Miss Canada

Clothes were overflowing from a purple backpack on one of the beds, a small Canadian flag sewn on its front. On top of the backpack, lay a book, emerald green with a picture of a bright blue dandelion, its title: Healing Your Life.  Outside in the courtyard woman in her twenties sat alone reading a newspaper. Her hair dripping wet, face made-up, nails manicured; excursions into femininity are rare on this road. Unprompted, she told me that there had been suicide bombings in Islamabad and that Miss Canada had won Miss Universe 2005 in Bangkok, but I already knew. We got chatting. She was a Canadian, not American, Canadian. After travelling around India for months she came to Pakistan a month ago with the intention of going to Kabul but trouble had flared up in Jalalabad and ‘three hundred jihadis [holy warriors] got together for the first time ever in a jirga [a meeting of tribal elders] and declared Holy war on America!’ Then there was the kidnapping of the Italian N.G.O. worker. Deterents accumulated so she decided to head back to India and visit the Dalai Lama. ‘My parents were like, Jennifer, [I didn’t know her name at this stage] that’s so great!! They were happy I was back in tourist land seeing the Dalai Lama and doing all that fluffy stuff,’ but Jennifer came back to try again. How comfortable did she feel travelling alone as a woman, I asked. ‘I didn’t sleep too well last night,’ she said, ‘when I cross the border, I’ll wear a burqa as far as Kabul.’ In the registration book of the hotel she had entered under ‘profession’, ‘make-up artist.’

KW, Peshawar, May, 2005