Something to Whine About...

Everyday on my way to work I get irritated with Americans. And this isn’t because I actually see any irritating Americans, nor is it a general irritation with heavy handed, American foreign policy. No, in fact, it’s not even really Americans that make me irritated every morning, it’s their embassy. The American Embassy in Karachi is located right on a busy thoroughfare that connects two important parts of the city. So to protect the embassy, the Pakistani Rangers (like the New York Rangers, but paid a whole hell of a lot less) put up random barriers at each end that you have to maneuver around. They have lots of fun shifting them around each morning, so you can never be sure which side you should be veering toward. What this accomplishes, is bringing four lanes of traffic abruptly down to one lane in an immense bottleneck. Of course, this makes all the drivers frantic and you end up with your cars inches apart. Sometimes it reminds me of movies or cartoons when three people try to squeeze through a door at once and get stuck, when of course, if they had just waited their turn, there would be no problem.

Once you get through the barriers, you can basically just take off at full speed again, so its kind of a funny little obstruction. It seems that they slow everyone down so that they can turn away the vans, trucks and motorcycles. Reason being that someone bombed the Embassy a few years back and these vehicles are apparently the most suspicious culprits. They’ll even stop and question you if your driving an old beat up car. What would stop you from stealing a brand new car, packing it full of explosives and driving right through is beyond me.

There are dudes stationed all along this road in little huts and armored vehicles, and seriously, it’s got to be one of the most boring jobs on the force. They just sit there watching the street. Sometimes they train their machine guns onto your car and follow you along, which is a little disconcerting. I’m just waiting for the day some dude falls asleep at the trigger and sprays the street with a little fun and games.

What’s worse, is when I’m coming home from work in one of our little Suzuki High-Top vans, which of course is a possible bomb carrier and banned from travelling that road. So that means I have to go way around in my little non-air-conditioned sewing machine with wheels. Then I get home all sweaty and have to take yet another shower, and I shake my fist in the air and curse that embassy.

And then the other day someone told me that there’s only office staff in that embassy anyway, no important diplomats or anything. That makes me even more irritated. Well, not so much irritated as annoyed, and I suppose not so much annoyed as put out, and I suppose really, in the scheme of things it doesn’t really bother me much at all, but in the end, I like to pretend that my life is really tough. But it’s not.