally, feel much better today. All in all, going to the hospital in Islamabad in the middle of the night was much less unpleasant than one might expect. It turns out while the food in Pakistan can be very, very scary, the ER really is not. Let's hear it for surprises!

Down for the Count

2009-05-04T09:07:00.003+06:00

It finally got me. The deadly blister on the heel of the fantastic ex-pat experience. The reason, perhaps, why 70% of Americans don't own a passport. The inevitable initiation that tests how much you really like your new exotic environment, all the beautiful sunshine, and the exciting development work. The devil-child birthed through the marriage of a new microbial environment and the occasionally dubious sanitation practices of my adopted country.

It seems rude to talk about dubious sanitation practices, and it makes me want to retract that statement. On the other hand, many, many people who have lived here for a very, very long time have told me that the most dangerous thing in Pakistan is the food. (They usually say this as a way to minimize concerns about terrorists attacks. As in, "Nah...don't worry about bombings. The most dangerous thing in Pakistan is the food.")

But, as we all know, I love food. I don't ever want to be on the wrong side of food. So I started the relationship slowly and carefully, testing things out to make sure I wasn't going to get burned. And everything went so well at first. I watched, sympathetic but relieved, as one by one, every member of our team went down except for me. It was immediately clear every morning whether a target had been hit: obvious in the haggard look of the haven't-slept, the grimace at the sight of breakfast eggs, the cautious "Oooh, no thanks, my stomach isn't doing so well." I, however, seemed immune. As the days passed and nothing got me, I grew cocky. I thought my naturopath-recommended regimen of probiotics, herbal tinctures and something called "Omphalia" was a good luck charm that could ward off all invisible nastiness.

As happens in so many relationships, I grew complacent. Maybe I forgot to take my omphalia once in a while. Maybe I really wanted that salad of raw cucumbers and carrots at a random restaurant and decided I deserved it. Maybe I wanted to eat an apple without peeling it first. Maybe I should have known better.

I guess I shouldn't get too graphic. (Although modesty gets thrown out the window early here. It no longer makes any impression whatsoever when one of my colleagues announces it is their turn to "sit by the door" during the meeting in case they have to run out, emergency-style). But let's just say that of the many things I thought I would try for the first time upon moving to South Asia, giving a stool sample to a total stranger at the American Embassy was never on that list. Too much information? Well, I did promise you tales about parasites in an early post long ago, when I was still sitting blithely in Boston downing raw, unwashed vegetables by the truckload and not even knowing what activated charcoal is (answer: a pretty handy thing to have around).

The good news is, I don't have parasites. Just a particularly nasty helping of bad bacteria that hitched a secret ride somewhere, in something I ate. It could have been anything, so no plate, no treat, no delicacy is without suspicion now. The chicken sandwich that was part of my daily lunch routine at the Guest House, the delicious lamb curry at that restaurant at the Marriott, the harmless looking smoothie from the American Club (although supposedly they are extra vigilant there). Like a girl who's been dumped for the first time, I'm no longer as trusting as I was before. From now on, only the safest of food should apply.

I'm finally on the upswing, after being totally laid low and feverish for 24 hours, pretty miserable for an additional 48, and working not so much "from home" as "from bed" on the worst day of the experience. A combination of probiotics (doubling up on the dosage really does help), lots of water with a heavy dash of Celtic sea salt to replace lost minerals, an all-bland white toast diet, and the super nice people at the embassy's health unit are to thank for my recovery. I'm still here, still in love with Pakistan, and almost ready to eat again.

Today's Piece of Good Luck

2009-04-28T21:29:00.004+06:00

Nothing perks up your work week more than the happy news that the anti-American demonstration that was planned at the intersection of right down the street from your Guest House for twelve noon Tuesday has been moved to the next town, over--Rawalpindi! Thanks, Rawalpindi!

What you Give Up...What you Get

2009-04-26T20:45:00.016+06:00

So I have put myself in a pickle. Let me explain.

