lives of girls and women

Got this book for Christmas -- it had been on the list for a while. I'm about 80 pages in and I'm just not going to finish it. The writing is labored and the story, such as it is, completely fails to hold my attention. The thing reads like it was written by an MFA grad student, someone who cares a lot about writing and wants very badly to be thought of as a good writer, but who just isn't. I mean, my god, enough with the lists already.

"This rickety wooden store, so narrow from front to back it looked like a cardboard box stood on end, haphazardly plastered with metal and painted signs advertising flour, tea, rolled oats, soft drinks, cigarettes, was always to me the sign that the town had ended. Sidewalks, street lights, lined-up shade trees, milkmen's and icemen's carts, birdbaths, flower borders, verandas with wicker chairs, from which ladies watched the street..."

"And as he talked a different landscape -- cars, billboards, industrial buildings, roads and locked gates and high wire fences, railway tracks, steep cindery embankments, tin sheds, ditches with a little brown water in them, also tin cans, mashed cardboard cartons, all kinds of clogged or barely floating waste -- all this seemed to grow up around us..."

So very grating. It's like someone told Munro that she should show but not tell, and she didn't quite understand how to pull that off.

Not recommended.

the human factor

Spoilers below, not that anyone who ever comes across this post will care.

Not really in the same league as The Quiet American, but that's a pretty high bar. It's subdued and sad. Some of the characters (especially the villains) are a bit caricaturish but the main character is really well drawn, and his relationships with the caricatures around him don't themselves feel exaggerated or shallow. It's as though he's in focus, and the strings connecting him to everyone around him are in focus but only out to a point, and then they start to blur and by the time you follow them to the end you've just got sketchy outlines.

The story is about an old, tired spy whiling away his days in London on the forgotten southern Africa desk of MI6. The higher-ups suspect a leak in his section, and home in on his pathetic, alcoholic colleague. They're wrong.

abu dhabi

Here I am again in at AUH. Couldn't get into the business lounge this time, seems you're supposed to have a gold card or something and this is MJ's first trip on Etihad, so no dice. Whatever. At least I followed him through the fast-track security line for fancy people instead of waiting in the epically long line for the plebes. Anyway, this airport is like a smaller DXB. I continue to be mystified at the lack of movie theaters in airports. I'd have spent $20 to see a decent movie.

The second day up north was just amazing, I don't even know where to start. We saw a 250kW micro-hydel, flew all over the place in a helicopter, visited a shop where women are making beautiful furniture, and climbed to the top of a 1000-year-old Buddhist fort. And other stuff. Ate a traditional Burushaski meal (that being the language spoken by most people in Hunza) at a little cafe at the foot of the fort. Hunza deserves vastly more tourism than it gets. It's stunningly beautiful, people are welcoming and hospitable, and it's relatively safe. There just needs to be a better road. And, well, Pakistan needs to get its shit together.

Adding to the pleasantness of the trip was that we had a good group of people to travel with. In particular I really like Malik, the head of AK Rural Support Prog. He's from Aliabad, where a group of men from the village played music for us and danced and then presented us with handmade wool vests and caps. Oh, and they made us dance, too. Mirza and me, that is. There is video but I will see it destroyed before it ever sees the light of day.

Last night we went over to dinner at Karim A's house. His wife and their help had cooked up a huge amount of delicious Indian and Pakistani food and I ate a bit too much. And then we went back to the hotel, I packed, slept for 45 minutes, and then left for the airport. I tried to stay awake for the ISB-AUH leg but failed about halfway through and ended up sleeping for more than an hour. Here's hoping for a repeat (and longer) performance on the upcoming flight. We board in an hour or so.

helicopter ride

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I RODE IN A HELICOPTER THUPATHUPATHUPATHUPA MMMEEEEEEEERRRRRR MMMMMEEEEEEEEEERRRRR THUPATHUPATHUPATHUPA.

I felt like a little kid as the blades turned on and we started to coast off the pad at ISB. Big silly grin on my face. Flying up and over the Margalla hills, up through this valley and that, with a quick pit stop in Gilgit before continuing on to a village up above 6,000 feet, to visit a local support organization that AKRSP helped get off the ground eight years ago. What an amazing experience. Now we are back in Gilgit, at the Serena here, with dinner in ten minutes or so. I'm drinking my first-ever glass of fresh cherry juice.

This is the part of the trip that makes it all worthwhile, and that reminds me that what I do isn't a complete waste, that it's arrogant and small-minded to even have such thoughts. It's difficult to be cynical, difficult to feel anything but privileged to be a visitor and guest up here. And now the muezzin is singing. It's beautiful up here. Finally got some worthwhile photos. We are forbidden to take any from the helicopter but I snuck one in and and will try to get a few more tomorrow. My god, on the way out of this village we were flying not 40 feet above the tops of the poplar trees.

