As the plane flew low over Lahore before landing, Blake was surprised to see water shining between some of the streets leading into the city. Quite a change from Karachi, he thought. I hope I have a little time tomorrow to look around.

The seminar was scheduled for the next morning. The city government had given permission just yesterday, but Blake had made his plans to come a week earlier, betting that the local opposition would buckle under the pressure. After all, he'd arranged for the Pakistani Ambassador at the UN to receive over two hundred fax messages urging that this seminar be permitted. Of course, many of these messages were sent by members of his organization using different names and fax machine numbers. A few other NGOs had pitched in, and they'd been helped by some of the ministers in the Action Alert Network for Religious Freedom. Using their Internet List they could generate up to a hundred responses within four hours. Not bad for a small organization.

When the wheels were finally on the tarmac, Blake heaved a sigh of relief. Ever since he'd been on a plane to Delhi that had blown three tires during its landing, he'd been especially wary about flying in South Asia. He checked for his passport in his coat pocket before he remembered that he wouldn't need it, because he'd just come up from Karachi. He was carrying a suitcase that rolled on wheels containing his computer, a clean dress shirt and a fresh set of underwear. He'd left his international bag at the hotel in Karachi, where he planned to stop before leaving the country. That made is possible to come quickly through the baggage area and out to the exit.

Blake looked for a sign or a friendly face, as he emerged from the relative security of the terminal into the mass of taxi drivers and baggage carriers blocking the exit. He didn't see Joseph but then caught sight of a sign with the initials "RFA." Holding tightly to the handle of his bag, he pushed his way through the crowd until he reached the sign.

"I'm Blake," he shouted above the noise of the crowd and the traffic moving in front of the terminal.

A short man with a narrow face lowered the sign and offered his hand. "Mark Masih. Glad you made it. Follow me."

Slowly they pushed their way to the street and then, more easily, crossed the parking lot to a car that was waiting. Masih put Blake's bag in the trunk and motioned to him to get in the front seat.

The sun was going down, as the car moved through the heavy traffic into the city. "Did you eat on the plane?" Masih asked him.

"Yes. Shortly before we landed. I'm not very hungry now."

"Good. I thought that would be the case. Then we can go to the theater tonight, if you wish."

"The theater?"

"Lahore is the center of Punjabi culture. It's a much more open place than Karachi in many ways. The theater here is very popular."

"Great. Let's go."

The car took them down a boulevard with a pool of water between the lanes, past stone and brick buildings that looked very British, to a two story stone structure with broad steps leading up to the entrance. The driver dropped them off, and they went up the steps. Inside the vestibule was packed with people. The mirrors on the walls and the dim lighting made the room seem larger than it actually was. Many of the men were smoking, and clouds of gray smoke circled around the lights in the ceiling. Blake was irritated by the cigarette smoke. In this part of the world there was no such thing as a non-smoking area in public places.

Some of the women were dressed very smartly in Western outfits and wore shoes with high heels. Others wore Punjabi pants suits. A number of families with children were also waiting for the play to begin. It seemed that the theater was a real community experience in Lahore.

He was glad when the doors opened and they took their seats, because the smokers put out their cigarettes before entering the theater. A few minutes after they had filed in, the play began. He couldn't understand the Punjabi dialogue, but he was able to figure out the plot of the play. A young girl was brought from somewhere outside the city to a place where several women and men hung out. It seemed she was being trained in dance and manners. Then she appeared as an older adolescent. There was a lot of laughter, so he knew the play was a comedy. When a man paid money and took the young woman into a back room on the set, he realized that she had grown up and was now a prostitute. It appeared that her clients were wealthy businessmen. In this Islamic society he'd never expected that the play would be set in a whorehouse and would dramatize the coerced prostitution of a young country girl.

The play ended when one of the customers fell in love with the prostitute. It appeared that they would live happily ever after, but it wasn't clear to Blake whether or not he would free her from the whorehouse. Perhaps he simply paid to keep her there, as his mistress. When Blake asked Masih after they left the theater about the plot, the young Punjabi basically confirmed his understanding of the play.

By the time he reached his hotel Blake was numb with fatigue. Masih said he would come by at 9 in the morning so they could visit an old fort in the city before the seminar. Blake thanked him, then picked up his key, went into his room, and immediately went to bed. Before he fell asleep, however, he thought of the young girl being carried away from her poor relatives in the countryside. Children are bought and sold like cattle in this country! he despaired.

When his alarm went off the next morning, Blake was momentarily disoriented. Where was he? Then he remembered the play the night before and quickly got up, showered and shaved.

He rang for breakfast to be brought to his room. He only wanted tea and toast, and he'd discovered yesterday evening when he'd arrived that there was hardly anyone in the hotel. He didn't want to be the only person in the dining room having breakfast.

