I went to Lahore.

I might have done better in Geometry Honors (how did that happen?) in ninth grade if Mr. Camp, who was also my driver’s ed instructor, had been able to take us on a field trip to the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore. Here is what geometry can be:

Beautiful, endlessly repeating shapes that meld into greater patterns that shift in significance depending of perspective. I clearly have earned an “A” in Pretentiousness Honors, but I’m going to let that slide. There’s no way to describe the beauty of this place without resorting to hyperbole and poetry. Same with the newly restored Shahi Hammam, also in Lahore’s Old City:

This must be what it’s like inside the minds of brilliant mathematicians. I’ll bet they see expanding interconnections that rest of us can’t. Math and I came to an abrupt dissolution after Mr. Camp’s class (he didn’t hold this against me in driver’s ed, to his credit), but I’ve found that improv is about finding the game, honoring the patterns that emerge, discovering the shapes of the scenes as they unfold. I do know some truly brilliant improvisers; this must be what their space work looks like in their mind’s eye. I imagine it would be overwhelming. I also know that, as much as I loved being in this mosque and this bath house, I was also dumbfounded and proved, again, that “wow” can ultimately be an insipid mantra (“Wow! This mosque is amazing!” “Wow! We’re almost out of waffles!”) (although, if you look at a waffle, it’s all about geometry as well).

I had the best time in Lahore. My Lonely Planet guide, which I left in Islamabad, describes the city at “the Pearl of the Punjab.” This fits. After going to Theatre Wallay’s show On Common Ground (in Urdu; still, very powerful for this English speaker), the cast invited me to dinner at a rooftop restaurant that overlooked the Badshahi Mosque on one side and the red-light district on the other. If this, then that, if I’m remembering Mr. Camp’s chalkboard proofs correctly. There was a crescent moon hanging over the mosque. It was after midnight and some Bollywood music was playing. I ate my weight in biryani and palak paneer. All these words about domes and moons and pearls don’t do this place justice. Here’s an unedited photo of our view:

On the drive back to the hotel–the Pearl Continental, where I said, “wow” a whole lot–we passed goats and donkey carts and a brightly lit camel cart being pulled by a camel whose photo is in the dictionary under “undulate.”

The next morning the cast took me on a tour of the Old City (see above) and to the Bibi Pak Daman shrine, an unusual place, I’m told, for several reasons. Shia Muslims are a minority in Pakistan; this shrine, which is also a mausoleum, does not enforce gender segregation; I was able to enter. My guides from the cast explained the symbolism of the black draping and the flowing water and the silver cradles suspended like swings, all connected to the story of the Battle of Karbala where water was denied to the besieged, where these women were swallowed by the earth rather than suffer disgrace. My Theatre Wallay friends patiently and with justifiable pride tried to explain the nuances of this dramatic place; my favorite line of the entire day was when a cast member, pointing out the complexities of the religious connotations (again, wow), said, “of course, there are compelling counter-narratives.”

What a great term: counter-narrative. Is anything linear? I doubt it.

I got to do an improv workshop above a cardiologist’s office on Sunday afternoon. The group was an informal collection of people from Theatre Wallay and a media group. We played Word Pizza, a free-association game where you also pretend you’re tossing pizza dough into the air (the description does the game justice, for the record).  My mind unleashed words like “horse” and “run” and “boat.” The Pakistani group offered “Shopenhauer” and “nihilism,” among others. I like to think I provided the counter-narrative.

They want to form their own improv troupe in Lahore! I hope they do.  On the way to the airport I got to wander around the Lawrence Gardens for about an hour. It was heaven. I loved the parks in Kolkata and Delhi and Yangon. So much attention to beauty, and on such a human scale. Lawrence Gardens, just as the sun was about to set, was as peaceful and expansive as it could be.

I’m leaving Pakistan tonight.  I’ll miss Javed and Ali and Sikandar and Nadeem (who took such good care of me) and the folks at Theatre Wallay and everyone at USEFP who helped make this possible. Thank you to my friends and family who supported me in this endeavor. I am a lucky man.