I sent Puchi a message on Facebook the other day. The message was titled “Memories,” and in it I wrote that I had been reading some of my old diaries. “Do you remember Johnny and Ronnie Afridi?” I asked her.

“You kept diaries?” she responded. “No wonder you remember all this stuff.” I think I made her nervous, because a few minutes later she wrote again, “I can’t believe you kept diaries all those years.”

The diary I was reading was written in late 1986 and early 1987 when I was back in Pakistan for an extended visit. Puchi and I used to go out to parties quite a lot back then, and I was struck by how all the same people, usually married, were carrying on affairs with each other.

At 19, I found myself hanging around a lot of middle-aged people. They would ask me what I did. “Are you a travel agent?” I gather they said this, because they considered it a respectable career for a young woman.

So I started answering, “No, I’m a writer.” And I began a novella (in my diary) titled the “The Young and the Eligible,” mostly about the dramas that were  unfolding all around me in the Islamabad social circles we were frequenting. For example, Johnny’s wife left him for Ronnie, his identical twin brother. Johnny shifted his affections to Puchi. Tina was taken by Johnny. Puchi had a thing for a man we called Beau. Beau was in love with a Sri Lankan woman.  And then there were a whole lot of Frenchmen who may have been gays.

The one story that may be in an earlier  diary that I would like to tell is when Puchi met David Bowie. I asked her, “Can I tell your David Bowie story? If so, please dilate on some details. I know you were fourteen, because I have my diaries.” But it is her story, so I feel I need permission to tell the full version.  She said she is thinking about it and will get back to me. I have not heard from her since.