The Greenbury hotel was a relic of the British colonial period. It had been built almost a century ago. The rooms were spacious, and the heavy masonry kept them cool. But the paint was peeling from the walls, and the rugs were threadbare. There was hot water, however, and he was grateful for that. He'd once stayed in a cold water hotel in Pakistan. He always tried to economize on his accommodations, but he looked forward to a hot shower, especially in hot and dusty countries.

The Greenbury had been a five-star hotel before such a system of hotel accommodations was devised. Now, he guessed, it was a two-star hotel. He'd asked Paul to arrange something cheaper than the nearby Sheraton. Actually, the Greenbury was very handy to the downtown and historical parts of the city of Lahore.

When he heard the knock on the door, he called, "Come in." The waiter brought in a pot of tea and toast and set it on the table. "Thank you," Blake said, as he handed the waiter a tip. Alone again, Blake sat down, poured himself a cup of tea, and mixed in a bit of milk. He liked his tea "white," as the English say. At home Blake drank coffee in the morning, but he found the coffee in Pakistan too strong and bitter for his taste. So, in keeping with the British history of this part of the world, he drank tea instead.

Blake spread margarine on the cold, damp toast. He preferred to eat nan in Pakistan and India rather than toast, as the only sliced bread available in these countries was soft, white bread. If it was toasted too much, it became hard. But when toasted only slightly, it quickly cooled. He'd tried this morning to order nan, which in Pakistan was often made of whole wheat flour and was much more substantial and nutritious than white bread. Moreover, nan usually came nice and warm, when served in a hotel. Unfortunately, he'd been told that it wasn't available in the Greenbury hotel in the early part of the day.

The tea was hot and tasted good. Many years earlier Blake had stayed in a hotel in Bombay where he hadn't dared to drink even the tea. It was, he believed, a zero-star hotel. Blake had made the mistake of asking an Indian acquaintance to arrange an overnight at a "cheap" place, which is what he got. The room cost him less than a US dollar that night. The lock on the door had been kicked in at some point, so there was a heavy bar inside the room to secure the door. The toilet didn't flush, but there was a bucket for the shower that he used to pour water into the toilet bowl. He had to be very careful in the bathroom, however, because the wires connected to the light switch were exposed. A person could easily have been electrocuted in that room.

The sheets on the bed in that Indian zero-star hotel were stained, and before he went to sleep Blake noticed that there was a dead cockroach lying in the corner of the room. He was glad it wasn't alive and tried not to think of its relatives. He slept fitfully, as a train track ran behind the hotel and the trains ran all through the night. In the morning, therefore, Blake was glad to repack his bag and leave. Turning to go, he saw that the dead cockroach in the corner was gone. Something larger must have come in the room during the night. He was glad he'd been asleep at that point.

Recalling that night in India, the Greenbury in Lahore looked pretty good in comparison. After finishing his tea, Blake used the toilet, brushed his teeth, and got ready to leave. He locked the door and stepped out onto the verandah to wait for his ride. Each of the rooms in the hotel had two screen doors that made a triangle in front of the entrance to a room. Apparently, this allowed the guest to step into the area just in front of the door and close the screens, before opening the door to the room. Did that help keep mosquitoes out? In front of his door the screen doors had been opened and were pushed back against the walls on either side of the door. Either there were no mosquitoes, he mused, or else the hotel was setting him up!

A broad lawn and a high wall separated the verandah from the street, and an access road ran along the front of the verandah, entering from the street at one end of the hotel and exiting to the street at the other. In a few minutes a dusty car came along this road and stopped in front of him. After Blake stepped off the verandah, Mark Masih greeted him with a friendly wave of his hand.

Fifteen minutes later they came to the older part of the city where the ancient fort was located. It was a massive structure built during the Mogul era. Its ruler had spared no expense in furnishing the fortress with carved marble and inlaid stone, but now the building had largely been stripped of its assets. Walking through the empty rooms, Blake wondered about the hundreds of men who had been forced to work on this vast structure for years.

Near the center of the fort he looked down into a lower level that contained tunnels leading to other forts and cities. These were blocked off now, but Masih told him that they supposedly allowed messengers and reinforcements to travel to the fort when it was under siege. As they came out of the fort, they walked down stairs that were two and a half to three feet wide. These allowed elephants, Masih said, to be taken into the fort. Blake tried to image what the fort was like in its heyday, with elephants in armor coming down the broad staircase on their way to a battle outside the fort. It must have been quite a scene.

When they came out of the fort, Blake noticed a small elephant tethered to a battered tree. The elephant looked tired and sick-not at all like the great elephants of war he'd imagined. The owner seemed to be offering photographs with the elephant to tourists. When the elephant dropped a large pile of manure to the street, Blake suddenly realized that a fort full of great elephants must have been a very messy place.

The driver brought up the car, and they both climbed in. From warrior elephants to tourist photographs and dusty cars, Blake reflected. The feudal society of the past had disappeared in many ways, yet it continued in ruins and in social structures like the blasphemy law. He glanced at his watch. They had an hour to get to the seminar before it started. He hoped all would go well today. A successful seminar would be one small step toward greater freedom in this terribly oppressive society.