Blowback

Chapter One

Lahore, Pakistan

One year later

The narrow streets of the old city contained one of the worst slums in the world. Filth, squalor, and despair were daily accompaniments to the lives of Pakistan's lowest of citizens -- the poverty-stricken Punjabi Muslims. Smaller and darker-skinned than the rest of Lahore's populace, the most fortunate among them were doomed to lives of mind-numbing menial labor, while the balance found themselves sucked up into the ranks of street urchins, beggars, and homeless. Their plight was one of subcontinental Islam's dirty little secrets, and it turned the stomach of the man sitting in the stolen Toyota Corolla outside the tomb of Muhammad Iqbal, poet and ideological godfather of modern Pakistan.

A devout Muslim, the man was humiliated to see how the promise of Muslim brotherhood had been denied the Punjabis. Pakistan was a hypocritical tangle of class divisions, and nowhere was that more evident than in the role of women. Beyond the fortunate women of the privileged classes who participated in think tanks, ran charity organiz ... read full excerpt from Blowback: A Thriller ebook