Brad and Lily in Dubai-India-Pakistan: July 24--finally arrived at Nosheen's house

Today we woke up and drove to Sialkot. I was in the car with Nosheen’s cousin again, and it was pretty clear he wasn’t real sure about directions. By some miracle, Google maps on my phone worked well enough to give us directions from our location to Sialkot. But he didn’t seem real interested in following those directions. Anyway, after some slowing down, consulting with random pedestrians, and speculating, we got on the right road.

Some of the trip was on the Lahore Ring Road, which is a nice, modern highway that encircles the city. It had rained the day before, I guess, and there were laborers using crude brooms to sweep puddles into drain holes. Nosheen’s cousin told me that all these workers were Christians, who can’t get better jobs because of their religion. He says that these people make $70-80 per month.

A couple funny things happened on our three-hour road trip. Shortly into our journey we stopped for gas, and the attendants told the driver that he needed to have a nicer car if he was going to be driving a foreigner around. Next, Nosheen’s cousin pointed out to me the place where they’d gotten caught in traffic, which made them late to pick us up at Wagah yesterday. He said, "Yesterday we are slowly slowly slowly like ant,” which struck me as hilarious for some reason.

As we drove, poverty was everywhere. I think that Pakistan is the poorest place I've ever seen, though I understand that I don’t exactly have worldwide experience at these things. I saw more crippled beggars in Pakistan than I have anywhere else. I saw legless men in the middle of the road where there are speed bumps, reaching out to cars as they passed. I saw crippled people asking for money in medians and along the road. I saw legless men pulling their bodies behind them on the sidewalk. And for the first time I saw a person who had the same condition as the “elephant man.”

I don’t see the presence of any foreign tourists at all. We didn’t see any in Lahore yesterday, even though the mosque was fairly crowded and that’s the place not to miss in Lahore. I never saw a single souvenir shop or other store that seemed to be devoted to stuff that only a foreigner would buy.

In other developing countries I’ve seen a lot of people sharing a motorcycle, but in Pakistan it seems like you hardly ever see a motorcycle with only one person on it.

It’s very common to see a motorcycle with three adult passengers, or a family of four with two small kids. Once I even saw a family of five, with the smallest kid on the bike about 10 years old. It’s hard to believe that people don’t get killed all the time. Maybe they do.

We passed lots of fields on our way to Sialkot. It’s rice planting season, and that work is done by hand. Tractors here have big circular metal frames on the outside of the normal wheels, to keep them from sinking into the mud.

As in other places, I saw some awesome English mishaps on the signs here. We passed a “Tuck Shop,” and a “Butt Store.”

On the way to Sialkot, Nosheen warned me that the roads in her hometown weren’t very good. She wasn’t kidding. There are lots and LOTS of potholes, formal and informal speed bumps everywhere, and areas where the pavement was completely gone and the road was an ungraded, bumpy, muddy dirt road. Mind you, these are busy roads we’re talking about—the equivalent of Brown Road near my house. And the traffic is basically horrible in Pakistan all the time, with very few stoplights and frenetic uncontrolled intersections. For that reason, a car can seldom go faster than 25 mph, and often no more than 10 or 15 mph.

Because the car was small, we couldn’t fit all our people and all our baggage. Nosheen’s little brother Jumshed and her ward member David took a bus and each took one of our suitcases while we drove. This was just one example of the kindness they showed to us. They would not let me carry my own bag, ever. And they would not let me pay for the bus tickets they had to buy.

Nosheen’s house is off a busy but poorly maintained two-lane road. From there you take an unpaved one-lane road—really an alley—that runs at random angles through a maze of brick and concrete dwellings. Her house is concrete—or maybe concrete over brick. It has a metal garage door gate for a front door, as do most of the houses in the neighborhood. When we arrived and knocked on the door, Nosheen’s family members shouted from within for us to wait a minute, so we did. When they called to us to come on in, they were all waiting, grinning and holding baskets of rose petals, which they showered us with. They also had large flower arrangements for each of us, similar to the ones that Nosheen had bought in Lahore. They smelled really good. And they had made rose petal necklaces for us. It was a pretty incredible reception. We came in and met everyone.

The house is one story with an inside staircase up to the roof. Other than the one metal exterior door, and one other exterior door, there are no other doors in the house. Rooms—including bathrooms—are separated by hanging curtains in the doorways. There is one common area perhaps 20 x 30 feet. There are two bedrooms, each with a bath/toilet room. All the floors are concrete, though one of the bedrooms has a couple rugs on the floor, and people don’t wear their shoes into that room. The roof is also available to sit on or look out from. It has a wall around it about four feet high. Nosheen’s older brother, Junaid, is the head of the household. He has a wife and two-year old daughter. Others who live there are Nosheen’s mom, her younger sister, and two younger brothers. Junaid embraced me with tears in his eyes and thanked me for coming.

They had prepared lunch for us—awesome Pakistani food. It was a little uncomfortable because a big part of the lunch was us eating and them watching. This was something we had to learn to get used to. They treated us like royalty—we got served first, got the best food, were always offered more of everything. They scurried around to help and serve us.

After lunch we played a Pakistani version of Parcheesi. Everyone was animated and it was fun.

It rained some that first day. The rain runs down the street outside Nosheen’s house and into a field across from her front door. It collects dishwater and other refuse, and must be horribly dirty. There’s also a big garbage pile right across from Nosheen’s front door. She told me that they’ve asked the neighbors not to put their trash there, but everyone does anyway. Several boys were playing the the field as it rained. About four inches of runoff had accumulated maybe for inches of rainwater runoff. There were also cattle grazing in the field.

There is a mosque maybe 100 feet from Nosheen’s house. It it not very big, but it has VERY loud speakers that blare the prayers at the appointed times, five times a day. When the mosque megaphones are going, you literally have to shout to make yourself heard to a person right next to you in Nosheen’s living room. It’s very annoying. And if you’re playing music or anything, you need to turn it down during those times because if you don’t the Muslims will get angry with you. Christians have been murdered in Pakistan for blasphemy, so it’s important to be careful. (A couple days later we were on the roof when Lily unthinkingly kind of mimicked the blaring prayer. Nosheen’s family immediately shushed her so no one would hear that.)

The branch presidency came to visit us in Nosheen’s living room in the evening. We sat and visited with them, and the branch president brought me a new watch as a gift. After the presidency left it was raining lightly. Lily, Nosheen and I took an umbrella up on the roof and just looked out on the area for a while.

Junaid works at the nicest pizza place in Sialkot. I was thinking that it wouldn’t be very good, but they actually had really good pizza. The GM was thrilled to have foreigners there and gave us our dinner for free. He also brought us right in and gave us a table despite the line of people waiting—which earned me the stinkeye from a group of women in hijabs. The table right next to ours was a group of friends out for someone’s birthday. They were taking selfies, so I went over and took a couple photos for them so their whole group would be in it. Then the restaurant started a big, loud happy birthday song, and flashing lights and lots of bass and everything, so we started kinda hooting and doing fist bumps and stuff, and the group saw us and got all stoked and told me and Lily to come over and dance with them and generally go nuts. It was hilarious—like being a rock star. Afterward Nosheen told me that will really help Junaid at his job—since he’s affiliated with Americans he might get a promotion.