The plane landed in Heathrow and we went through passport control. I got the fish eye because I was traveling on my Pakistani passport and because I’d been letting my beard grow for the past week or so. My Pakistani passport says I am Abdul Ismail Laghari, although I don’t believe anyone ever called me Abdul. The name means “slave of God” and Theodore means “God-lover,” which probably amounts to the same thing, and even my Pakistani family calls me Theo. I was actually baptized Theodore at the cathedral in Lahore, privately so as not to cause scandal. So I have been a kind of undercover person from birth almost, and I am bound to offend those who like neat classifications. The passport guy (one of those) looked at his computer for a few minutes to see whether I was the terrorist I seemed to be, but then he gave the passport back to me and moved his eyes to the next in line. I suppose I will have to get used to that when I travel now.

I bought half a dozen bottles of good scotch at the duty-free shop. I have a license to possess and consume booze within the borders of Pakistan, a state that’s officially teetotal but whose citizens behave a lot like the Americans did when religious fanatics banned alcohol there some years back. My booze license is one advantage to having two identities, and bottles of scotch make a nice gift or bribe.

They called my flight and I got on with my yellow duty-free bag bulging and there was the usual boarding mess, because everyone else on the plane had been shopping too and the overheads were jammed tight. I had a seat in the next-to-last row in coach and there was a Pakistani family behind me with a five-year-old girl who insisted on sitting on her mother’s lap and shrieked when the flight attendant made her buckle in for takeoff. As soon as the flight attendant turned her back, the dad took the belt off and put the kid back on the lap. This cycle went on several times until the flight attendant threatened to throw them off the plane, after which the kid howled and kicked the back of my chair until the plane was roaring down the runway and the flight attendants were belted in, at which point the dad blithely unstrapped the kid and returned her to the lap for good. I was back in Pakistan already, where no one pays attention to rules and family peace is the main goal of life. It felt just like home.

Customs in Lahore gave me some heat about the Scotch, but since I have a pale skin and spoke perfect Urdu (and had the booze license) the guy figured I was connected to the elite and let me through. My Auntie Rukhsana was waiting for me outside passport control, and I got a big hug from her, followed by a flood of tears-Oh, your poor mother, you poor boy-and so on, and I thought it was a little extreme, it’s not like either my mother and I were the center of family life among the Lagharis. She asked me with a kind of hungry desperation how our plan was going, and I said it was going as well as could be expected but the thing now was to find out where the hostages were being held and I had to be here to do that, and she asked me how I was going to proceed, all business now, the tears dried, and I said I still had some contacts and I’d ask around. She pumped me a little then, like the good journalist she is, but I put her off, like the good secret agent I am, and at last she quit and flashed me a smile. “Little Theo, all grown up!” she said. “We’re having a party for you tonight. I hope you are not too jet-lagged.”

“Not too,” I said. “I’m used to traveling. But I’m not exactly in the party mood.”

“Yes, I understand, and we all, or almost all, feel the same way. But here the family is the most important thing; whenever something happens in your life, good or bad, the family gathers and we all eat, eat. You don’t understand that maybe, but I think we must have such a gathering, because I think you will need our help in what you are going to do. So it is, in a sense, part of why you have come.”

“Okay, got it,” I said. I’m nothing if not culturally flexible. “Who all is going to be there?”

“Oh, just the immediate family, Jafar and our children and Nisar and his wife and children. They are dying to meet you.”

“And Seyd? He’s not coming?”

She made a face. “Oh, Seyd! That’s all we would need, an ISI-wallah and you in the same room.”

“Why not? I’m sort of an ISI-wallah myself. We could have an interesting conversation.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said my aunt darkly, and then turned to snarl in Mahji dialect at the beggars and porters who had surrounded us as soon as we left the terminal building. Another sign I was back home, people willing to carry heavy loads for a few cents, and other people treating them like dogs, and me as one of the non-dog higher beings: the feelings connected with that, and the near-solidity of the humid air, a sticky sludge of diesel, sewage, and hot spicy oils.

We got into her Mini and Rukhsana gunned the engine and pressed the horn, trusting the dog people to scramble out of our way, which they did, apparently without resentment, and she whipped us out into the exit road traffic.

I said the expected “Lahore Lahore hai,” and she laughed and replied in Mahji Panjabi.

“Yes, and can you still speak your cradle tongue, or have you forgotten?”

I answered in the same language. “I have not forgotten, Auntie, although I think that even you are more comfortable in English or proper Urdu.”

“Yes, but I am part of the cosmopolitan liberal elite that will be the ruin of pure Islamic Pakistan, according to my brother Seyd. I believe he has stopped using English entirely.”

“Then, we’ll have to speak Urdu when we meet.”

“You intend to visit Seyd?” She seemed astounded.

“Sure,” I said. “I need to find out what ISI knows about the kidnapping. I’m assuming he’ll be forthcoming. One of his relatives by marriage is among the hostages.”

“Whom he has always despised. Honestly, Theo, you cannot be so naïve. Don’t you understand that the people who did this atrocity are ISI pawns? I would not be surprised to learn that ISI arranged the whole affair.”

“Why would they do that?”

“A number of reasons. To embarrass the new government, who perhaps are not as bloodthirsty or purely Islamic as they would like. To discredit anyone working for peace with India. To curry favor with the mullahs. For money.”

“How money?”

“Well, if you have kidnapped one of the richest men in the world, I assume there will be money involved. I have heard rumors of negotiations. I have heard of lunches up in Pindi between businessmen, strangers, and high officials of the military and Inter-Services Intelligence. Something is going on. It is well known the whole country is for sale, so why shouldn’t our terrorists be for sale as well?”

“If that were true we’d have bin Laden by now. No one’s collected the twenty-five million.”

“Oh, well, those are Pashtuns. In any case, betraying a leader is a different affair entirely to selling a hostage.” Then she yelled, “Get out my way, you shit-eater, go rape your sister!” out the window at a multicolored bus as she whipped across several lanes to make a left turn.

“You’re not going to Model Town Park?” I said, as we changed direction.

“Oh, no, we are too fine for Model Town Park now. We have a house in Gulberg, which would have been quite convenient when the children were at school, but now we float around in it like fish in a tank. We have fifteen marlas, can you imagine?”

“That’s a good-sized house,” I said, falling easily back into the traditional calculations. A marla was 272 and a quarter square feet, so fifteen marlas was a big house for urban Pakistan.

“You must be doing very well, Auntie.”

“Oh, well, I am working and the children are grown and Jafar was made head of his division, and we did well on the Model Town house and some investments. You know, most people have small houses full of elderly relatives so we all take one another out to restaurants. When you are able to entertain in your own home that is a big something.”