Sylvia's Journal

From Amsterdam to Dubai I made good progress on a piece of embroidery that has been in the works for two years now, while listening to books on tape downloaded from the Manchester library on my iPAD. It made for a very fast 5 hour flight.

Dubai was quieter than I had expected, with nearly as many sales people, trying to get us to buy things we don’t need, as passengers. Dubai is full of memories of our many trips in and out of Kabul. Despite its bad rap, we have always liked the place (though not necessarily the airport). If you can let go of the rampant materialism you can marvel at the mingling of races, (life)styles, ideologies, traditions and dress that are stirred together in this ancient crossroads. I had dinner at midnight in a restaurant chain that serves fried seafood next to raw seafood. It is the same chain in which I had one of my last meals in South Africa about a month ago, only this time there was no beer or sake served alongside the sushi.

The flight from Dubai to Karachi, which I had dreaded, thinking it would be like the flights to Dhaka, turned out better than expected. The people who travel to Karachi are quite different from those who travel to Dhaka – more western dress, more English speakers and more cosmopolitan. I also had three chairs to myself and slept through most of the short flight (1.5 hours).

The airport in Karachi was jam packed with long lines at the immigration hall. One young American woman was sheparding 23 American/Pakistani kids into the country, apologizing left and right as she was figuring out how the immigration officials handled groups (they didn’t). I thought she was brave to have volunteered for the job and wished her well. There was a special line for unaccompanied ladies and children, which I joined, bypassing hundreds of men, many apparently coming back from a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

The nice young man from the Sheraton greeted me inside the arrival hall, which was wonderful once I left it and saw the packed crowds outside with rows and rows of mostly men, pressing on flimsy gates.

Outside the air smelled of roses. The ground was covered with red rose petals. My young guide explained that it had something to do with the pilgrimage. I love arrival halls at airports mostly because of the happiness and affection that is displayed as passengers are greeted by family, friends and well-wishers. This place was no difference except for the added carpet of rose petals and the thick rose fragrance that overwhelmed the usual smell of jet fuel, hot asphalt and car exhaust fumes.

Once we left the airport, the traffic jam dissolved and we drove into town on nearly empty roads. It was dark and I couldn’t get a good sense of the city. What I saw reminded me of Dhaka but also of Abidjan and Entebbe, a generic developing country metropolis. The bill boards for luxury items, the high rises, the McDonald strategically placed across from the arrival hall, as well as my Sheraton pick up man, with his dreams of getting an electrical engineering PhD in Australia are of one world; black-clad veiled women, clustering around their menfolk dressed in traditional garb with their wild and sometimes henna-ed hair and beards are of another world altogether; still, all of it is Pakistan. I sympathized with those who try to govern this place.

The Sheraton hotel is hidden behind a high wall guarded by men in uniforms with guns and equipment to detect bombs. Once you are let in you can believe you are in a small town with a short but quiet road passing small shops. More security to get into the hotel itself, though the metal detector didn’t detect my metal ankle brace. Since our workshop is in this hotel we may actually not experience all that much what Karachi is all about.