lahore - the return.

After a hot bath and some ridiculous chick lit, I feel better. I started feeling better when the turn-down guy came to my room - the same guy I sent away last night. Tonight, after a few hours hunched in front of my laptop and a smelly tray of the remnants of sweet and sour chicken on the coffee table, someone else in my room seemed welcome. I opened the door, smiled, and waved him inside.

He hurried around me with his tasks, but something about his energy filled the room - or maybe it was the rose water he spritzed all over the floor. Or the oil lamp he lit on the bedside table. Suddenly, the little wilty roses in plastic on my pillow took on so much more meaning. We didn't make eye contact, but I sensed that he was smiling as he went about his work

It feels good to be alone, in this dark little room.

It feels good to be back in Pakistan, riding around the leafy streets, watching auto-rickshaws buzz by. Turbaned men in salwar kameez stroll down the street in pairs, or lounge in traffic circles, or sit cross-legged facing each other in the park. Women, so seldom seen on the street, tuck their dupatta a little more closely around their face.

Something about being somewhere so other, so far away and so removed from everything… there’s something about that which is appealing. The lure of the hotel room – the quiet hotel room where I don’t have to listen to anything at all.