While trying to decide whether to move to Pakistan, I made a list of all the little things I would have to give up if I came, just to make sure I was ready to make the jump. You've heard about them all many times already: pork products, vodka & soda, lettuce, cheeseburgers, driving, skirts, showing your bum in public, a totally Taliban-free life, etc. I thought it over carefully and decided it was worth giving up all these things for a great job and a new, exciting experience. Then I got here. I discovered, first of all, that not everything on my "banned" list was truly banned, thanks to three little miracles called the French Club, the embassy commissary, and bootleggers. Turns out champagne, bacon, and even provocative clothes are not a part of my distant past (you can wear all manner of sexy outfits to the monthly French Club dance party if that is what you are into).

Then another thing happened. I realized all the things you can get in Pakistan that you can't get back at home. This includes: people to drive you around, iron your clothes, plant a vegetable garden and exotic varieties of fruit trees in your yard, help you cook, give you a spa pedicure for $10, sell you beautiful handmade jewelry, patrol your house with large guns 24 hours a day, and carve all your salad vegetables into intricate little designs, all at very reasonable cost. (Is the ability to live like royalty all the time due to a country's cheap labor conditions problematic? I'm sure it is. But this is a larger issue that needs to be tackled in a separate post. For now I am just loving the carrot flowers and the $20 massages.)

There are other things I've grown to enjoy as well: permission to wear flat, comfortable open-toed sandals to work every single day even in the most professional office, delicious green tea (even though it comes out of utterly nondescript little packets, I swear it tastes better here), and the kind of soft hair that can only come from showering in non-chlorinated water. I mean, given all these conditions, why doesn't everybody live here? I'm thinking maybe just the parasites and the terrorists.*

But in all seriousness, this is a beautiful country full of lush vegetation, lovely mountains, and some of the nicest, most welcoming people I've ever met. It's occurred to me recently that I've already ruined myself to live back in the U.S., and I've only been here three weeks. This is the problem with traveling, with moving, with seeing another country or even another neighborhood: you can never again live in ignorance of what you are missing. Of course I would miss the US if I couldn't go back there as well--that's exactly my point. I guess the only answer is just to soak it all up wherever you are.

In that spirit, I bought a huge disco ball today for 500 rupees (that's about six dollars). I love this country.

*Yes, the Taliban has captured Buner; Yes, it's 70 miles away; No, this doesn't mean they are headed to Islamabad.

Holla!

2009-04-21T11:05:00.001+06:00

Update: I am no longer a woman without a country--my passport's back. AND all my stuff arrived. AND all my Trader Joe's stash made it through customs. Things are good.

Honeymoon Period

2009-04-18T13:16:00.006+06:00

Lately I have found myself saying "fantastic" about twenty times a day. Undoubtedly this is the honeymoon period that several people have warned me about upon moving to a new country. Does this mean I should be bracing for the return to reality when my frustration at not being able to wear jeans in public or find a good burrito place erupts into a discontented malaise? Maybe. But just because you're on honeymoon doesn't mean you're not in love.

The energy in Islamabad is intense. This is partly due to the high-threat environment we are living in and the very legitimate concerns about security here. But it is also due to finding yourself in a place where decisions have high stakes and there is a real opportunity to have an impact. Yes, I miss Mexican food and the ability to walk around by myself on the street, not to mention all the people I love that are now far away, but I find that the word "fantastic" keeps popping out of my mouth every few minutes regardless.

I just feel like this is my kind of place. Let me give you a few examples.

They eat dinner here at nine p.m., ten p.m., whenever-they-feel-like-it-p.m. Last week, before I realized this, I nearly fainted at a work dinner that started at 7 even though the food didn't arrive until 10. Before it came, I had to hint broadly for a snack and then inhale pound cake while trying to ask intelligent questions about program management design. But now I know better (Rule: Carry Food at All Times) and can just enjoy being around my kind of people that don't finish eating until midnight. This was the same dinner that was finished off with a dessert of chocolate ice cream topped with what looked like boiled ramen noodles without the seasoning packet. I didn't know what to do about that either, so I just ate it. It wasn't bad, though not as good as the pound cake.

