Up north and personal: Be my guest

The lonely nook of the mountains up north sees some strange visitations.

Guests can be strange creatures and, just when you think they can’t get any odder, along comes one to smash all previous records to smithereens!

Some months ago, an Islamabadi friend had introduced me to a lovely young lady from Saudi Arabia who wanted to see my garden. I took her and her husband around my garden and was happily explaining the intricacies of permaculture to — let me call her ‘Saima’ — when she suddenly grabbed my arm, pulled me close and whispered, “I really love Abdul. I really, really do love him.”

Knowing that her husband, who was picking tomatoes in another part of the garden, was not called Abdul, I was a little taken aback. “I can’t imagine life without Abdul,” she went on. “He is everything to me”.

I must have looked perplexed, as I couldn’t fathom out why someone I’d never laid eyes on before, was baring her heart and soul as she stood, on a now-crushed clump of garlic chives, pinching with bejeweled, manicured-to-perfection fingers the bottom of her elegant silk robe up out of the soil.

“Abdul?” I eventually queried on realising that some kind of response was expected and wondering what on earth was going to come next.“Abdul?”

“Yes, Abdul. I love him in a way nobody could ever understand but…..I have a feeling that you just might.”

“Oh!” was just about all I could utter as my surprised eyebrows disappeared into my hairline.

“He comes everywhere with me, absolutely everywhere. I even brought him to Pakistan as I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him behind.”

Everywhere! She takes Abdul everywhere!

“Would you like to meet him?” she whispered while fluttering her mascara-encrusted eyelashes against delicately rouged cheeks. “He would so enjoy walking around your garden and checking out the beautiful plants.”

“Err, umm, mmmh…well…yes,” I said to the obviously desperate lady.

As I looked furtively around to see if there had been a late arrival I hadn’t spotted, Saima, heavy gold bangles clanking as she rooted in the folds of her immaculate robes, announced loudly: “Here, meet Abdul” leaving me dumbfounded as she handed over the terrapin that lives in her pocket!

Then there was the time that the same Isloo- ite friend phoned to say that he wanted to bring a couple of ladies up to visit me. He wouldn’t give the identity of the ladies concerned but said I was not to make lunch since they would bring it with them. Not being used to self-catering guests, I conjured up a huge pan of homemade soup with fresh rolls, plenty for what I expected would be the four of us but not, as it turned out, for the twenty odd guests who arrived in a convoy of expensive vehicles!

As three ladies were deftly ushered through the front gate, men in suits — with guns — positioned themselves on top of the neighbour’s roof, on the flat roof of another house close by and in my front garden. One brushed past me to check out the livingroom before the ladies entered! Not finding ‘enemies’ hiding underneath the dining table or even lingering out in the woodshed, this bodyguard, as he turned out to be, was about to check the bedroom when I told him, in no uncertain terms, “My guard dogs are in there so I wouldn’t open it if I were you.”

He backed rapidly off and took up position sitting, rather precariously, on the front garden wall which towers all of 13 feet above the road.

The ladies wanted to see my garden so we headed in that direction. I learnt that the guards were for the extremely pleasant wife of the gentleman who is now a former British Ambassador and for the equally nice wife of the British Military Attaché. The other lady was the artist wife of my friend. After an expedition amongst the burgeoning fruit trees and vegetable beds, I rushed inside to put on the soup and make tea whilst a veritable feast was being delivered from the huge hotel which drapes itself along the top of this particular mountain. The soup went down better than the feast which pleased me no end and then, British ladies being dog lovers, they asked to see my menagerie. Deciding to let out only the most biddable one, I let loose Pedro, an exceedingly fat Miniature Dachshund, only to have him dash, in very fine Dachshund style, straight out in to the front garden to take on the armed bodyguard with teeth barred and hackles well and truly risen.

The bodyguard was, luckily for Pedro, exceedingly slow on the draw: Pedro was snapping ferociously at his dancing feet well before he could extract his pistol from the leather confines of his shiny black holster, in perfect imitation of the biggest, toothiest crocodile you ever had the misfortune to lay your eyes on.

The guard — not Pedro — yelped loudly and leapt completely on top of the wall, teetering precariously in the direction of the long drop while Pedro — I swear this is true — laughed uproariously! Pedro was hauled back to the bedroom and locked in with his buddies while the guard quaked in his shoes for fear that the truly-vicious-when-called-for German Shepherd would also get out.

The visit was a surprising success and the Ambassadress, went away smiling, with plenty of tales to tell.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th, 2011.