Category: Journal

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Prairie Rainstorms

Lately I seem to go for bike rides at the strangest times. I find with the long summer days, when daylight lasts until 10:30 at night, my perception of the day is often different than it would be normally. Instead I find myself setting out on a bike ride at 10 pm, thinking to enjoy a quick half hour of sunlight with some twilight as well. But, what would have appalled my grandparents more than the lateness of my trip would probably be the fact that I left the house in a black t-shirt and shorts with no helmet as well. It struck me as funny that I had just happened to be wearing all black when I left, but being too lazy to go back and change, I set out all the same.

As I left, dark thunderclouds loomed over the West side of town, bursting with brilliant flashes of lighting. I could feel the winds picking up, blowing the cool night air past me, as the smell of oncoming rain filled the air. It reminded me of Murree and the nights when I would lie awake watching the clouds pour over the hilltops as they boomed and crashed, shaking the windows in their frames. This night, as I rode, gazing at the sky beside me I just wanted the sky to break loose. “Give me a real good storm”, I prayed, as I caught myself again spending too much time looking at the sky and not enough looking at the path below me that was getting darker by the minute.

Our town was wrapping up the week of its annual Westerner Days fair, and as I rode past the park where the events had been held for the day, I was met by all kinds of people walking back to the cars, or getting on buses, hurrying to beat the darkness and the oncoming rain. Then, turning back toward town I coasted through quiet neighborhoods and shut up houses, as the sky threw a bluish-purple light over the streets with its streaks of lightning. Only as I started to turn home did the drops of rain begin to fall, slow and scattered at first, but building in time. Thankfully I wasn’t far from home, as very quickly the rain grew harder and harder, though still sparse. In fact, I had reached my neighborhood with little more than a drop on myself, though I could hear them landing all around me on the road and roofs of the houses. Then, just before my street I had the pleasure of having a marble size drop of hail hit me right on my head, stinging like a rock. I made it the rest of the way, holding one hand over head and eyes as I pulled into the driveway, moments before the clouds burst.

By the time I had gotten inside after leaving my bike in the garage, rain was showering down from above. I kept all the house lights off. I could see the sky better that way, and I watched as huge trees nearby bent over in the wind. Occasional lightning would light up the whole backyard to reveal the thousands of drops that filled the sky and the grass that that glistened in the dark.

A prairie storm isn’t quite the same as a monsoon storm in Pakistan, but I felt that night that God made sure it got pretty close – close enough enough for me. And that evening I lay in my bed and listened the the rain continue to drench the earth below, and fell asleep happy.

hail

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An Evening in Karachi

Thinking back on the past few weeks and my time in Pakistan, I hardly know how to relate the mix of emotions that seem to wrestle around in my heart. I can clearly remember the drive to the airport on my last day, squeezed into a small white taxi with my brother, watching the Murree hills fade away from me. Lush trees were soon replaced by sparser shrubs, the cool mountain air grew hot, and my shirt began to stick to back. I watched as I was taken away, feeling like a banished criminal, being led from the place I wanted to stay. I know that it was me who decided when to leave, and when my flight would be, but somehow it felt forced, like a sentence carried out routinely. Like visiting hours were over.

As I sat on the plane, surrounded by Pakistanis, I remembered the joy I felt when I had taken this same flight coming to Pakistan, and the anticipation with which I watched out the windows to see the small houses with flat roofs and little Japanese vehicles that dotted the airport tarmac. Now I thought of the airports in Canada, where clean Fords drove around, pulling the long baggage trains toward the plane, and not a plastic bag was to be found on the grass around the runway. Something about Canada always seems to be a little too clean – antiseptic maybe.

I had a pleasant surprise the evening of my flight as my brother and I landed in Karachi, and rode a shuttle to the nearby airport hotel. Thinking we were heading straight out of the country, I had forgotten that we would be spending the night here, and that my time in Pakistan was not quite over yet. Instead, I gazed out the window at the silhouettes of trees and buildings as the air of a Karachi night blew warm in my face – enjoying Pakistan for a short while longer. I hadn’t even planned to be down in the Sindh, and then, unexpectedly there, I felt I couldn’t have left without being there first. I felt as though, in some ways, I hadn’t truly been to Pakistan without being in Karachi, with its lights, its memories, and bustle of activity.

Our hotel seemed like an oasis. It was surprisingly enjoyable, ignoring the not-so-clean looking sheets, and the cockroaches that skittered across the floor (thankfully they were only small ones – much better than the huge ones we sometimes found in our bathroom in the Sindh. The ones that would take a few good smacks to kill, and that would then wiggle their massive legs feverishly until you had washed them down into the toilet in the ground).

Once at the hotel, my brother and I made our way to the restaurant for a buffet of various Pakistani food. It was evident that I would be given ample opportunities to enjoy the little things of Pakistan for just one more night, and I made the most of it, with rice, vegetables, chicken and roti. After the meal, my brother and I, tired as we were, made our way around the compound, following the signs to tour the games room, the work-out room, and even a swimming pool, which was closed for the night. We managed to pull ourselves up high enough up to wall to peer over at the still water in the pool. I texted my Mum that evening and told her we had decided not to go to Canada quite yet, and that instead we would enjoy the hotel for a few more days, and give ourselves time to enjoy the pool and the other facilities. If only it had been true.

After our explorations of the hotel were complete, my brother and I returned to the room for cool showers. The water was soothing, as I let the cold water rinse off the sweat that stuck to my clothes. I lay damp in my bed, staring up at the roof, listening to the sound of the water as my brother showered. Again, questions and emotions poured into my head. This time I closed my eyes, and prayed aloud instead – going before the one Person that I knew would stay with me, that has a plan for me, and that will give a purpose to each morning and fresh joy to fulfill it as well.