Forbidden things taste sweeter. The bottle of red wine that you have to call a secret hook-up to have delivered. The party where you are allowed to wear American clothes that would be inappropriate outside the gates of the French Club. (Of course the French have the good parties. Is anyone surprised by this?) The glass of champagne at aforementioned French Club after being told that it is impossible to find champagne in Pakistan. I can only imagine what my next mouthful of bacon will taste like. (I haven't found a secret hook-up for this yet.)

Did I mention the stakes are high? There seems to be an article about Pakistan on the front page of every morning's New York Times, and the location of this country at the epicenter of foreign policy is underscored by the endless stream of important visitors here to look at the place and hear what everyone here is going to do about it. I get to be involved in this. Fantastic.

It's so different. The people, the customs, the food, the clothes, the jewelry, the weather, the shisha, the mountains. There is so much newness to take in, it is hard to imagine ever getting bored here. (Ask me again in June when it is 100 degrees and I am trapped in my air-conditioned apartment pacing like a caged tiger.)

I guess it's good that I am in love with Pakistan right now. Yesterday I had to surrender my passport to a delivery agent who needs it to clear my air shipment of personal effects (remember the 739 pounds of stuff?) through customs when it arrives into Islamabad late tonight. Yes, my real passport. Not a copy. Let's hope I get it back on Monday morning as promised. I'd hate for the honeymoon to be over so soon.

A Normal Monday

2009-04-14T00:00:00.005+05:00

I've been waiting to post until I have time to sit down and write a proper update, but if I wait for that it may never happen. So, I'll just give you a quick snapshot of my Monday instead.

Today was like any other start to a normal work week, except my 8 a.m. meeting was at the Islamabad Gun Club. The Gun Club sounds like a scary bunker shooting range kind of deal, but it's actually a lovely spot just outside of town with rolling green lawns, stretched skins of leopards adorning the door jams, and a very civilized breakfast buffet. Once there I watched a PowerPoint presentation. That part is probably not very different from your day.

While watching the presentation, I had my choice of coffee, tea, or a tall glass of unfiltered apple juice to go along with a breakfast that included chickpeas in tomato sauce. That's probably a little different from your day (except for the coffee thing).

After the Gun Club, my favorite driver, Abdulrahman, drove me back to the office in a car with screens over the windows so I could get back to work designing a plan for my next six months of work. Everything there sounds pretty normal except for having someone designated to drive you around at all times, although in New York they just call that a "cab." So maybe...not that different.

After eating lunch at my desk (not different), I went to the US Embassy (different) for a meeting that went on a little too long until I started getting sleepy and my stomach started growling with hunger (not different). I drank a delicious raspberry smoothie that made all my problems go away (not different, if you live near a Jamba Juice or similar). After the meeting, I hit the gym for a quick workout (not different) at a place where I have to run my gym bag through an x-ray machine to check for weapons (different). After the gym I was hungry again and wanted to get pizza delivered for dinner (not different), but the pizza had to be ordered in Urdu (different) so it came with onions, olives, and chicken on it, despite the fact that I just wanted mushroom.

Now dinner and my work day are done, and I can check my email while listening to Pandora and update my Facebook status (not different). While doing all those things, the power in the entire building just went out, as it does 3-4 times every day, and now the loud noise of the generator outside will lull me to sleep (different).

I hope everyone is having a lovely Monday, different or not, wherever you are.

First Impressions

2009-04-08T22:18:00.004+05:00

So many new experiences, so little time to report them. I'll do my best with a few bullet points for now. After four days in Pakistan, this is what I've learned:

I wanted a challenging, exciting job that would stretch and engage me intellectually, and I got it. I also got ten-hour workdays. (When am I going to have time to blog?) For some reason I am totally okay with these hours right now.

