Pakistan to me...
...is dusty streets and brightly painted trucks, several people on one motorcycle and beggars tapping at your car window.
Pakistan to me is heat and flimsy shawls over dark hair, glittering embroidery and pink in almost every fabric.
Pakistan is spiced meat and deep-fried desserts soaked in sugar syrup, comfortable clothing and hard beds.
It's singing bollywood songs in the car, having a live-in cook and concern for a foreigner's relative inexperience with spice, the lilting and round sound of Urdu, and not understanding a word of an old lady's insistent chattering on the plane. It's eating with your hands and the smell of henna, jangling golden bangles on your wrist and comfortable leather kholapure; it's a nation's intense focus on marriage and a mosque in the moonlight with cool stone underfoot.
It's milk products and distinctive patterns and boring men's clothes; it's roti and personal drivers, bare feet and friendly people, mountain villages and late-night kulfi and big gatherings, but most of all... it's a friend's wedding.
