Call in the Heavy Artillery

As Ed exits the room he suddenly turns and impishly says, "Remember Mark, always talk to the person next to you on the airplane." Years ago I had very intentionally implemented this very program and I take his injunction to be yet another wink from the great beyond. A half hour later Farhan, whom I had been in contact with about the possible sponsorship of dome structures for quake affected areas, arrives at the ActionAid office and we head out in search of food. Farhan is somehow younger, more youthful, and generously padded than I expected from his emails. He is dressed in a fitted suit that gives him the appearance of a Wall Street go getter. He fires up a remixed hip-hop CD in his Honda luxury sedan. I feel slightly goofy in my mock-Muslim garb in the suddenly very secular milieu.

"What kind of food are you in the mood for?" he asks.

"Actually this could get interesting. I'm vegan, so I don't eat any animal products at all." My confession amuses Farhan who eyes me skeptically.

"How are you going to survive in Pakistan...and the mountains!"

"It's an open question."

We drive to Pizza Hut in the waning light of an early winter's eve. Islamabad is an unimaginatively planned city a la Chandigargh with Battleship-labeled sectors like F-4 and G-15 and markets vaguely reminiscent of bland American strip malls. Pepsico has done nothing to make its pizza franchise culturally relevant and it once inside there is no discerning one is not in Kansas anymore. Farhan is intrigued by my cheese-less pizza order, but is too busy entertaining his two cell phones to try any. "I tell you Mark. I don't get a moment's peace anymore. I've been neglecting my work to collect relief goods and now everything is just snowballing. I have over two-hundred unanswered emails waiting." Farhan, who I come to learn was raised in Dubai and London, is having a hard time adjusting to the slower pace of life in Pakistan. He sells UK property for a land trust based in London and just recently set up an office in Islamabad. The earthquake awakened a part of him that he didn't know existed.

"I was just watching television after the quake and knew I had to get up in the mountains," Farhan explains, " I haven't done anything adventurous in my entire life, but when I saw how bad things were in the villages something just clicked and my apprehension was gone. A couple days later I was on a deteriorating bridge with only three wheels of the car making contact and just laughing about it. We had delivered our first load of blankets and that's all I cared about. When I think about it now I realize how close we were to falling off the bridge. We certainly would have died. My friend wanted to get out and help direct me to keep the tires on the rails, but I told him to get back in the car because if we were going to die it would be together." Farhan is laughing and I am grinning. He takes a couple of calls before continuing his narrative.

"You know I have just been working 20 hours a day ever since the earthquake happened almost a month ago. But somehow I never get tired. Every truckload of supplies that I manage to send up makes me want to send two more. The look on the faces of the villagers makes everything worthwhile. Now I'm getting in trouble with my business associates for using our office space to store the collected goods – you'll see what I mean later. I'm kind of out of control. At some point I have to turn my attention back to work, but it's hard. Sorry, just one minute." Farhan takes another call and two words in his second phone rings. He rolls his eyes and asks the first caller to hold while he answers the other phone. At one point in his three-way conversation he marries the two phones together at 180 degrees so the callers can shout at one another in primitive hi-tech fashion.

The calls are in regard to three trucks which have arrived from Karachi loaded with donated goods shipped from Dubai. They have nowhere to park within city limits of Islamabad and the drivers are anxious to head back south. Meanwhile three businessmen have arrived from Lahore and are raring to have their share of the goods transferred to their trucks and head into the mountains. To straighten matters out we head to Farhan's office, which is in a well-guarded compound at the end of an affluent suburban street. The office itself resembles a well-appointed bungalow – enough so that Farhan shifted his living quarters here after the earthquake left a large crack in the ceiling of his six-story flat. He misses his jacuzzi and sauna, but is otherwise satisfied with his new digs. When the gate opens I spot a mountain of blankets, tents, and clothing in a deep well running the length of the house. "My business partners are giving me a lot of grief for taking over the office space, but I'm the big cheese in our Pakistan office so they can't do anything about it. Now they too have been catching volunteer fever and nobody is sleeping at all which explains the bloodshot eyes." Farhan remains remarkably good humored in light of his stressful environs.

Shortly after we arrive the three businessmen from Lahore are welcomed into the reception/living room. They are all former mountain-dwelling Afghans and to a man they are super-sized with fingers seemingly as big around as my wrists. The densely bearded trio, dressed in tent-like, earth-toned kurtas, are introduced as Mujahadeen by the ever-bemused Farhan. In Pakistan, like Afghanistan, the kurtas have rounded edges and worn loose, unlike the straight cut Indian variety. I feel uncomfortably effeminate in my smallish and slightly sheer Indian pajama. The mountain men look me over as if sizing me up for a game of buzkashi with me serving as the goat's carcass. They relax somewhat when Farhan gives them the skinny on my intention to volunteer in the earth quaked zone. After tea the three giants stuff themselves into the back of Farhan's sedan and we drive outside the city to where the relief-laden trucks are queued impatiently by the side of the road. We hold a pow-wow in the pitch black and the passing traffic brushes uncomfortably close to our position, drawing up towers of dust haphazardly painted by misaligned headlights. The drivers are talked into waiting until midnight to enter the city when they will be able to find parking to unload.

