Pakistan=India?

Dear friends,

Thanks again for the beautiful and caring replies and comments on my blog. I travelled safely through Baluchistan all the way to Quetta. Apart from the usual hassle with taxiwallas and other little cheaters, I didn’t experience any hostility nowhere at all. I did of course not take any extra risks and I safely reached the border with Pakistan. From a beautiful, well maintained custom authority office I travelled into an ugly small shack where the Pakistani officers were waiting for us. Welcome to Pakistan. But this was the outside. The alliance with Bush against terrorism has not been unfruitful and behind the small ugly shack there were modern computer systems and there was to be taken a photograph of me. You of course never know I could be a terrorist .

From the Pakistani bordertown Taftan I travelled by bus 600 kms through spectacular desert all the way to Quetta. It was an amazing experience and I finally got to see the Pashtun men in real time, the ones you see so much on television when something is covered about Afghanistan. In this bus I had my second communal Iftar in my life. The first time I broke the fast was in Antwerp on an evening organized by the ‘migrant’ student organization Student Focus at Antwerp University. And this second breaking of the fast was in the bus in the middle of the desert close to the border with Afghanistan. Dates were handed out, some sweet drink was shared, melons were cut and shared and chai was handed out. Also the bus did stop every time for prayers. I found those acts of worship amazingly strong acts of community feeling and it brought me a bit closer to an understanding of the strength of Islam. The next day I enjoyed my first walking around in a Pakistani city, Quetta… It’s so funny how the two nations India and Pakistan are fighting… I’ve only been 3 days in Pakistan but at the first sight there are so many similarities. Pakistanis look like Indians, Pakistan is as dirty and as beautiful as India can be, the toilets in the train smell exactly the same, the trains look similar and the taxiwallas are as big cheaters as in India. And if this would not be everything, also the goods and food sold in shops are all almost the same. Two nations, both almost the same, fighting for a piece of land. ???????????

It’s only after Quetta that things went a bit wrong. The big ego in me hadn’t prepared for Pakistan. ‘I know a bit Urdu-Hindi, I am the all-India knower and as Pakistan is similar to India I would of course not encounter any problem.’ That’s what I’m apparently thinking every year again. But every year again I have to admit that I get trapped. It always occurs that I don’t know India as good as I thought and every time again I slowly have to adapt to the complexities of this South-Asian society. This time I did not only get ripped off at the border with Pakistan, I also didn’t know anything at all about the Pakistani geography. So I got totally surprised when my non-ac train was firstly passing Afghan refugee camps, secondly went through spectacular mountains and afterwards through super hot and dry desert and plains. Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers. I had never been in such heat in my life, let it be while sitting in a train with 30 more people. And even worse, the wind that was created by the moving train, was not cold neither warm but hot! I got headache, catched fever and I must have looked like a sad hippie tripping on an overdoses … Although it stayed hot, temperatures went to ‘normal’ South-Asian heat and by the morning I felt much better, but I was longing for a nicer hotel room and a long shower…

I am now in Lahore. Found a vegetarian meal in an expensive restaurant and I was crossing allover the city on a motorbike in search for identical Pakistani goods as gifts for Indian friends but couldn’t find any. Tomorrow morning I’m taking the bus to cross the border with my beloved India. But that sounds bloody nationalist as Pakistanis seem to be as Indian as Indians seem to be Pakistanis.

With love from Lahore.