It is a myth that there is no salad in Pakistan! True, there's no lettuce, but what else can we call that little pile of artfully carved and zigzagged carrots and cucumbers dressed in oil and vinegar that comes with every meal? I am ecstatic to see my old friend - vegetables.

Coffee = Nescafe. When's the last time you poured a heaping teaspoonful of flavor crystals into hot water to get your caffeine fix...like 1980? Welcome to the time machine.

I can pull any wrinkled item of clothing out of my overstuffed suitcase and get it ironed, just about any time of the day, for 40 rupees (about .50 cents). It is always men who do the ironing. This is not what I expected.

My new favorite thing to do at four o'clock is to have tea and homemade macaroons.

I don't like having a driver on call as much as I thought I would. I miss driving, and I'm itching to try out one of those tiny little cars on the wrong side of the road.

The US Embassy in Islamabad reminds me of Disneyland. Equal parts Jungle Cruise ride and those flower beds in the shape of Mickey Mouse at the Main Gate.

I think there will come a day when the daily call to prayer at 5:00 am will not wake me up out of a sound sleep. This day cannot come soon enough.

The hats on the staff at the Marriott Hotel are fantastic!! Yes, they all really wear that.

I keep waiting for the culture shock to start happening. It is crazy to be here, and everything is different, but it feels oddly normal too, as if I've been here sometime before and my body remembers it. This is by far the biggest surprise of all.

Thanks so much for all the emails, travel and good luck wishes you've all been sending my way. It is so great to hear from everyone! Honestly, if you ever want to feel loved and appreciated, just move to Pakistan for a year. Foolproof.

More soon...

Unaccompanied Lady

2009-04-05T16:40:00.011+05:00

First communication breakdown: hot milk with my breakfast cornflakes. But if that's the most I have to complain about on my first day in Islamabad, I have to say things are looking pretty good.

My 27 hours of travel time took me from Boston to Washington DC to Doha, Qatar and finally to Pakistan, arriving in the middle of the night. I have only good things to say about Qatar Air, which has nice wide seats, Jet Blue-like entertainment options, and sweet little candies and warm hand towels passed around at every possible opportunity. During my trip I watched 3 sitcoms, one episode of "House," the pilot of "Life on Mars," an entire movie (Marley & Me), and read an entire book (Eat Pray Love). (Hey, it's about an American woman in her 30s who travels abroad alone for a year and learns all sorts of important lessons. Seemed too obvious to pass up.)

A quick note about this glut of entertainment. I figured it would be my last American TV for awhile, so I really ate it up. The episode of "House" was fantastic--it guest-starred Mira Sorvino as a scientist with a mysterious illness trapped at the South Pole--and I enjoyed the pilot of "Life on Mars" way more than I thought I would. It's about a cop who gets into a car accident in 2008 and wakes up in 1973, only no one is surprised to see him there. He finds himself in utterly unfamiliar surroundings, and yet he is immediately presented with a complete set of useful things: an apartment, keys, a car, and a job, and everyone seems to know his name. It's not unlike showing up in Pakistan and being presented with an apartment, keys, a driver, and a job, and everyone seems to know my name. Except I also got a Blackberry. As for Marley & Me, beware of gut-wrenchingly sad doggie snuff films wrapped up in the trappings of innocuous romantic comedies. Just beware. And try to avoid blowing your nose all over your aloof and distinguished Qatari seatmate, as this alerts him to the fact that you are a crazy American woman crying over a stupid dog movie.

