Lahore, From Afar

The waiter brought the plates of food to our table, plonked them down, and walked away.  We were in a French restaurant in a shopping mall in southern England.  In an effort to replicate the French dining experience the restaurant had been decorated with old French film posters and tiled in black and white, and the bad service from surly staff added another layer of realism.

My son and I tucked in to massive dishes of mussels, since we were in the UK temporarily and were soon to be heading back to Pakistan where mussels are as rare as rude people.  My wife had a steak sandwich.  The other kids had asked for macaroni cheese, the kind of bland dish restaurants serve to children in an effort to keep them quiet.  Outside, shoppers were dashing to and fro.  A couple with a small child came and sat at the table next to ours and played with their smartphones until their child started screaming, at which point they gave a smartphone to him to keep him quiet.  Our waiter came and dropped off a jug of tap water and seemed to think that he was doing us a personal favour by doing so.

Suddenly my wife’s phone bleeped.  She checked it, looked at me, and said “Bomb in Lahore”.

The details were simple enough, containing the usual ingredients: a crowd of people in a city, a parked car, a network of people with murderous hearts.  8 dead, we were told.

Instantly my mind went back to Pakistan.  I could imagine the crowded streets of Lahore, the throngs of people coming to see what was happening, the police shoving back the sightseers.  The screams of the sirens carrying the injured to hospitals, the doctors and nurses rolling up their sleeves to perform their daily acts of heroism as they bandaged wounds and saved lives and informed grieving relatives that the man they sent to train as a policeman would not be returning home.  I could imagine the screams of shock and the pain searing, agonisingly, into the hearts of people across the nation.  I could imagine the cries of anguish from people across the country as they learned of a new outrage carried out by terrorists intent on destroying Pakistan.

Outside the restaurant the shoppers were dashing to and fro, bags of new possessions under their arms.  My infant son spilled his water over himself.  My daughter was ploughing steadily through her macaroni.  My son was devouring his mussels.  The people at the table next to us were eating in silence, eyes flicking to their phones every other bite.  And far away, I thought I could hear the sirens.