Detox

At the Islamabad airport, before I departed for Bangkok, I got frisked in two curtained-off "ladies' screening" stations because if men and women walked through the same metal detector we might contaminate each other with electro-magnetic particles. I filled out three forms that asked obsessively for my "husband's/father's name," and each time I wrote Griff's name (sorry Dad) only because I like imagining the poor soul who reads the immigration cards trying to figure out how my last name isn't the same as Griff's. And as Griff and I boarded the bus that would take us from the terminal gate to the plane, the driver said to me, "Excuse me! Madame! You must sit on the lady's seat!" He pointed to a single chair separated, as though a quarantine, from the rows of benches. I turned and watched Griff walk away from me and sit down. I looked again at the lady's seat. My right fist tightened into a white ball, and I quickly grabbed my right wrist to be sure I would not throw a punch at the driver. As I lowered myself into my seat, I reminded myself that I was on my way to Thailand, that I would have deliverance if I could just get myself on the God damn plane without committing my first assault.

This is how I was, teetering on the edge, primed to go from pleasant to ballistic at Ferrari speed, when we touched down in Thailand. At the airport, all the conveyer belts and departure/arrival screens worked. The place was not crawling with 19-year-old boys in uniforms with semi-automatic weapons. Women accounted for half of the crowds. No one stared at me. I felt as though I was in shock.

When we walked into our fabulous Asian Art Deco hotel room, which has purple walls and red doors and colored paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, I felt hopped up on e at a rave. The colors, the vibrancy, and the creativity all mesmerized me as though I were a prisoner who had just emerged from solitary confinement. Finally, I wrested myself from the pulsating kaleidoscope, to go for a walk. As we exited the hotel lobby, the doorman looked at me, put his hands together, as though in prayer, and bowed his head. My first reaction was that I wanted to drop kick him. What I saw, fresh from Islamabad, was the Thai version of the gender bullshit that prevents nearly all Pakistani men from shaking my hand. But before my rage surged beyond my control, he bowed to Griff, who had the sense to bow back. And I realized suddenly that I had just been incredibly rude to this man in that I had refrained from exchanging his greeting – just as, in Pakistan, I’m supposed to refrain from making eye contact with men. I bowed, and he laughed, and I, though uneasy with expressing unmitigated delight in public, laughed too.

When we wandered into a coffee shop, I noticed people all around me laughing. I was certain, at first, that they were laughing at me, and I hurriedly checked to see if my fly was unzipped or it I had a piece of lettuce wedged between my teeth. I couldn’t find anything wrong, and just as I considered leaving, I realized that the people around me were not only laughing about something completely unrelated to me, but also that they weren’t even thinking about me. I was nowhere in their minds, and with this revelation came the most profound sense of deliverance. I was free.

And I felt free, too, walking around outside. No one stared at me. If I wanted to put my hair in a ponytail, I could simply lift up my arms and do just that – I did not have to wait until I got home or contort myself strangely to avoid the dire event that my shirt might ride up to reveal a sliver of skin. I wanted to thank every maniacal taxi driver who sped past me instead of slowing down with his head hanging out the window to watch the apparently fascinating spectacle of a Western woman perambulating. If I accidentally brushed up against a man, I said excuse me, and neither of us thought anything of any meaning had occurred. As I spoke to Griff, I felt a lightness, a foreign sense of abandon, that I struggled to diagnose. And then I realized I felt liberated because I wasn’t worried that the room was bugged or that ISI agents were listening to me.

Near the end of the day, a motorcade with a member of the monarchy drove by us, and my first thought was that I had better skedaddle to avoid the cross fire of an assassination attempt. And then I noticed that there was only one security officer on the sidewalk with a gun. And that none of the people in the cars had guns trained on the crowds. And that the onlookers were cheering and smiling. Because this was something akin to a parade, and I, finally, was in no way part of the spectacle.