All this TV got me through the journey quite nicely though, depositing me relatively whole and healthy to the Islamabad airport at 3:00 am local time. Immediately upon arrival I was presented with my first decision in Pakistan--which customs line to join. "Unaccompanied Ladies" or "Diplomats/Foreigners"? Technically I qualify for membership in both groups, forcing me to ponder at this ungodly hour of the morning which of these I am more of--a lady or a foreigner. Anyone who has seen me drop a crumb of food on my shirt and then eat it knows that "lady" is a bit of a stretch. I joined the queue of diplomats in their rumpled suits but did notice that the Ladies line went much faster.

After an uneventful drive to the guest house where I will be staying for the next month, I starting unpacking but quickly ran out of steam, so I ate a bag of Lays potato chips in something called "French Cheese" flavor instead, and then found with satisfaction a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate in the room fridge. After this morning snack, I peeked out the window one last time before going to sleep, just as the sun was starting to rise. The air was beautifully cool and fresh after all those hours on airplanes, and I saw a quiet little park across the street with lots of benches and an empty fountain. It looked just like a park in Whittier or La Habra or Santa Barbara, blue in the very early morning light and full of eucalyptus trees. Then I saw the line of four donkeys clopping slowly up the street, laden with passengers wrapped up in shawls and tunics, and it didn't look so much like California anymore. Life on Mars, indeed.

Sweet Boston

2009-04-03T04:08:00.006+05:00

What is it about leaving something that makes it seem all the sweeter? Ever since I knew I was leaving, I have been conducting a love affair with Boston, one that has involved candlelit dinners, walks down Newbury Street with smiles for each budding spring flower, and sighs of appreciation and nostalgia for every favorite corner, haunt, and quirk about this city that I have lived in for ten years.

After all, thanks to Skype and the fact that calls from Pakistan to the US are only two cents a minute, I can keep in pretty good touch with all the people I love while I'm gone. But I can't stroll over to Devlin's for the juicy bacon cheddar burger, and I can't go to the Public Garden to sit on the brass ducks or make fun of people for going to the "Cheers" bar. I can't sneak my favorite Cuban sandwich from Yawkey Way into the fancy Fenway seats upstairs before the game starts. I can't get all excited about ivy on brick buildings, or order pad zeeyou from one of the three excellent Thai restaurants around my house. I can't go down to Daisy Buchanan's to sing "The Piano Man" during last call (or to borrow their plunger in the middle of a very crowded Christmas party when we realize we don't have one). I can't take Boston with me.

Yesterday is a perfect example of this recent love affair. I spent the day with one of my dearest friends doing a bunch of great Boston things. There was a little Newbury Street, a little trafficky Mass Pike, a little Waterfront, a little Boylston, even a little Coolidge Corner at the end. We started with brunch at Flour, one of those places whose glass case is so crammed with pastries and buns and cakes of irresistible variety that you have to get several of them and just stuff yourself. Then we hit the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art which was fun because his artwork has been appearing all over the streets of Boston ever since I moved here (way before he was a fancy-pants ICA exhibitor) and because I wanted to see the original Obama "Hope" poster in person. It's as cool as you might imagine.

I also did something I've been wanting to do for three years. We went to Bodega, a sneaker shop downtown that masquerades as a neighborhood convenience store and whose address was a closely guarded secret for years. Stacks of Diet A&W root beer and bags of chips for .50 cents crowd a small, dusty shop that gives way, Open Sesame style, to a showroom with twenty foot ceilings, track lighting on rich wooden shelves, and rows and rows of special edition sneakers. I don't know anything about sneakers (although Turtle is my favorite character on Entourage), but anything that has zero advertising, cheap snacks, and a secret door sounds good to me.

After finding my pair of Puma Clydes in a shade of what has alternatively been described to me as "seafoam" "lime" or "mint" (none of those quite gets it right), I decided I am finally ready to go to Pakistan. I have found Bodega, seen Obama, grabbed the perfect fitting green sneaker, and have finally come to the tail end of my month-long tour of this city I love. It's time to say goodbye, or at least see you later. I guess you could say that Islamabad has some serious shoes to fill. (Yeah, I went there with the metaphor. You liked it.)