I never saw this trip to Pakistan with the International Center for Journalists as a one-time event, a go-and-come-home gig, something that was good for creating fodder for speaking engagements around Tallahassee and not much more.

I’m not much of a sightseer for the purpose of just seeing sights, either.

It was an extraordinary trip to Pakistan – a whirlwind two weeks filled with dozens upon dozens of meetings – meetings with government officials, news executives, journalists, NGOs and even an artist or two. We were wined, dined, gifted and feted. We were welcomed extravagantly, generously, sometimes lovingly. We made business contacts and we made friends. We saw amazing sights – from the ancient ruins at Taxila and extraordinary art to security checkpoints and blockades.

We learned that Pakistan is a complicated, feudal society.

The glorious, several hundred feet tall minaret of Khalid Masjid, in one of Lahore’s peaceful residential areas, looks over a courtyard that once used to be a calm parking space for the namazi (prayer men). But today, it is populated by armed watchmen, posted in different corners of the mosque like flagpoles. The place still appears ‘calm’ (read quiet), but the presence of guards with their double-barreled guns pointed in the air and the sight of barricades at entry and exit points is menacing, to say the least.