Running away from our saviours

We were driving through Firdous Market when the police randomly decided to interrogate us. How can we feel safe?

When George Fulton says he is returning to the UK for security reasons, it is understandable. When Pakistani men say they want to go to another country for the sake of someone else’s security, it’s unfortunate.

When I read a story about reports on how scores of young men were applying for jobs to serve as security officers in a Middle Eastern country my first reaction was don’t these people realise that they are needed in their own country.

Later, I came to know my maid’s son had applied for the same job. I was flabbergasted. She said:

“It is better that he guards another country instead of losing an arm or a leg in a blast here or becomes a mistaken target of a bullet that was not meant to kill him.”

I didn’t agree with it then but a few days later I had change my mind. We were on our way home, around midnight, in the office car. Near Firdous Market, in Lahore’s Gulberg, I noticed a police van was following us. Eventually it caught up with us and our car came to a halt.

Six men jumped out and surrounded our vehicle. One of the police officers literally pulled the driver out and pushed him to a corner. Another knocked at my locked door. I refused to lower my window and perhaps because they realised that a woman was sitting in the back seat, they moved away. The policemen hurriedly got back into their vehicle and drove away. Our driver returned, and told us that the policemen had mistaken the car for terrorists.

I thought to myself that how could the police have possibly taken us to be terrorists. Also the methods used by the police were, to say the least, unorthodox. And then it made me think of my maid’s son, who wouldn’t mind moving to a strange new land because he would at least have some semblance of safety.

I understood why someone would run away.