The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [99]
After Samad got his car, he figured he had the status to merit a wife. But his older brother said no. So Samad and his cousin/niece had eloped. Samad’s older brother had reacted predictably, vowing to kill Samad for insulting his honor and marrying his eighteen-year-old daughter.
This, also, was typical. Because Samad and his bride had disobeyed their family, both could be killed. So for weeks, Samad and his new bride were on the run, sheltered by friends in Lahore and sympathetic family members. Finally his mother helped broker a truce. Samad and his wife moved back home. And Samad started calling my office manager, begging for his job back.
I felt I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to train a new driver. And I blamed myself for tempting Samad, giving him too much trust and responsibility. He had reacted like any young man to an empty house, a pool table, and free booze—actually, he had reacted better than most. And I had bigger issues to worry about than a missing bottle of Midori liqueur. Dave was moving out. We had broken up, and the split was hardly amicable. Just before flying in from Kabul, he sent me an e-mail, apologizing for the hurt he had caused but saying he had wanted to be honest about his feelings. “I have no doubt you’ll be run off your feet when I come through, as it always was,” he wrote. “Maybe I do need someone who has time to tend for me when I come in.”
Maybe so. Samad helped him move out, even though it was confusing for him, a bit like subjecting a three-year-old to a divorce. Samad had bought all three of us key chains, each with our first initial. He had been thrilled when I started dating Dave, talking about my wedding and naming our firstborn before our one-month anniversary. Although divorce and single adults over thirty were quite common in my Pakistani circle of friends, in Samad’s family such things were scandalous.
While packing up, Dave was kind and polite. I wondered if we were making a mistake. But then friends forced me to go out for dinner instead of moping at home, and to go to the UN club for a drink.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s where he always goes.”
“That’s where everyone in Islamabad goes,” a friend said, reminding me how miserable our options were. “You can’t let him run your life.”
So we went, hiding in the back garden because Dave had been spotted inside. After a while, my curiosity won out.
“What was he doing?” I asked.
“Singing karaoke,” a friend said.
“What song?”
“ ‘My Way.’ ”
Meanwhile, Pakistan started to simmer again. It was August 2008. President Pervez Musharraf, who had managed to hold on to his presidency even as his popularity, power, and army post had been stripped away, finally stepped down. He didn’t really have a choice—his enemies had recruited enough votes in parliament to impeach him. He gave a speech, punctuated with tears. “God protect Pakistan,” he ended it. “God protect you, Pakistan, forever. Long live Pakistan.” And then Musharraf collected his note cards and tried to stand up, with some difficulty. With that, all vestiges of the country’s military rule were finished, at least for now.
Instead of resolving the political quagmire, his move only sharpened it. Pakistan’s fragile new ruling coalition was falling apart. The coalition had agreed to restore the judges fired by Musharraf within twenty-four hours of him leaving the presidency, but that deadline quickly passed. The tiger of Punjab, Nawaz Sharif, still defending the judiciary, threatened to pull out of the coalition. But Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, did not want to restore the judges. He probably suspected that they would