"So," said the gun maker, "tell me about burial."
"Boowal?" I said, I didn't catch it.
"Burial. tell me about burial. In your country, what do they do with the dead bodies?"
When do you cross the line into being visibly scared? To alert the other person that you are suddenly very uncomfortable with the situation you have found yourself in?
I was in the gun factory of Darra, a small town in the no-mans land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It had once been a tourist destination, but the US occupation of Afghanistan closed it right down. Now a few souls come through, following strict government rules to get a permit: you must hire an armed guard; you must travel in an unmarked private vehicle; you must be out by dusk.
And some strict instructions from the guide for conduct in the villages and hash bazaars: keep your head covered; do not talk to anybody; no eye contact with anyone on the way through the village; if anyone asks where we are going, we must say, in Urdu, “We are going to the cemetery.”
We were carrying packets of crayons to be delivered to the school - a token price to be paid by the guide for bringing in a westerner and something to keep any crusading tribesmen at bay with. It's for the children.
Once through the village and inside the mews-style workshop factory, the mood in our little private car, bristling with robes and guns, immediately relaxed. There was no danger in here, besides the hail of bullets coming from every corner of the factory into the air.
The men were friendly, warm hearted, they welcomed photographs, made tea and even broke open a KitKat (the snack of factory workers tea breaks from Greenville Six Sigma coffee lounges to the dusty floors of illegal Pakistani gun workshops).
We sat, had tea and chatted about the world, we talked about Pukhtoon women (the most beautiful in the world), Punjab women (general shakes of heads) and western girls ("too wide hips"). Don't shoot the messenger.
And there it was, as the gun maker pumped the shotgun assembly: “What do you do with your dead bodies?”
I felt chilled at this. This suddenly didn't feel like a safe place to be. A few days later, Afghan-stationed US troops would sneak over the border and launch a rocket attack on a village a few hundred km south of here, in the ongoing quest to find Osama bin Laden and kill Al Quaeda operatives. Kabul is 220km west, Islamabad 200km east. Foreigners were welcome as individuals but our nations were disliked. And aid out here would be non existent - the armed guard was our army, and he was off smoking a joint with the factory's guards.
“Burial. Well,” I said, thinking best to keep the mood light, “it starts with a service.”
“A long service. With all the friends and family.”
The men were interested in this. We, Britain, were not a religious country and yet we were buried in churches? The conversation continued, moved onto education, the chill of the moment earlier passed and the small yard felt warm and sunny again.
I was ashamed to have been scared; the result of my CNN education into the Middle East and Afghanistan, conditioning my response to tall berobed men with AK47 rifles sitting around in rooms exactly the same as those shown as “terrorist message video” on the TV.
What I learned in northwest Pakistan was that these groups of men would happily jeer and fire their rifles in the air for the cameras, for a few hundred rupees - that's the part you'll see on CNN. Then they'll sling their rifles over their shoulders and pick up their bags of brightly coloured tomatoes, oranges and carrots and make their way home with the shopping.
