Point-blank

Hyderabad?” asks the man in a thick Pashto accent, looking quizzically towards other passengers in the economy compartment of a train as it trundles from Peshawar to Karachi. His clothes are tattered and his beard is unkempt; his teeth are stained yellow. He hands over his cell phone to the passenger next to him. “Tell [the man on the other end of the line] where we are; I can’t comprehend,” he requests in broken Urdu.