The High Commissioner of Canada in Pakistan’s name is Heather Cruden, and she’s a wonderful lady who was a teacher. It was because of her generosity that I was touring Pakistan. The High Commission was paying all expenses.

So while I was setting up the Roses in My Carpets powerpoint, she was talking to the young adults sitting all prim and proper, waiting for me to begin. And I learned something. The High Commissioner is basically the Canadian Ambassador to Pakistan, but because Pakistan is part of the British Commonwealth as is Canada, we have high commissioners not ambassadors!

As if I wasn’t nervous enough already! Here I was going to be doing my Roses presentation in front of basically the Canadian Ambassador to Pakistan!!! It was a good thing that I had done Roses so many times! Basically I can do it in my sleep!

And I have plenty of confidence in it, I really do think it’s one of my best presentations!

Oh how they laughed in all the right spots! And since the story is set in a refugee camp in Peshawar not far away, it was the perfect choice.

At the end of the presentation the response from the students and teachers was overwhelming!

Later that evening, Maham and I were invited to the Canadian High Commission for a dinner IN MY HONOUR!!!!

Talk about feeling like you’re out of your league!!!

When I told my husband I was leaving for the dinner he told me to remember how to use all the cutlery!!!

LOL.

Start outwards and go in, I reminded myself, and DON’T PUT YOUR ELBOWS ON THE TABLE! (Although I still slipped in that regard once or twice!)

But I needn’t have worried. Ms. Cruden is about as down to earth as they come, and we had a lovely time!

I met her assistant, James Clark, the one I’d been corresponding with, and also a nice gentleman from Italy who works for Unicef and we discussed a possible collaboration.

I was feeling very gregarious which is a symptom of nervousness! I’m one of those who talks a LOT when they’re nervous! And they kept asking me questions so I kept telling them stories about myself, including the one about how my husband I met! That had them laughing really hard!

And then we started talking literature and Heather and I (she asked me to call her Heather) like a number of books in common. We both love L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle and she also loved No Great Mischief by Alistair McLeod!

But I think they all laughed the loudest when I recommended Sherman Alexi’s Diary of a Part-time Indian to the Italian gentleman. He has a couple of nephews for whom he buys books and one of them is eleven and I told him he would be perfect for this book but then I felt I should warn him, in case it would be an issue, that the book does contain masturbation.

Oh how they all laughed! I guess at the casual way I mentioned it. I’m guessing they found it totally hilarious and incongruous that me in my hijab would talk so openly about such a taboo subject.

And yet in the back of my mind I could hear my husband’s voice telling me not to hog the conversation! So I did my best to shut up at times too.

It was actually really nice when the others were talking! I got to eat then although really, for me the food was an afterthought and although it was nice, it didn’t compare to the brilliance of the dinner guests.

I left feeling luminous, my footfalls barely touching the ground.

Later I keynoted the Children’s Literature Festival in Karachi.

Here’s me in front of the podium. It was an amazing festival. So happy to see the literacy initiatives in Pakistan!