Farhan has finally developed an appetite and suggests we secure a late dinner. The restaurant he chooses is close to Pizza Hut geographically, but a world apart in ambience. The walls are adorned with scenes of Afghan rural life and ruins, including a depiction of the larger-than-life Buddhas that were subsequently shelled into oblivion by the Taliban. Many of the paintings resemble the imagined worlds of pulp sci-fi novels in their strangeness. The entire menu from A to Z is meat-centric. Farhan explains my dietary regimen to the bewildered Afghans who special order a soup and salad for me. In the meantime a plate stacked high with meat kebabs arrives. There is no possible way they will ingest the meaty mountain I muse, but am proved wrong in the trivial span of fifteen minutes. My soup arrives and immediately starts my veggie-sense tingling. Suspicious that something is amiss with the brownish swill, I cautiously submerge my spoon and strike a solid form. I move the mysterious mass up along the slope of the bowl and discover it to be a hunk of meat fashioned into a sphere. Farhan chuckles and suggests I just eat around the offensive matter. Meat eaters will never understand that food once touched by meat is forever tainted by association. Next the salad arrives. It appears to be nothing more than a generous bowl of smallish, pink and purple onions. I am about to plop one into my mouth when something at the bottom of the bowl catches my eye. I shift the onions to reveal a meat core! I resign myself to going without a second dinner. I can feel my apprehension rising with regards to securing sufficient calories in the mountains.

"Just wait till he gets to the Musaffarabad!" Farhan cackles with delight to the Afghans who still aren't quite sure what to make of the reluctant diner. Four plates of sizable bird carcass are served and once more I am inclined to think this will be the foursome's gastronomic comeuppance until one after another they are licking the meatless bones that once served as fleshy superstructure. Resonant belches are offered up liberally to the consternation of none. Next comes strips of dark meat which I take to be beef and they are swallowed up like displaced tongues leaving me in mute awe. Finally sated Farhan turns his attention back to his neglected cell phones which have been vibrating for his attention. They are bearers of bad news.

One of the trucks has scratched a doctor's Merc while making a turn and the indignant victim has taken all of three of the truck drivers' licenses and is refusing to return them. Without their licenses the drivers are unwilling to proceed into the city where the transfer of goods can take place.

We return to Farhan's office to work on a solution. One by one Farhan and his coterie phone the agitated physician and try to talk him into relinquishing the documentation.

"Sir, the vast majority of the cargo is medicines to replenish the depleted stores at the hospitals and camps in the mountains. Surely as a doctor..."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap."

"Yes, yes I understand. It's unfortunate, but a bigger tragedy..."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap."

"Yes. No. I understand, but please consider for a moment..."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap."

Farhan's friend from London, Ali, is the last to try his luck. Whereas the Afghans are built like mountains Ali is built like a tree and towers a good four inches above everybody else. He dresses in a curious commingling of East of West – loose sweat pants and a Harley-Davidson t-shirt are worn with a traditional Pathan cap and jacket. To continue working with Farhan, Ali moved with his family to Islamabad two years ago and they have finally adapted to life in the Islamic state after a bit of a rough patch. Now he, like his boss, has contracted the volunteer bug.

"Doctor, I am very sorry to disturb you sir at this late hour, but I would like to make you an offer..."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap."

"Right. That's why I am calling. I am willing to pay out of pocket whatever amount you think is necessary to cover the damages to your vehicle."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap."

"I completely trust you. You can estimate on the high side and then refund the difference if you choose."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap."

"What is the real issue then? Sir, there are people suffering tonight up in the mountains that will really benefit from..."

"Yabbitty, yap, yap. Click. Buzzzz."

"I can't believe it. The bloody chap's hung up on me." Thereafter the doctor switches off his phone and everyone present is at a loss as to how to proceed. Farhan remains good-natured about the situation and he reverts to what any South Asian worth his namak would do in a similar situation – he has a round of tea served up for all.

"Oh yeah, Mark can't have any," Farhan remembers with unbridled mirth.

"I can have black tea. Just not any with milk," I offer, more interested in setting the record straight than in actually having anything to drink.

"Oh, that's right," Farhan says slightly crestfallen. The dainty tea cups look ridiculously small in the giant paws of the Ali and the Afghans. The trio inquires into Farhan's land development business and he goes into salesman mode at 1:32 am, but you can tell his heart is not really into it. He excuses himself to his office/bedroom and returns in blue jeans and t-shirt with a corduroy jacket. Even in somnolent repose he remains appropriately attired for a GQ shoot. Over the next minutes Farhan's body sinks ever lower into his easy chair in what appears to be a precursor to sleep, yet his eyes remain wide open and scan an unseen thought-scape. In time he begins the demented snickering of the severely sleep-deprived.

"What is it?" Ali asks.

"There's only one man that can see us out of this mess," Farhan teases.

"Who?"

"You know who."

"Who?"

"You know who."

"I'm too tired to figure it out," Ali complains.

"You know who," Farhan persists. Ali scrunches his face in puzzlement before a slow smile straightens his features.

"Oh no, not the Brigadier," he says.

"He said to call him up if we ever needed help," Farhan points out.

"We do need help... But it's so late, early, or whatever."

"Should we call him? He's such a character. He just might be able to make the doctor come around by using his connections."

"The Brigadier, the Brigadier... he's larger than life," Ali muses slumberously.

"Should I call him?" Farhan smiles. "I'll do it if somebody tells me to."

"Go for it," I say, "Call in the heavy artillery."