Alone with the Divine in Pakistan

 

Alone with the Divine in Pakistan

No one in the world but God knows where I am.

Four o’clock in the morning: Karachi, Pakistan. It was the season of the Hajj, and the above thought struck me as I sat in the small airport café. My plane had been late arriving from Bangkok, I had missed my connecting flight to Lahore, and had been informed that all flights were sold out through the next week. And in those days before cell phones and 9/11, I had no way of getting in touch with my awaiting friends to inform them of my predicament.

This was not my first time in Pakistan, nor in this particular café. As I ordered a hot milky chai, I contrasted that experience with my current one. As a teen-ager eight years previously I had been traveling with my family, and our arrival had been quite different.

Arriving in Karachi’s airport in 1982 (also delayed en route to see our friends), we had been surprised by the warm greeting of a manager from our Pakistani host’s Karachi enterprise. Learning of our missed connecting flight to Lahore and that all subsequent connectors were already oversold, that gentleman ushered us into this very café and ordered us some refreshment. Then taking our passports and tickets, he returned shortly with boarding passes for the next flight departing for Lahore. We knew we had entered a world with which we were not familiar, where “connections” smoothed the way for us to continue on our journey; we appreciatively took the boarding passes and regretted the family that had been bumped from that flight to make room for these interloping Americans.

Now traveling as a young woman, there was no business manager to greet me when I landed in the middle of the night nor to help me navigate missed connectors so that I might arrive at my Lahore destination. I was alone in this unknown city, wondering how I was going to reach my destination amidst the crush of Muslim pilgrims en route to their sacred city.

As I sipped upon the sweet fragrant tea and pondered my options, the airline employee who had told me three hours previously of the sold out flights came into the café. Recognizing me, he came over to my table and asked me why I was still there, suggesting that despite the sold out flights, I should try to get on the next flight out to Lahore leaving in an hour and a half.

Not understanding how I could possibly get on the flight without a reservation, I grabbed my two small bags and dashed to the airline check-in, only to be greeted by a disorderly mass of humanity sprinkled with huge cardboard appliance boxes and gargantuan piles of luggage. Clutching with my few belongings, I was surprised when a man in the line motioned this misplaced Westerner ahead of him to midway in the line, and again surprised when another man, seeing that I was traveling light, indicated I should go all the way to the counter.

When I arrived there, I slapped down my ticket and passport, overpaid the transit fee in U.S. dollars (which was received most gladly), and was awarded a coveted boarding pass, which I took most gratefully. I then went to the departure gate, to bask in astonishment at what had just transpired.

As I entered the waiting area, I noticed a small nook with a prayer rug, provided for traveling pilgrims to maintain their daily prayers while in transit. Although I did not practice the same faith as my fellow travelers, I felt a tremendous sense of gratitude to the Almighty, the Merciful, who had known my predicament and had worked through various unexpected strangers to help me progress on my journey.

With neither family nor friends at hand, I felt an enormous sense of freedom as I not only arrived in a strange land alone, but also overcame the obstacles I had encountered upon arriving there. Although I was somewhat concerned that I could not apprise my friends of the reason for my delayed arrival, there was a sense of liberation that despite being alone, I could manage the challenge and find gratitude in the experience – an approach with which I endeavor to live all of life.

And God always knows where I am.

About the author: Dawn Young’s first words were “bye-bye,” which eventually led to a series of overseas odysseys, beginning as a teen-ager and continuing today in her roles as a French teacher and mother of two young men. She credits many of her adventures to a spirit cultivated by her mother – who raised her on stories of her Pakistani “Uncle Alam and Aunt Riffi” – and her maternal grandparents – North Carolina farmers whose hospitality to a young Pakistani student at North Carolina State University in 1956 led to their families’ connections over time and space. Dawn tries to cultivate that same spirit of “relational ambassadorship” in her North Carolina students and children today.

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