Pakistan Journal: Deployed

Three of us were leaving; Thirty-seven of us weren't. What do you think that felt like?

At first I didn't think anything of it. I was too busy packing my bag, getting rid of things that I wouldn't need and acquiring the supplies that I would. Then I heard the comments begin--"Why are they going and not us? We're a team of three too!" It wasn't that people were unhappy for us, they were unhappy for themselves. The truth was, 37 men wanted to be in our place and weren't.

We jumped into a taxi that took us to the bus station. Once there, our taxi driver helped to negotiate eight seats in a van for us and our luggage so that we wouldn't have to store our gear on top. This particular taxi was already quite full with ramdom men heading to Bisham. Once we were packed in and sitting in the back we waited for another twenty minutes before we left, meaning that we had lost feeling in our legs before our three hour journey began.

At last, one more person crammed into our van bringing the grand total to 14 people (the vehicle was designed for 10). It was on this taxi ride that we began to see the effects of the 7.6 quake. We began to notice tent villages stretched as far as the eye could see, as well as destroyed buildings and homes. We were commenting on what we were seeing and realized that no one else in the vehicle was talking at all. I thought this was strange, especially because we were all in such close proximity to everyone else. Obviously taxis are not social vehicles because we were the only ones to carry any converstation the entire trip.

We were an hour and a half into the journey to Bisham when all of a sudden our driver pulled us over and everyone filed out of the taxi. Jeff, Ben, and I were all pretty confused until we watched what was happening. One by one, the men crossed over the road, washed their hands, feet, and face and proceeded to line up for prayer time. While they were praying, we met a man from our taxi named Faizel who heard us asking questions of what was going on.

"Prayer," he said in perfect English, "It is time for them to pray."

My first reaction to hearing English coming out of this man was, "I really hope we hadn't said anything wrong or offensive while we were talking in the van!"

He introduced himself and told us that he had been listening to our conversation for the past hour and that he hoped that was okay. Of course it was and so we began to ask him questions about why some men were praying and he wasn't. He told us that he wasn't praying because he wasn't wearing the correct type of clothing and it would be disrespectful to pray dressed as he was. I'm not sure why this was. The only thing that made sense to me about it was that he was wearing Western-style clothing (jeans and a button down shirt) and everyone praying were wearing the traditional Pakistani-style clothing.

We jumped back into the taxi and were on our way again. This time it was the four of us talking. We learned several things about Faizel and about the city (Bisham) that we were heading to.

And then it got dark.

Keep in mind what I described about the way that they drive. Now, imagine that happening over earthquake disrupted roads with oncoming headlights weaving, bouncing, and veering this way and that. Luckily I was doing the "head-bobby because I'm really sleepy" thing again. As I was sitting on the far right side of the vehicle, my head bounced off of Jeff and the back of the seat in front of me. I would have been fine like this for hours, but Jeff decided that it was time to wake me up. He didn't wake me up because he was sick of my bouncing off his shoulder. Rather, he woke me up because he needed to get to the window as soon as possible. In other words--Jeff was about to blow!

My initial thought was, "Ain't no way he's leaning over me to puke out the window!" So I offered the following suggestion.
"Why don't we switch spots?"
This would work fine in a typical vehicle. This was no typical vehicle--this one happened to have no room for a switch of this magnitude to take place. Somehow, we (both measuring over 6-feet tall) managed to dance some weird dance so that we could switch spots. No sooner had Jeff gotten into my old seat then he threw open the window and got rid of everything inside of him.

The journey to Bisham was coming to a painful end when Faizel spoke back up.
"You are in my city--let me take you out for dinner."

"Fantastic!" was my response. We knew nothing about Bisham or what was in store for us within the hour.