(Daniel) This morning I called Rowan and Gabbs from the Hotel regarding meeting them later. The voice at the end of the phone sounded very poorly, and Gabby explained that Rowan was very sick and wouldn’t be able to leave the room. As she said this, I could feel my own stomach turning a little, but paid no attention. Instead I went downstairs and met two gentlemen from the “Islamic Family Channel”. Following a call last night, they were waiting to see me in the lobby. One man was quite old and was apparently there as a translator, the other was younger and was the station director for the channel. After introductions, I sat and answered their questions, but it began to dawn on me that this was not so much an interview, but a Q&A about how I got my vehicle across from one country to another. There was no camera, just a tape recorder, and the man asking questions seemed more like an officer of some kind than a presenter. After a while, I mentioned the questioning in DG Khan, the way that a policeman had mysteriously arrived when we broke down, and the feeling that perhaps we were being watched. I joked that perhaps my interviewers were really ISI officers. This joke did not get a laugh though, in fact the man cut off the conversation almost immediately and made his excuses to leave.
After saying goodbye to the men, I went up to my room. It was just in time, as the illness that had obviously been brewing inside chose this moment to make itself apparent. I hate to admit to it, but I shit myself, and not in a small way. I spent what felt like the next few hours on the toilet. Eventually though, I felt I had the strength to make a journey out. With this I went to Rowan and Gabby at the Best Western in Gulberg. I took what felt like one of the longest taxi rides of my life. On arrival, I went up to the others’ room and knocked. A face looking similarly pained to my own answered the door, Rowan had been ill overnight, and was still suffering. I told him that I was bad too, and we spent the rest of the day trying not to move, and watching HBO on their TV.

After several hours I decided to return to my hotel for an early night, the taxi got there around 6.30pm. However my phone rang and when I answered, Awas, the mechanic from Bilal Gang spoke. He asked me where I had been, and I explained about the sick day. He offered to bring me some medicine, but I declined, choosing to sleep instead. About half an hour later, there was a knock at the door, it was Awas, apparently not heeding my decline. He said he had brought a gift, and handed me what looked like a brown cricket ball. “Hashish!” He said, smiling. I politely declined, so he offered instead to take me to the pharmacy. Out of politeness, and a genuine need for some medicine, I accepted. This was how I ended up in a car with Awas and his friend Usaman driving down the road looking for a chemist. True to his word, we found a store, and I bought some painkillers, and some anti S & D tablets, then got back in the car for a lift home. After a minute or two, I realised that we were going the wrong way. (Don’t forget this is still Pakistan!)
I asked where we were going. “To my friend’s house” replied Awas, with a waggle of his head. Apparently, my new friends wanted me to go meet some people. I weakly tried to decline, but didn’t have the strength and soon found myself in a poor suburb of town, sitting on a sofa in a strange rundown house, meeting a large family of people and being shown some kind of picture album. Photos of their daughter were shown over and over again, and I began to wonder if there was some meaning in this. Whatever happened, my stomach was not settled, and I desperately needed to leave. When we eventually did go, the whole family squeezed into the car. Awas said they needed a ride into town. They even needed to bring the TV for some reason. So we piled back into Awas’ Honda civic, all seven of us, and the TV, to take the fairly long journey back into the city, and drop me off.
Thankfully I made it back, and after saying my goodbyes, went back upstairs to bed. Lying in my room, I wondered if the trip had been for some other reason, the photo album of progressively more revealing photos of their daughter, the TV in the car. Had I somehow been sold into a marriage proposal? I hoped I would never find out.