Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

moment the diplomatic plane took off―and they could hold a “wheels up” party to recover. I joked that maybe I would only pretend to leave, then sneak back to celebrate with them.

Under extraordinary security, we flew to Lahore, the capital of Punjab. The Pakistanis were so afraid of an incident that they positioned hundreds of soldiers along the route from the airport. Unlike modern Islamabad, Lahore is an ancient site with glorious Moghul architecture. The roads had been cleared of all normal traffic, and the ordinarily teeming city seemed depopulated. On parts of our route, colorful printed cloth had been hung on clotheslines to hide the slums alongside the highway. But where the material had fallen down, I could see children and emaciated dogs scrambling around piles of garbage.

We drove out to a rural village that, despite its lack of electricity, was considered advantaged because it had a health clinic and a school that educated girls. The clinic was a concrete-block building staffed by a handful of doctors and technicians who were responsible for an area with a population of 150,000 people. The staff was heroic in its efforts but lacked many crucial resources. We brought donations of medical supplies and necessities, as we tried to do wherever we visited. Patients, mostly mothers with their children, sat quietly on benches against the wall. They seemed astonished to see so many Americans in their little village but graciously allowed Chelsea and me to hold their babies and ask them questions through an interpreter.

Another concrete building a hundred yards away housed the primary school for girls.

That was as far as their education was likely to go, because the nearest secondary school―high school―was for boys only. I spoke to a woman who had ten children, five boys and five girls. She sent her five boys to the secondary school, but her girls had nowhere to go because they couldn’t travel to or attend the nearest girls’ school. She wanted a secondary school nearby for her girls. She talked very openly about birth control and said that if she had known then what she knew now, she wouldn’t have had so many children.

We visited a multigenerational, crowded family compound just behind the school, with children and animals roaming around the courtyard. The oldest family members sat in hammocks watching the commotion created by my visit, while the male head of the family greeted me warmly and showed me several of the compound’s one-room homes, which contained sleeping and eating areas for individual families. Communal activity took place outdoors, where the women gathered to prepare and cook food. Two young girls showed Chelsea how to use black kohl coloring on her eyes. Fashion is a universal feminine touchstone.

I had given a lot of thought to how Chelsea and I should dress on the trip. We wanted to be comfortable, and under the sun’s heat, I was glad for the hats and cotton clothes I had packed. I didn’t want to offend people in the communities I was visiting, but I was also wary of appearing to embrace customs reflecting a culture that restricted women’s lives and rights. On Jackie Kennedy’s historic tour of India and Pakistan in 1962, she was photographed wearing sleeveless shifts and knee-length skirts―not to mention a midriffbaring sari that caused an international sensation. Public opinion seemed to have grown more conservative in South Asia since then. We consulted State Department experts, who offered tips on how to behave in foreign countries without embarrassing ourselves or offending our hosts. The South Asia briefing papers warned against crossing legs, pointing fingers, eating with the “unclean” left hand or initiating physical contact with the opposite sex, including a handshake.

I made sure to pack several long scarves that I could throw around my shoulders or put over my head if I entered a mosque. I had noticed the way Benazir Bhutto covered her hair with a light scarf. She wore a local form of dress called shalwar kameez, a long, flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive. Chelsea and I decided to try out this style. For the extravaganza at the Lahore Fort that night, I wore a red silk shalwar kameez, and Chelsea donned one in a turquoise green that complemented her eyes. The Governor of Punjab had invited five hundred guests to the red sandstone fortress, once headquarters of the medieval Moghul empire, that loomed on a hill overlooking the city. We arrived on a clear, starry evening and stepped out of our cars into a scene from the Arabian Nights. Beneath a fireworks display, troupes of musicians and dancers greeted us on either side of a long red carpet. Camels and horses draped in jeweled robes and headdresses shuffled and spun to flute music. Chelsea and I were entranced and squeezed each other’s hands in wonder. Two huge wind-carved turrets guarded the entrance to the inner fort, where thousands of flickering oil lamps lit the courtyards and passageways, and the air was fragrant with rose petals. I looked at my enchanting, suddenly grown-up daughter wrapped in brilliant silk, and wished Bill were there to see her, too.

The evening ended in a dash to the airport and a flight to New Delhi. I had wanted to visit India ever since I was a freshman in college and Margaret Clapp, the President of Wellesley College, left to head a women’s college in Madurai, India. Before she went, she made the rounds to our dormitories, describing what she would be doing. I was intrigued.

Before I decided on law school, I had considered going to India to study or teach.

A quarter-century later, I was making my first trip there, representing my country. Bill had asked me to go because he wanted to oversee the development of good relations with India after forty years of the Indian policy of non-alignment and its ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I wanted to see for myself the world’s largest democracy and learn