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The Worst Airport in the World

I believe I truly have found the worst airport in the world. No, it’s not Karachi, or Islamabad, or even the intense security checks of Kabul International Airport. The worst airport in the world is in Toronto Pearson International Airport.

On the way to Canada from Pakistan, I explained to my brother Stephen how I couldn’t understand the baggage carousels in Canada. In Pakistan the luggage comes in on belted conveyors that loop back and forth throughout the room. These, to me, are obviously much lighter and therefore cheaper to run as well. In Canada however, the luggage drops down onto a small carousel with shifting steel pieces, that must cost a fair bit more to run than the light conveyors in Pakistan. To add to this, baggage comes down slowly from the floor above, where it then slides down onto the carousel, not only slamming into the bags below, but sometimes stacking two, if not three bags on top of each other. This means that if your bag happened to land on top of a couple others, you then have to reach as high as you can to fight your bag off a revolving mountain.

Before seeing the baggage carousels, my brother told me that he liked the way they were built in Canada and that he thought they were “cool.” However, after almost an hour and a half of waiting for bags to slowly drop down before we could wrestle them off off one another as they quickly slipped by, and almost pushed him into a railing as they went by, he had converted to my hatred of Canadian carousels.

To add to this, Toronto Pearson International is the only airport I know of where a person has to pay to use the baggage carts that are normally provided for the public. And after paying a whole two dollars to get one, one finds oneself with a pitiful little cart that cannot go backwards, and that needs to have its handle pressed to move at all. As always, I was not impressed. The only time that I found this cart closely useful was when it didn’t roll away from me as I loaded my bags from it into the car in the parking lot. It seems the only thing it does well is to keep from moving.

After using the cart, the thing should then be returned to it’s cart ‘corral’, where usually a person in dealt out twenty-five cents by the machine attached, to make one feel a little better about their financial loss over this awful contraption. Instead, upon returning the poor cart to the ground floor, my brother and I were left empty handed by the machine, two dollars poorer and feeling very much cheated.

So, Toronto Pearson International Airport, it’s official, you are the worst airport in the world.

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Getting Warmer

Sitting on the plane on my way to Islamabad, I am finally beginning to realize that I really am going to be in Pakistan soon. It wasn’t until I reached Toronto that the white faces in waiting lounges began to grow scarcer, and very soon I found myself almost alone amongst Pakistanis traveling back as well. And I, the out of place white face, finally felt oddly at home again. All around me, Urdu has replaced the usual sounds of English, and with the flavourful taste of chicken curry and rice for supper on my flight, I know I’m getting closer. I’m getting warmer.

A flight attendant talks to me, asking where I’m going. Soon I find out he has studied in the same hills as I have, and even visited my school at times for sports matches. Another tells me that her family is originally from the Murree area as well. We talk about the beauty of the hills and the mountains, and how wonderful the weather is there. Definitely getting warmer.

I feel myself aging when I fly. When I was younger, the twenty hours or so of transit were easily filled, movie after movie, as I made my way through the available options. I can even remember watching a single movie two or three times in a row. This time I haven’t even touched my tv. In fact, on my last flight I found myself trying to turn down the lighting on the screen, just so it wouldn’t bother me as I closed my eyes and drifted into intermittent sleep.

Sleep. The one thing I hope to reap out of this trip. I know that the instant I set foot on Pakistani soil, sleep will become precious but fleeting commodity, so I hope to get as much of it as I can beforehand. With so little time and so many people to talk to, I’m not sure that shut-eye will be very high on the priority list. I still remember the days before my own high school graduation, as I talked late into the night with the other guys in my class. It’s not the nights you slept that you’ll remember, I told myself. It’s the ones that you didn’t sleep that make the best memories. And looking back, I think I can agree with that. It’s certainly not a principle I would hold to every day, but at the special times in life, its good to keep in mind what’s really important. I just take comfort in knowing that if all these late nights kill me, at least I’ll die happy.

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Fix Ourselves

Books tell us a lot about ourselves. When I go home to visit my grandparents about an hour from my college, I often go and help out at a second hand store where my Grandmother volunteers. If I’m not needed hauling a heavy box or bag, then I’m with the books, sorting through piles of titles that come in from everywhere. In some ways, it’s like sorting through boxes of treasure, only a large majority seem dull, dusty and all too uninteresting for me to ever spend time flipping through their pages. But even those that are boring often have a story to tell. What’s most interesting about sorting through these books is the way they reflect people, time periods and mindsets.

I’m not always quite sure what to do when I come across a book about how the evil communists in Russia are the antichrist, planning to take over Israel. Or when I find an action-romance novel splayed with a large picture of a Nazi plane engulfed in flames, headed downward to its destruction, while a couple embrace in the foreground. I wonder what kind of stories we will begin to tell ourselves over the years. Will pictures of dying Taliban or exploding North Korean warheads make up the background of our books, while a man and woman gaze into each other’s eyes in the forefront, reminding us that sappy emotional romance is really where our priorities lie?

Books tell us about ourselves. As I place books out on the shelves at the store, I’m surprised at the amount of books there are offering help for the many issues in our lives. Ten steps to a healthy marriage. How to find financial satisfaction. How to reign in your insane children. How to live without stress. How to live without worry. A hundred ways to simplify your life. A thousand ways to spend your money on books that will try to tell you how to fix your family, marriage, business and life. We try to fix ourselves.

The very fact that we have so many books on how to do all these things should perhaps indicate that most people are still looking. Just like the existence of doctors tells us that humans have problems. We see the brokenness of society in the simple laws of supply and demand. We look high and low for something that will finally satisfy, heal and direct. And we look everywhere but up. The true answer to all our confusion and our searching can be found in one Person. But too often we just don’t want to find it.