In the murky chaos, a large Pakistani man approaches.
"Where are you from?" he asks. It's a question that commonly precedes hello here when you're white. I explained I was from London. "London!" he hooted. "I live in London!" He proceeded to tell me exactly where on the Edgware Road his flat was situated. He then spoke to Michelle. "New York!" he cried. "I went to college in New York!"
It's the same reaction we've had from many of Pakistan's upper crust. If they haven't lived where you've lived, they have an auntie, or a son there. If they haven't been to your university (and they probably have) they have a student friend. So many Punjabi accents are flecked with an American twang or English intonation. Many of their owners have never left Pakistan.
There are some Pakistanis, I am told, who "enrich" their accents to adopt airs and graces. But a far better explanation, and one that frightens many here, is that the educated classes are leaving in their droves. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, writers, thinkers, artists - many are fleeing a country which has disappointed them. They are left with an untrustworthy government, a leader they are sure has his hands in the coffers, failing education and healthcare, and terrorism. Since Pakistan was formed as a nation over sixty years ago, they have been living behind barricades and in constant fear of their lives. It's a situation that can become all too normal, as a conversation I heard in the car a couple of days ago illlustrates:
"Aren't they living in Dubai now?"
"Oh no, they came back in the end."
"Why?"
"Well, of course, they have a livelihood here. It's your life or your livelihood, and you have to choose. But you also can't have a life without a livelihood..."
"Didn't he get kidnapped?"
"Oh, don't be silly child, not kidnapped. He was only held at gunpoint."
Almost one in 50 Pakistanis - 3.25 million - are expatriates living abroad, mostly in the US, UK and the United Arab Emirates. Around 1,800,000 leave Pakistan every year. Most are poor migrant workers, but not all: considering that a good chunk of these are from the educated classes - a tiny layer of the total population - Pakistan has something of a brain drain situation.
There's little faith in the country's reputation abroad, a situation which the jet-setting club are all too aware of. I've been interviewed this week by three different Asian TV networks, CNN India being one of them, and they all ask the same question: why do foreigners equate Pakistan with terrorism? They already know the answer, but I'm the horse's mouth.
Prominent Pakistani journalist and politician Ayaz Amir recently wrote the following.
"Adversity and facing up to it are part of the human condition. But the consistent ability to make simple problems worse and invent new problems all the time is a distinction that sets us apart from many other countries in what used to be called the Third World"
The same attitudes are evident lower down the social scale. One survey of working class Pakistani expats in Dubai yielded the following results:
| Social Capital: What ordinary folk think | ||||
| (98 immigrants Dubai) | ||||
| Proud of being Pakistani | 16 | |||
| Pakistanis at Fault | 72 | |||
| Work together | 22 | |||
| No trust | 69 | |||
| Faith in state | 12 | |||
| Faith in leadership | 7 | |||
| Pakistani education valuable | 19 | |||
Pakistan is a country with self-esteem problems. From the questions asked me this week, it seems convenient to blame the foreign media creating a terrorist narrative. In truth, Pakistanis are the most generous and hospitable people I have met on my travels. But the blame for their country's immediate connotations does not just lie abroad: it seems from the statistics that many Pakistanis agree too.
In the meantime, someone hit the generator and the music powered up again. And believe me, conflict or no, Pakistani clubbers can dance until dawn and beyond.
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