More later, I guess.

oh my god, we're actually going, i think

Helicopter is scheduled to leave at 1:30 PM, bound for Gilgit. I can't bloody wait. Still debating whether to bring my computer; guess it can't hurt to.

T-minus-three hours, still expecting something to go wrong between now and then.

north

Three things to report:

First, somebody screwed up and I didn't get clearance to visit the US Embassy today. It's absurd to me that a US citizen should need advance clearance for a meeting at a US embassy,  but such is life. Send me through the metal detector, search my bag, whatever. But bar me from coming at all? Silly.

Second, our trip up north was delayed by weather. There was a thunderstorm or something up there today so the helicopter can't leave for Islamabad until tonight or very early tomorrow. We got our clearances for Wednesday, apparently, so hopefully we'll get at least a day and night up in Gilgit. Hopes high, expectations low.

Three: Natalie and I went over to Danny and Andrea's last night and then out to dinner at a Pakistani place. Their house is comically big for two people, on a sizable property in a fancy neighborhood about 10 minutes from the Serena. But that's where their employer set them up and they're making the best of it, starting a garden with everything up to avocado and lemon trees. It was nice to hang out with them again.

Now I'm waiting for MJ and Natalie to get back from the embassy so we can figure out what to do with the rest of the day. The meeting arranged for later seems oddly redundant to one we had the day before yesterday. Not sure what's up with that. Evidently we're all going to dinner up in the hills tonight. I'd prefer to have a night to myself but I probably won't even try to get out of it. MJ would be mad and it'll be fine; at the very least Natalie will be there.

cuba libre

It ain't much. Fun enough. Read the whole thing in between snatches of fitful sleep on the plane rides over here. Pleasant but pretty forgettable. I should have picked up Get Shorty instead but I'm afraid I won't like it as much as I love the movie.

thai food

Just got back from a really lovely dinner that Danny and Andrea invited me to. A big group of their friends and friends of friends (I think we were 15 in all) ate at the Thai place in the Marriott. It's a little silly to get picked up from the Serena, drive four minutes, and end up at the Marriott, which is almost as  fancy. But whatever, it was great to see the two of them and their friends were cool. Not a typical NGO crowd, I'm sure in part because Danny grew up in Abbottabad. Nice way to cap off the day, and we even had some smuggled-in vodka for vodka tonics. Not much else to report, the morning/early afternoon meeting was good but the later meeting was a near-complete waste of time. So it goes.

It is looking more and more like we'll actually get to go to Chitral and Gilgit from Tuesday-Thursday. I don't want to believe it and knock wood every time it comes up because I don't want to jinx it. But it would be so cool. Here's hoping.

Tomorrow brings a relatively early morning and some work on a proposal that's due Monday (ack!), then more meetings and hopefully an afternoon free to sit by the pool or something. Natalie arrives in about 3 hours. It'll be nice to have someone to decompress with at the hotel. MJ is not exactly Mr. Decompression.

second wind

I faded after lunch and was a step slow all day but otherwise it's been a pretty easy adjustment so far jet-lag wise. Let's see if diphenhydramine can see me through the night. Our meetings today were pleasant and productive. Had lunch with Karim and Salman and Dr. Qayyum. Went to the gym, ordered room service, spent three hours on email, and now it's time for bed. Meetings tomorrow start at the blessedly civil hour of 10 AM. 

islamagood

Pretty uneventful trip over. Flew Etihad for the first time. Nice enough and the flight was at least half empty, so I got a pair of seats to myself. I'd never been on a long-haul flight that empty; I wondered if they were losing money on it. Managed to sleep fitfully for seven (!!!) hours. Maybe I'm getting better at this napping/sleeping sitting up thing. On the flight I also read Elmore Leonard's Cuba Libre, which I'd picked up at the Stone Ridge book fair. Not a great book, but good plane reading.

Got to the hotel around 3:30, then unpacked, flossed and brushed, and popped two benadryl and an ibuprofen. This morning, MJ and I had a meeting with an economist from DFID (British USAID) over breakfast. He was bright and knowledgeable and, as MJ and I discussed after he left, quite blunt and realistic about his questions and views. It's refreshing to meet civil servants like that.

Our first meeting at the office is in twenty minutes so I'm back in the room, writing this with Al Jazeera in the background -- seems the chief prosecutor in the corruption case against Benazir Bhutto (who is dead but who was major-league corrupt, guilty as all get-out) was assassinated earlier today. Other major Pakistan headlines: the government is going to deploy 70,000 troops to guard polling sites on May 11; an Indian prisoner on Pakistani death row for espionage was beaten to death earlier this week and yesterday his body was returned to India; 74 people "and counting" have been killed in election violence already. Islamabad is very calm, though.

More later.