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One morning I popped awake at 6:30 with a stabbing sensation in the middle of my upper back. I couldn’t turn my head. I felt as if there had been a crank in the middle of my back, and it had been turned and turned, until at one point, something snapped. In tears, I called Samad, who picked me up and rushed me to the hospital. I called a friend to meet me there, just before being dumped in a bed and injected with drugs. Woozy, drowsy, I vaguely noticed a team of men and women in white coats surrounding me. One, with a long, fundamentalist beard and no mustache, asked if he could take my pulse. An Islamic fundie. I could recognize one anywhere, even when I was high.

“Yes, fine,” I whispered.

Before I knew it, he had unzipped my jeans and started feeling for the pulse in my groin. This man would probably never even shake my hand, but here he was, grabbing around inside my pants. The crowd leaned forward to look. I was in so much pain and on so many painkillers, I barely registered the many easier places to check a pulse. My friend showed up, just in time to add some modicum of decency to the nurses’ decision to check my breasts.

“What is going on here?” she announced, pulling the drapes closed. “Who’s in charge?”

“I have no idea,” I replied.

I never saw the fundie again, and the doctors shot me up with enough drugs so I no longer cared. But I clearly needed a break. I needed to be left alone, to sleep for a month. Once my pinched nerve subsided, I hopped on a plane for London. Unfortunately, it was November 3, 2007. It would be the shortest vacation of my life.

CHAPTER 15

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

I walked off the plane exhausted but excited. Finally, I would be able to relax with Dave. Finally, we could do couples’ things we had never experienced in Pakistan, radical activities like holding hands in public. Finally, we could see what was between us.

But as soon as I spotted Dave in Heathrow, I knew something was wrong. He wore a sad smile and patted me like he was putting out a fire.

“What? What happened?”

“I’m sorry, babe. Musharraf just declared an emergency.”

I felt as if someone had kicked me in the head.

“No. No. I can’t.”

“You can. You have to,” he said.

I felt sorry for us, sorrier for Pakistan. Every month seemed to bring a fresh crisis, a new attempt to drive the country into a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour. Musharraf had suspended the constitution, actually fired Chief Justice Chaudhry instead of just suspending him, suspended the country’s other independent top judges unless they signed a new oath, and placed them all under house arrest, blocking off the entire judges’ enclave with riot police, barricades, and barbed wire. In a hilarious justification, Musharraf said he declared the emergency because of the increased threat of Islamic militants and interference by the judiciary. It seemed much more likely that Musharraf wanted to preempt an expected ruling by the supreme court that would have tossed out his recent reelection.

The country’s security services started rounding up the bad guys. No, not the nefarious Islamic miscreants Musharraf usually complained about. Instead, the tin men hauled away thousands of lawyers, opposition politicians, and human-rights activists. From London, I frantically called people in Pakistan—some talked in hushed tones because they had already been detained. Others talked, but by the end of the day, their phones just rang incessantly or not at all. Tammy went into hiding.

By the next day, I was back on a plane, bound for Islamabad.

Musharraf’s extreme action provoked some allies to finally turn against him—at least somewhat. The Dutch government suspended aid. Britain announced it would review its aid package. The European Union said its members were considering the dreaded “possible further steps.” President George W. Bush told reporters in the Oval Office that the United States wanted elections as soon as possible, wanted Musharraf to strip off his