Bhutto died on Thursday afternoon. Once confirmed word
spread fast from mouth to mouth to mobile phone. What began as a certain
posture between two men talking in a doorway spread quickly up and down the
street.
With regrettable, practiced, efficiency shopkeepers and
traders pulled down shutters and packed away stalls. The fish shop at the foot
of our hotel turned off the gas and staked away piles of fillets prepared for
that evening’s eating. Everywhere the lights went out.
Within an our all was quiet, save the television in the
foyer showing wall to wall Benazir tributes, newsflash and speculation. We took
our dinner, bought just before Rawalpindi closed down, and went upstairs to our
room.
For security, or from respect, Pakistan was still for three
days. There were exceptions of course. The paan man never closed his
stall, not even as the taxis and auto-rickshaws were abandoning the streets.
The Good Luck Sweet Store continued to trade, selling cakes and chocolates and
delicious carrot halwa from behind a façade of day old newspapers.
Children played in the now empty streets, games of cricket
and impromptu football. From the top of our hotel, where we stayed most of that
first day, we watched boys flying kites. Paper thin, and hundreds of metres in
the air.
Saturday was quiet again but Sunday began to move as locals
grew tired of the enforced stillness. The baker opened, as did market stalls
selling apples and mandarins and dried fruit. We took ever longer walks,
surprised at the absolute lack of police or military presence. Took pleasure in
the quiet, the lack of horns or traffic, the clean air that invaded the city
after years of smoke and haze.
