Arrived at Lahore exhausted… didn’t sleep a wink. Was immediately pounced on by three separate narcotics officers. The last one insisted we go to the special area. For some reason they asked if I was Naheed’s "mentor." Not exactly sure what that even means… maybe with the beard I looked like a guru. Eventually Naheed explained in Urdu that we were journalists, and they smiled politely and let us go.
I can’t believe how hot it is… it’s 40-something but with the humidity, probably the hottest place I’ve ever been. Shooting here will be a horror.
Flew to Islamabad, an hour away, and were picked up by
Naheed’s brother-in-law Sayeed, a very nice guy who spent 8 inexplicable years in Houston. He lives in a gated community for military personnel called Wahcant.
The roads are dusty, everything is crumbling and falling down, kind of like Dakar actually, perhaps half a step up. There don’t seem to be any lanes, and the little buses are overcrowded and covered in very elaborate and colourful plates and designs.
Sayeed's house is quite big, with huge doorways to let the air flow. We spend too long talking… I just want to eat and go to bed. Instead of a nice Pakistani meal, we ate a delivered chicken pizza in the one room with AC. I used a weird phone contraption to send a few emails with Naheed’s computer, which inched down the "superhighway."
It’s so hot it’s almost impossible to sleep, even with a huge industrial ceiling fan directly on top of me. I wet my head to try to keep cool, but instead of refreshing me it's like pouring water on sauna coals. This is going to be a challenge.
The roads are dusty, everything is crumbling and falling down, kind of like Dakar actually, perhaps half a step up. There don’t seem to be any lanes, and the little buses are overcrowded and covered in very elaborate and colourful plates and designs.
Sayeed's house is quite big, with huge doorways to let the air flow. We spend too long talking… I just want to eat and go to bed. Instead of a nice Pakistani meal, we ate a delivered chicken pizza in the one room with AC. I used a weird phone contraption to send a few emails with Naheed’s computer, which inched down the "superhighway."
It’s so hot it’s almost impossible to sleep, even with a huge industrial ceiling fan directly on top of me. I wet my head to try to keep cool, but instead of refreshing me it's like pouring water on sauna coals. This is going to be a challenge.
