Islamabad

It’s Sunday. I go for a lazy afternoon walk to Islamabad. The minibus leaves me square in square F-6/4, and many of the houses around are partially covered with sheets or clothes. I am approach square F-5 with the interior ministry, ministerial complex and the Pakistani TV - all in a few minutes walk from Marriott hotel. I am checking the map where the hotel is listed as address number one in the capital. There is no better target for busy media presence. The street to the hotel is blocked - better late than never - and inside are the journalists from Express News, Dawn TV etc. Reporters are talking in front of vans with sticking out satellite antennas. Commoners are not allowed in the complex through the main street, but police is directing the crowd how to bypass the security (?) through a ravine 50 m away. I join the crowd to get a closer look. No need to describe the condition of the road and the facade of a wing is almost gone. This part of Marriott (name is still there) is like a dolls house painted in black instead of pink. The ground under the buildings has a glass snow layer within at least a kilometer radius. The grass and sidewalks are covered with debris, and windows of nearby shops are missing. It’s Sunday, but the merchants sit around to guard their shops from looting - only the glass doors of banks have been mended. The usual suspects are the bearded brotherhood, Pakistan's premier intelligence agency (ISI) or even Americans, but no matter who do choose to bet on you won’t be very far from the truth - their interests are intertwined in a strange symbiosis as it was in Indonesia 2003. That’s all folks. I stayed in hotel Faisal, worth less than the explosives needed to be destroyed.