Rawalpindi Continued

My guides did not appear to like Benzair Bhutto , partly because she was a woman and partly because she represented the secular PPP. Mobashir spoke of Pakistan as a 'gift from God' and implied that what God had given could never be taken away.

I was still having major problems matching up Islamic concepts of justice and fairness with what I was seeing all around me at first hand, on TV and in the press. One small example was cited in my journal. It appears that on several occasions that day I had seen drivers pulled over by the police who then insisted an a bribe. My driver for the following day said he would be stopped on the return leg from Dina and would have to pay the police RS 50. I am shocked and scared that these people whose task is to defend the people actually turn out to be little more than state-paid intimidators.

It appears from my journal that someone told me a joke about the police with the punch line being that the police knew who had committed the crime even before it had been perpetrated. The implication here was that the police set people up, plant evidence then make false arrests. I was rapidly becoming seriously afraid on being in Pakistan because the country was peppered with soldiers, check points, police and security personnel. I was quickly coming to the view that Pakistan was a lawless country in which the ordinary person can be set up and victimised almost at will.

At 6.25pm I seemed to have gone out walking the streets of Rawalpindi, Committee Chowk and found a small mazar and graveyard. Some of the graves were colourfully festooned with trimmings probably relating to the fact that the previous day had been The Prophet's Birthday. I approached the mazar and got talking to a middle aged man who told me he was a murid of a pir related to Pir Mahroof. The man said he knew both Bradford and Birmingham well. I only wished my journal told a little more about the conversation we had but it doesn't.

I got back to the Blue Sky Hotel and noted that some 'dangerous-looking guys' on the check out called me over to ask why I always carried my bag with me and didn't leave it in the room. They told me to leave it in the room - not likely! My journal tells me how intimidated I felt in that hotel all alone and that I really was beginning to fear for my bodily safety. I apparently piled up the furniture against the room door that night. There were also two power cuts one after the other. There was, it appears, a candle in the room but nothing to light it with.

Since leaving Karachi, says my journal, I've felt nothing but insecurity. Rawalpindi, at that time, was supposed to be safe but being in that hotel gave me the creeps!

Family Eating - I was widely travelled even at that time but I came across something totally new in this hotel namely, the family eating facilities! The arrangement was rather similar to that of a hospital bed but in a hotel restaurant. The idea was that a family (including women) could come out to eat and a 'privacy curtain' could then be pulled round to preserve the modesty of the women. I was beginning to give a lot of thought to the concept of purdah since I had not seen anything similar in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt or Malaysia, all Muslim countries of course.

More on purdah here.

My journal then goes on to say that the next few nights ought to be a lot more secure since I would be a guest in Pir Mahroof's mansion in Dina. The restaurant began to fill up with men and no women. I wondered once more about the status of women in Pakistan since I saw so few of them. In sunni Egypt women are about everywhere. Many wear a headscarf, some do not but they are in evidence doing the shopping in markets, on buses and on the ferry etc. This was the first trip I had ever made where the vast majority of women were living segregated lives. I wondered what the wives of all the men in the restaurant would be doing at home. Apart from sexual activity I was asking myself about exactly how Pakistani men and women relate to each other on a normal daily basis. Through my 'western filter' I was seeing apartheid, not of racial groups but between the genders. The Prophet's Farewell Speech came to mind in which he spoke of the rights of women. I wondered exactly what status women enjoyed in Pakistan and whether wives were properly treated as human beings or merely sexual objects. Being western, it was impossible not to be wondering about these issues.

How do young Pakistani men cope with their growing, unfulfilled sexuality during the time they are not permitted any contact with females? I began to ask myself this important question knowing, that wherever sexuality is repressed, there are always consequences in terms of human behaviour. I also wondered about women's groups in Pakistan asking myself what women did whenever they got together and how they found out about the facts of life. I was wanting to know whether it was common for Pakistani women to now know about sex until their actual marriage?

This is shameful - the irony of Lahore (YouTube video about prostitution in Lahore)

In Pakistan today, says my journal, would women be happy with their lot and treatment if they were able to speak freely? I was picking up a great deal about the way the system here actively represses women and prevents them from playing their full part in society. The illusion I had about Pakistan being literally, The Land Of The Pure, had fallen apart by this time. Pakistan was, I had concluded, the ( Land of The Corrupt and Decadent).