Pakistan - Day 7

Weekends are meant to go out at your leisure. It is meant to take in the activities of the week and recuperate or complete unfinished tasks during the week. Not in Pakistan. It was just another day of the week, promising more events than one person could handle.

The electricity went out Saturday morning at 6am. I noticed this because the air conditioning switched off and I was only being cooled by the ceiling fan. After two hours of sleep, my eyes flew open to check the time.

Squeeze me? Why the hell was the electricity off? This was not the normal timing. I got up and looked around. One child was in the middle of the king size bed snoring. The other was on the ground on a mattress curled up in a fetal position. Hubby was at one end of tbe bed. One daughter was missing. Perhaps sleeping with her cousins in another room. I stepped over everyone and went downstairs.

No one was awake and I sat in the sitting room alone. I listened to the rooster's call, the distance noise of a bell and cars driving through the street. After an hour of contemplation,I walked back upstairs, hot and bothered. I couldn't sleep, had no appetite and the loadshedding was a royal pain in the a**. So I pulled out a book and read. By 11am, everyone started to awake. The electricity was still out. It had been more than five hours. At meal time, the elders in the house made an executive decision. Half of them were going to a nearby aunt's house around the corner and we were going to hubby's uncle's house half an hour away. Apparently he lived in a new development in Lahore called NFC where the traffic and congestion was considerably less. The family raved that he bought a brand new house in a relatively posh area. I needed to move. In lightning speed, I was already packing for the overnight stay the minute the plans were made.

The girls were another story. They did not want to be separated from their cousins. I told them to consider this move as part of an adventure. All of them stopped what they were doing and gave me side-long glances. Ok, I tried to embellish each moment but could you blame me knowing what I knew? I became the master storyteller in order to shield them from the reality of our situation. In my morning contemplation, I realized I had to put on the brave face and lead the family. Of course, our safety was my number one priority so I wary of that.

One thing I never overlooked - at all times, was that one parent had to be with the three girls. I never allowed them to go out without one of us. This golden rule was challenged at many points and my insistence was deemed as being too particular. But I didn't care. It was my way or the highway and everyone knew not to mess with that.