At Rawalpindi bus terminal, the light is violet from the rising moon, and gray from the perpetual smog. I am held in the mystery and danger of twilight in a new city. Fresh off the long haul bus, I weave my way through loading an unloading vehicles towards the indigo glow of gas burners and promising smells of an outdoor café.
There is no menu, just tall pots of rich burgundy curry and people sitting at tables solemnly picking apart joints of meat atop flat plates of rice. Tired bus drivers, rickshaw wallas, families consisting entirely of men.
I am vegetarian, I am tired and I am hungry. I am also a stranger, a foreign woman alone in a creased salwar kames and slippery head scarf that constantly fails to sit quite right. I bite my lip and contemplate the Urdu required to order a meal of something less meaty than what I can see the other diners eating.
Twilight is becoming night and the headlights of buses at the nearby terminal and the oil-specked lantern from the restaurant's kitchen do their best against the growing dark. Camouflage helicopters begin their nightly hover above the city.
A fellow diner in white cotton salwar and gray woollen vest approaches my lopsided table.
'Excuse me Madam?'
I look up wearily, expecting a curious 'Which Country do you come from?' or a leading 'Do you have boyfriend?'
But no. He dips his head respectfully. 'We would like to pay for your meal.' He indicates another lopsided table on which his Uncle and teenaged son are eating. 'You are a guest in our country. It is our hospitality to you.'
He does not invite me to join their masculine trio. To do so would harm my honour and leave me vulnerable to unwelcome advances from other diners. Instead he calls over the senior waiter and quietly orders a vegetarian meal with soft bread and 'anything else she wants'. Then he leaves me to eat.
Later a pot of sweet mint tea arrives at my table. Later still, his son is deployed and a taxi sourced and paid for.
Before bidding farewell, the man gives me a tattered business card with several phone numbers of friends and family, should I run into any trouble during my travels through his country. He assures me that his second uncle is a lawyer and that, should I visit their house, his