No, I'm not Raymond Davis

I heard the news about what had happened in Lahore when I received a phone call from my boss while I was driving along Margalla Road on my way home from work - “Shane. An American has gone on a rampage in Lahore. He gunned down two people in the street. It's on the TV right now”. I thanked my boss for the call and switched on the TV as soon as I got home. Express News was showing looped footage of a white saloon car with bullet holes in the windshield and a foreign man in a check shirt being led away by the police. This was Raymond Davis, and over the next couple of days he would become a household name across the country.

Considering the level of anti-US sentiment in Pakistan – the anger over CIA drone strikes which kill far more innocent civilians than militants, and disquiet at the alleged presence in the country of foreign “military contractors” working for mercenary organizations like Blackwater – it was not surprising that Raymond Davis should become, for many Pakistanis, the embodiment of US arrogance and interference.

But what did all this mean for other goras in Pakistan? Well, in the same way that many brown skinned people in the West were fearful that they may become victims of a violent backlash in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, simply because they looked  Muslim, foreigners living in Pakistan were worried that they might be targeted in revenge attacks triggered by the actions of Raymond Davis. In fact,  just after the Lahore shootings, the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) advised foreigners not to wear check shirts – possibly the most absurd piece of security advice I had ever heard.

Worryingly, in the weeks following the incident, a disturbing pattern began to emerge in my dealings with the citizens of Islamabad. One evening, while hiking in the Margalla hills, I heard someone who was walking behind me mutter to a friend “hey, look at that guy, doesn't he look just like Raymond Davis?”. The following day I had a meeting in the Blue Area. I didn't know the person I was meeting, but she had seen photos of me. Around fifteen minutes into our  discussion, there was a change of subject. “You know”, the lady said, “when I saw your photos, the first thing I thought was – this guy looks a lot like Raymond Davis”. A day or two later, fresh footage of Davis's interrogation was aired on TV, and as much as I hated to admit it, I myself could see the resemblance.

On the evening Davis was released and spirited out of Pakistan I was on a work related trip to Abbottabad. I was sharing a room with a foreign colleague who had been in the country for only a few days. We had been advised to stay indoors. There was already trouble in Lahore, with images on the TV of police charging angry protesters and beating them with lathis. At around eleven o'clock I was lying in bed reading, when I heard a noise off in the distance. I couldn't be sure, but it sounded like chanting. As the minutes ticked away, the sound drifted ever closer, and it became clear that what we were hearing was the sound of an angry mob. My colleague, who was on his first trip outside Islamabad, looked worried and became increasingly agitated as the mob drew nearer. I assured him that we were safe, but  by that point I was also becoming nervous and my apparent resemblance to Mr Davis, as funny as it might have been at first, now looked like it could actually become a real problem.

Luckily, the angry mob turned out to be made up of students who were just looking for an excuse to hit the streets and make some noise, and after a short while they dispersed peacefully. The next morning we were given the all clear to return to Islamabad. I showered and dressed, putting on the only clean outfit I had – including a check shirt (against the advice of the UNDSS). Once I was safely back in Islamabad, I was wondering how to overcome this physical resemblance problem when I had an idea. If people are going to jump to conclusions based on my appearance, then I should just spell it out for them. I strolled into a shop selling custom-embroidered hats and shirts, selected a baseball cap and handed the lady a piece of paper with the words “Not Raymond Davis” written on it. I'm hoping this new hat dispels people's suspicions when they see this check shirted gora walking down the street.