The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [69]
The chief justice’s team then decided to take the show to the town of Abbottabad, in the North-West Frontier Province. Like every other journalist, I begged to ride in the suspended chief justice’s car. I was told no—he did not do ride-alongs, or interviews, or any meetings with the media. A few of us did the next best thing—we rode in the vehicle just behind the Chaudhry-mobile, with the wife of Chaudhry’s top lawyer. My good friend Tammy, a glamorous Pakistani lawyer and talk-show host prone to heat stroke, diamond bling, and citrus-scented facial wipes, was close to the lawyer’s family. In Pakistan, such connections were the only way to cut through the British red-tape hangover.
Unfortunately I had gotten out to stretch my legs. So now, just after punching an older man with a comb-over, yards away from the chief justice, I watched a window roll down on his vehicle.
“Is something wrong?” shouted one of the lawyers inside.
“Yeah, something’s wrong. These guys keep grabbing me.”
He sighed and whispered something to lawyers outside the Pajero. Half a dozen then walked over to me, surrounding my rear flank, trying to protect it. But they were as effective as the country’s legal system. The hands kept poking holes in their defenses. I kept spinning around, screaming, gesturing like I was conducting an orchestra on speed, randomly catching hands mid-pinch and then hitting the offenders.
I was creating a scene. This time, the door of the Pajero popped open.
“Kim. Get in,” the lawyer said.
This was unexpected. Every journalist I knew had been trying to get inside this vehicle for months. None had. But somehow, where skills, talent, and perseverance had failed, my unremarkable ass had delivered. I climbed into the backseat as another lawyer jumped out of the vehicle to make room for me. I sat quietly.
“Just sit there. Don’t say a word,” the top lawyer told me, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. “You can stay in here through the worst of the crowds. Do not talk to the chief justice. Do not try to interview the chief justice.”
I waited for a beat.
“But what if the chief justice wants to talk to me?”
Chaudhry laughed. I was in. And pretty soon, Tammy and another friend were in the car as well, because once I had breached the car, the others couldn’t be kept out. Especially Tammy, who as a minor celebrity had a Wonder Woman ability to make men talk, even without the lasso. As soon as the top lawyer stepped out of the SUV to make a speech, the chief justice, his minder gone, started gushing to Tammy.
“I’m quite happy, you yourself can imagine,” Chaudhry said, adding that he felt “wonderful.” He said he never would have imagined such a scene before being suspended. “Never, being a judge and a lawyer. Never.”
The top lawyer stepped back into the SUV, looking suspiciously from the judge to the backseat. All of us sat quietly.
At points the convoy reached speeds of sixty miles per hour. But whenever we hit a town, or even an intersection, crowds swarmed, bringing traffic to a standstill. People ran through the maze of cars, clutching handfuls of rose petals, trying to find Chaudhry, whom they called “chief.” At times it seemed like the SUV would be buried in petals or people. Supporters pounded on the windows so insistently that it occasionally felt like a zombie movie. They shook the vehicle. Stickers and posters showed Chaudhry superimposed over crowds of thousands like a political leader, or Chaudhry and the words “My Hero.” Our soundtrack veered between cheering crowds and loudspeakers, blaring a new hit song that repetitively asked army chief Musharraf, “Hey, man, why don’t you take off your uniform?”
We reached Abbottabad at a ludicrous 11 PM—driving seventy miles in fourteen hours, meaning an average speed of five miles an hour. A crowd of ten thousand people, mainly lawyers in their black suits and white shirts, had waited in front of a stage since the afternoon. Rebellion was