Back in Lahore (Pakistan)

Lahore looks much different when I’m working. On my vacation in May, it was bathed in a happy, I’m-Not-In-Kabul glow, accentuated by the company of a great travel companion. But now, the din of its traffic seems unbearable, the humidity miserable, the abject poverty intolerable.

I stay in the Pearl Continental, a luxe 5-star. The staff are still wearing those ridiculous “I Care!” buttons and still caring far too much. I find myself tripping over them. And while my head rests upon a goose-down pillow, I hear the wail of a child outside – a child that lives on these festering streets.

By day I tramp down refuse-strewn back alleys, talking to men who make kites for a living, mix dyes, fix cars. I stumble into rural villages in the middle of the big city – the city simply grew around them, leaving their brick roads and low marshes intact. There I meet with women who make shampoo for P&G out of their homes (and I thought Head and Shoulders came from a factory), and help run the family shop.

And then I dine at the best restaurant in Pakistan, the Cooko’s Den. Cooko’s is a rooftop restaurant, sandwiched between Lahore’s great fort and its infamous red light district. The owner, Iqbal Hussain, is a famous artist and a child of the brothels. He paints the dancing (Nauch) girls, and the paintings are unromantic and very human. The waiters lower the meat orders to the street, where the vendors below grill up kebobs, then load them into a metal tray which is pulled five floors up to the roof. I think/hope my vegetarian meal was prepared in the kitchen, one floor down. The views of the fort at night are spectacular, and the cool breeze a welcome relief.

I’m starting to wonder that I can transit between such wealth and such poverty so easily. I don’t feel guilty about staying in nice hotels and eating well. I feel grateful and damn lucky. But the squalor of poverty in Lahore beggars belief, and even while I enjoy my nightly breaks from it in glamorous hotels the contrast whipsaws me.

I don’t know how people can keep going under these conditions, but they do.