A friend of mine has been having some marital problems and a huge fight broke out between her and her husband two days ago. Divorce was brought up and the guy brought up the issue of how property/money should be split in case they decided to go ahead with it. My friend has a locker where she put all her gold jewelry that she got from her parents as well as in-laws along with other personal stuff. The guy ended up telling her that they will be splitting locker stuff in half as well which raised alarms for her.
So basically what she did was open another locker at a different bank and will be moving her stuff there. Since she has no family/friends she can trust in town, she asked me to go with her to the first bank, pick stuff up and transfer to the other. I asked if she wants me to drive to the first bank, she said no because she doesn’t want to be in the car alone, she also wants me to bring my backpack along.
Now I wouldn’t have put much thought into this except when I casually mentioned it to my fiance (I’m going to call him M) and family that I’m going out with her to accomplish this little feat, they are telling me to NOT to go in any case or stay in another car.
Last year I visited Pak after about 10 years to first attend this friend’s sisters wedding and then see my family after. I landed in her town and since it was my first day and I was WAY TOO excited to wait, we went out the first morning. I also needed to get some money exchanged so we went to this super store? which sold groceries, home supplies and had an atm/money exchanger. Anyway, I was with the same friend of mine and I took some money out of the atm, then stood in line for the money exchange. A guy stood right next to me in the next row and started texting. Then all of a sudden he tries to look at me all discreetly and keeps texting. Since his gaze was very low but merely trying to move his eyeballs to get my description (so he wasn’t basically looking me in the face and didn’t realize that I noticed him checking me out)… and kept texting and that’s when it hit me. He was texting my description to someone. I started having a huge panic attack. Here I was in Pak after 10 years, in karachi of all places where I had no family and knew no one except this friend and her family and someone was trying to rob/kidnap me just within a few hours I had landed. So i started telling my friend who was standing in front of me that I was scared and told her about the guy next to me. I also noticed some other guy in a suit standing right next to us looking at this guy and then getting on his phone. The guy standing behind me (also looked like he wasn’t local/holding some cash in dollars ) started to give me a nervous smile as well. So everyone around us basically knew that this guy was up to something and not saying anything and I stood there just going “I’m scared” “I’m scared” to my friend. My friend took the money from me and gave it to the exchange guy and the exchange guy started taking his sweet time. He then got on the phone. The suit guy (an undercover security guy I presume) asked the texting guy what he was there for. The guy said he needed to know the exchange rates. They told him the rates and he just left. They exchangers took a few more minutes and then finally gave us the money.
Now we were in the middle of a busy supermarket with our purses full, knowing well that someone out there had my entire description and we had no idea if the security people who also noticed, did anything about it or not. The texting guy was gone and I was scared of going out. I told my friend to just leave the purses in the store and get to the car (they could take the money for all I cared as long as they didn’t approach me directly, I was **** scared of that). My friend took both of our purses,stood in the middle of the market and told me to go out and call the driver (who was parked far) to come to the store entrance to pick us up. I went out of the store and called the driver, he parked his car closer,my friend got out and we left.
Anyway, I didn’t tell my mom about this incident knowing she gets overly worried but I ended up telling M about it. He yelled at me for not being vigilant enough (I was out in jeans) and then being dumb enough to listen to her and go out of the store when she stayed behind in a secure place. Before that I thought my friend handled this amazingly well and did what she could to protect me by taking my purse (I just didn’t want the money on or anywhere near me). But she knew full well that the people had my description and they could even harm me.
Maybe I shouldn’t say this and maybe her intentions were right for me but at the same time he made me look at the other side of the picture. I’m not saying she should have put her life in danger for me, but did she intentionally send me out there knowing that I was the one in danger. I haven’t lived in Pak much but she’s a local. I was too freaked out to think straight for myself and thought she knew what she was doing.
I never brought it up with her and mashallah we are still good friends to date.
Anyway, now she’s asking me to go to the bank with her and bring my backpack. She told me she doesn’t want stuff worth millions going to her greedy husband (she comes from a wealthy family so it’s all stuff given by her parents). I told M and he went off on me saying she’s intentionally putting his wife’s life in danger again. That his psycho husband could be following us and if it’s stuff that expensive she should get proper security to transfer it. (I’m 5’2 and weigh 110 lbs so I don’t know how big of a deterrent I can be). He called mom up and she’s saying the same thing.
This girl happens to be a really good friend of mine. She’s been there for me through some tough times and I for her. Plus she has no one else to rely on and it’s really really really hard for me to say no. I feel bad for what she’s going through. M and mom are just upset but at the end of the day they still love me and after some yelling, they’ll be okay. It doesn’t even look like a big deal to me. Banks are protected right. Only issue is the bag part. If she makes me carry the stuff in my backpack instead of hers, then yes, I’d definitely say something. But other than that, I find it hard to believe that she would intentionally put me in harms way while protecting herself. Or would she? I don’t know.
I’m still going though, or should I? I’m just looking for advice, or maybe a different perspective on how I should deal with this.