In the morning, after my useless meeting, I went off for my haircut. It’s a quite long drive to Shah Allah Ditta, an area on the outskirts of Islamabad, which used to be an old Buddhist site (it’s close to Taxila) so there are many caves filled with Buddha statues. The house itself is overlooking some beautiful hills, a part of the city that reminded me very much of Golden Bay in New Zealand, particularly in the winter sunlight. It was enough off the map that I asked the Careem driver to wait for me and promised to pay him extra. The house is a bit of folly, and all the better for it. It’s on a hillside and they didn’t do the usual thing of levelling the land to build, so when you step into the front door much of the house is actually below you, and there is a sort of bridge over a greenhouse and windows opening up to gardens all around. Though the haircut itself was in a shed in the garden (the house I remember from my last visit a few years ago) which had a rather cool industrial chic thing going, with peeling paint and haphazard black painted metal.
My haircut is not too bad, though not my favourite ever. The back is interestingly textured and brings out the white hair, but the front is a little too short and straight – I prefer a longer assymetrical look in front.
From Shah Allah Ditta (incidentally, how refreshing to find an area which hasn’t been renamed something stupid like Valencia or Eden Homes or Bahria Town, losing the older name), back to Islamabad where I did a quick bit of packing and we left. The sun was fierce by now, and I rather regretted my experiment with an acid, so had to sit with a shawl over my head for the first half of the drive.
On arriving in Lahore, I went straight to the hospital where I found the uncle looking more or less the same as ever, and his sons looking quite old and capable and managing everything. It looks like the heart surgery will be delayed a few days to let his lungs heal from their infections and 100 cigarettes-a-day habit, and there was the usual difficulty about arranging blood donations. For operations in Pakistan the family has to arrange for sufficient blood donations – a sad and horrible custom. So there were constant calls to potential donors with the same, somewhat rare, blood group. I put out an alert and received a hand written list of telephone numbers with a blood group written next to them, and we went down the list calling to see if anyone was willing and able to donate.
This morning, with the surgery delayed, I visited my grandmother who had been popping pills to keep herself from screaming, and she told me one of the stories from her childhood which makes me feel ashamed of having been so dismissive of the heat and dust and mangoes school of Subcontinental literature, as this one had multiple wives, black magic, abusive husbands, family fortunes, revenge, inheritance squabbles, young girls hiding under the table to eavesdrop on conversations, the lot.
Next I went to get my Pakistani ID card renewed, as it is due to expire in a few months and it permits me travel here on a UK passport without a visa. This was remarkably smooth and quick, and I was sheepishly pleased to see that I was listed as the head of the household as the GF, though male, is not Pakistani. Nevertheless, I still had to go with a family member to verify my identity, so I remain part of some family unit at least, as far as the state is concerned.