And she grabbed my......

This was my closest interaction with the beautiful women of Pakistan in Pakistan... curious?Read on! So, Basit and one of his buddies took me out to Gelato Affair for coffee on one of my first nights in Islamabad. The evening was filled with tons of sugary coffees and ice cream... it was a moment to be captured in film.As most of you know, my digi has been unwillingly donated to a burglar in London, so it was back to the old film camera, a fact that I didn't realize had consequences for the latter part of the evening! Basit, being a growing celebrity, had some of the waiters talking to him and apparently he said that its quite common for people to just come up and speak to him or ask him for autographs etc.We got one of the waiters to take our photo with the gelato bar in the background (ALL the tables were behind the camera).A number of seconds after the photo was taken, a decently attractive woman in a hijab came up asking for my camera. I figured she wanted a photo with Basit but as she grabbed my camera, I realised she wanted my camera and kept looking for the LCD screen to see if we had taken her photo!Apparently, that was quite a huge deal to her and was ready to expose my film to keep a photo of hers from getting out.

As Basit, his friend, this lady, now her husband who's returned from making a phone call, his sister all got into an argument my thoughts turned to what it would be like in a Pakistani jail and how thats the ONE place I really didn't wanna visit for mistankenly taking a photo of this woman!All this, besides the fact that it was virtually impossible for us to take her photo without a SUPERwide lens as she sat at the back far corner of the Cafe. After what felt like an eternity with all of us up on our feet, arguing about what to do with the film and the camera, as I hung on to the camera strap while she tried fiddling with the camera, we had a rescuer.
He came to our rescue after the waiters, owner and tables from where we took the photo failed to calm her down.He was sitting with four or five other women, all of whom nodded their heads in agreement as he told this lady's husband that it would have been impossible for us to take HER photo without HIS ladies being photographed as her table was behind his (relative to ours) and he confirmed that we hadn't photographed them.So here's our photo!
Do you follow what I'm sayin' 'cuz I think I just confused myself. In the end, they left in a huff as I quickly put my camera away and we thanked the entire cafe for coming to our rescue.I've been a lot more conscious about taking photos since then!It was definitely eye opening in terms of how different man-woman relationships are in public in Pakistan.This includes the exclusion of women entirely at the local dhabas . They either have the food delivered or huddle in cars and eat.