TheTraveler

 

Pakistani Cops
By Nathan Jones

Large buses with dark pajama clad young men hanging from the sides fly by. SUVs of luxury carry the upper class. Trucks and cars of variable sizes, most of them diesel, weave from lane to lane. Rickshaws, three wheeled diesel motorcycle-like taxis, find space between the lanes to putter along. The drivers of these tiny polluters are oblivious to the chaos around them. Motorcycles, some with entire families of five piled behind the father, fearlessly zoom by. Finally along the edge of the madness are the bicyclists on their heavy duty Chinese cruisers, some with fully covered women sitting side saddle on the panniers over the rear tire. To top it all off, everyone is traveling in the wrong direction, driving on the left, not the right!

"How was your day?" my mom asks turning back to make eye contact with me in the back seat.

"Good," I reply, the usual response for a middle school student. I fail to tell her how alone and scared I feel. She does not realize that I am a loner; an outcast. Being different is difficult and can be the worst feeling in the world.

"How about you Papa?" my mom asks my dad to her right in the driver’s seat.

With out taking his eyes off the mayhem ahead my dad mumbles a remark about the rush hour traffic on Canal Road.

I came to Pakistan with my parents. It was either my dad’s midlife crisis or an escape from the frigid Minnesota winters that sent us half way around the globe. My parents got jobs with the Lahore American School, a US curriculum K-12 institution. It was their first experience overseas as well. My innocence was challenged with an introduction to a new culture. I was extracted from the cradle of America and forced to mature in a world unlike anything imaginable. Everything from the putrid smells to the dark stares of the locals was not only different, but disturbing. The life I enjoyed back home was stolen from me and I felt as though I was kidnapped and thrown in hell.

A steady stream of traffic flows before us. With no room to merge in to the stream we wait anxiously. Minutes pass by and my father can wait no longer, he takes the next possible opportunity. Accelerating quickly he throws us in to the traffic. A perfect merging left turn until a small car lightly strikes our rear bumper.

A common occurrence on the streets of Lahore, no stopping to exchange insurance info was needed, much less possible due to the lack of insurance in Pakistan and obvious language barrier we would be faced with. These small differences were just the things we had to get used to living in Pakistan. We learned from mistakes and experiences that life here was much different than back in Minnesota.

My escapes were at home and at school. My blonde hair and white skin stood out like stars in the night among crowds of Pakistanis. Primarily the only Pakistanis outside were men. Dressed in baggy pajama like “shalwar kamises”, they smelled of curry and tea and starred at me with their beady black eyes. I was uncomfortable to say the least. The first four weekends - weekends, not weekdays – I was sick with a stomach bug. Like something from an alien horror film the giant amoeba wreaked havoc on my inners. It was a rough welcome to south Asia. Today I maintain that one must try to get sick in the United States. Our sanitation, food and drug administrations and water quality standards are second to none. Imagine the Mississippi River, clogged with raw sewage, dead animals and toxins. Or imagine your peaceful home town rocked with crime, irresponsible police, starving homeless and traffic like that of a demolition derby.

We continue on, happy to be on our way home for the weekend. Images of a Thailand spring break only days away flow through our minds and we are excited to think of the four months already spent in this God-awful land. Then behind us comes the notable sirens of a Pakistani police truck. A small truck, like that of an Isuzu or Nissan, with two small lights on top and an arched canvas tent over the bed. It pulls along side of us as we both move through the chaotic traffic. Two beret wearing officers sit in the cab and two AK-47 carrying deputies ride in the back. They yell at us in broken English to stop and point towards the side of the road.

The police in Pakistan are not known to serve and protect. Steal and harass is the more proper definition of a Pakistani cop. They need no reason to pull you over and will assess fines on the spot. To pay the fine is to continue on your way, not paying could mean a stay in a Pakistani jail which is much worse an experience than I care to imagine. Try five or so of those alien amoebas joining forces in your abdomen. They will pull over the SUV driving upper class, each of whom have their own method of getting rid of the pesky police. Some, we've heard, pull out the power card and threaten the cop’s job with their own positions and relations in higher government. Others simply pay the fine, accepting it as part of driving. Foreigners in Lahore have suggested playing dumb and acting as though you don’t understand anything they are saying. Sticking with this technique should frustrate the cops and they will hopefully give up. Through Islamic tradition and courtesy men are not allowed to look at women – they are of course the wife or daughter of some man – much less will cops pull over a woman driver.

I can’t remember what was said inside our own little white Toyota van, but I can imagine it was frantic confusion as I was in stunned fear. Accepting that we will have to pull over and try to bargain with the cops, my dad finds a place along the road to stop. Pulling around to face the traffic my dad only stops for a couple seconds and then continues on his way. To this day he insists he didn’t see the cops anywhere and figured he had lost them. He merges quickly back in to traffic and towards home. It doesn’t take long and that annoying siren is back; the small white truck beside us again. This time the cops are visibly upset as they are yelling more harshly. We had better not upset them anymore, so my father finds the next possible space along the road. Coming quickly to a stop about twenty yards behind a flat bed truck we wait for the confrontation with the cops.

My parents were stunned and fearful to the point of speechlessness. We watch the small white police truck speed by us. Whether or not the driver was starring at us or was simply moving too quickly is hard to guess. None-the-less the small white truck fails to stop and it plows in to the rear of the flat bed truck. I will always remember the sight of those cops in the back being thrown violently forward; their AK-47s flying overboard. The sound of busted metal and smoke billowing from the hood and little movement in the cab.

To this day we dont know the result of that crash. My dad made the only decision the situation could allow and he sped away quickly towards home, running over an AK as he took off. His life, not to mention a much larger sum of money, would have been on the line had we stayed. Like spraying a swarm of bees, we had truly irritated this squad of local cops. Unlike the meticulous system in America there are no records, the license plates mean nothing. Unlike home the police had almost cost us our lives, instead of saving them. Unlike home we again felt hopeless, alone and scared.

We were ever so grateful to finally arrive home as we all went in to the back room to hide and calm our tense nerves. Workers from the school came over later that day to replace the plates on our van and provide us with a different vehicle, this one a compact car. I was happy with the new car; it had air conditioning. From that day on my mom drove.

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