A Day in the Life…

 

Yesterday I went to the newly opened ‘Cosmo Cash and Carry’ which has just about everything I have been craving  — including TimTams — excluding good cheese. It was a marvelous outing, something that only someone who has been deprived of their accustomed comforts in life (said TimTams) and suddenly stumbbles upon them can really understand.

Cosmo Cash and Carry is located around fifteen minutes drive from our house, in Jinnah Park, which is a great place for outings, houses a number of good restaurants and a number of not so good ones (McDonalds). On the way there, I noticed a proliferation of armed men on the roadside, one about every five hundred metres to be exact, which I thought must have been in response to the terrorist attack that happened in Rawalpindi on Friday in a Mosque during prayer time.

They say a bunch of guys went into the Mosque and opened fire on the attending

faithful, throwing grenades as well — the first thing everyone here has said is ‘they can’t be Muslim’ and I tend to agree … the more puzzling question is who then?(Perhaps a discussion for another time) Around fourty people, including women and children were killed that day.

Because there were some higher up military men killed in the Mosque attack, they must have tightened security on military and government

officials, because when we came out of Cosmo Cash and Carry there were military men swarming all over the place. It took us two hours to drive what had taken us fifteen minute before, because they had blocked the road up ahead to allow some officials through — I tried to get photos of the large, black flag-bearing cars that carried the ‘important’ people — but they were driving so fast that there was no chance at all — I did manage to get some shots of the military men along the roads, and one very chirpy old security guard at a gas station — all the security guards everywhere in Pakistan (bakeries, clothes shops, restuarants) have guns his size too — its amazing just how accustomed you get to seeing firearms.

Life goes on in Pakistan. It kind of has too, despite all the killings, and all the bloodshed the people here are resilient. An old cousin of my father-in-law was recently telling how he fought off an armed robber in his house, and when the gun was pointed at his head, he simply thought ‘if its my day to die, its my day to die’ and kept fighting. It wasn’t his day to die, though I did see that he put in for a gun license of his own. But the point is that so many people here live by that philosophy, and just keep on going despite everything.

Coming out of Jinnah Park. First military man

Under the Golden Arches

A military man at the petrol station along the way home

The Security guard at the petrol station

Military truck outside Jinnah Park

The Jinnah Park sign, and Cinepax in the background

A mini sandbag fort at the petrol station!

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