Lahore! (yes i do realise I’m overly using exclamations!)
“Sufi night”!
There were seven of us (white folk) ushered through the middle of a throng of hundreds and sat down in front of the makeshift alter, which was enough to make me a wee bit paranoid. This was eased when a huge Pakistani Jesus lookalike wielding an enormous drum charged over to us, shook our hands and said “you are welcome here”, before taking his place alongside another drummer in front of the crowd.
Apparently Sufism is a kind of Islamic mysticism. From what i can make out it involves a load of blokes getting together and getting as stoned as possible while banging out some breakbeats on huge drums and dancing about in a trance. Not unlike a rave back home then.
It seemed there was a great deal of kudos to be had by the number of spliffs someone could smoke at the same time, with lots of red-eyed folk managing to cup their hands together inhaling eight at once. The entire mass of people heaved under a dense cloud of hash smoke and the locals were keen to pass the dutchie on to their guests and that meant us.
I haven’t really been smoking (hash) for some time now and my initial “I’m okay thanks” was met with such insistence that before long we were all puffing away with the rest of the Sufi massive. I was doing okay and getting into the music when i realised i had just passed a spliff onto a policeman who had appeared next me. He clocked my double take and the subsequent look of horror in my eyes, grabbed me by both shoulders and asked where i was from.“England! that is my favourite of all countries! You are very welcome in Pakistan!”.
He pulled another spliff out of his pocket and gave it to me to light. Friendly folk those Pakistanis.
Share a spliff with a policeman: Box ticked.