Things have come to a pass in this War On Terror we have been fighting since 9/11, when we see violent crime in this country on an unprecedented scale. As we try to cope with it, foreign drones attack the tribal area and cause casualties on a routine basis. Things have reached a stage where the head of the US Homeland Security believes international law should be changed on the sovereignty issue to accommodate such attacks. Be that as it may, east or west, the world is a changed place. In the name of security, civil liberties are being encroached upon and an ordinary man who feels the pinch of it in all walks of daily life. In this new world of heightened security, Pakistan is treated as a major suspect although this country is considered a "non-NATO ally." On the one hand suicide blasts are rocking the cities of Pakistan, the government hemmed in a security cocoon; and on the other it is under physical attack from its own allies. The situation is pervasively neurotic. (Look at the massive Cabinet expansion in the middle of a financial meltdown.) The Pakistani passport is suspect too and international travel with it is no more a joy. Starting from an entry visa application to the humiliating security and immigration checks, travel is not the fun it used to be. The application for an entry visa for the UK, for example, is 20 pages long and there is a requirement for supporting documents which could exceed that number by the time you have put them together. The visa application office of the British High Commission in Islamabad having closed for security reasons since the Marriott blast in September, the application has now to be filed in their office in Lahore or Karachi. You have to file your application personally and to do so you have to make an appointment which normally takes a week to ten days. I did all that recently and arrived at the reception counter in the UK Visa Application Centre at 20, Fatima Jinnah Road in Lahore last Monday at 2:45 pm, the appointed time. On initial scrutiny of documents the demand draft in favour of the British High Commission I had attached was not acceptable as the visa fee had been reduced (on account of exchange rate fluctuation) from Rs 30,760 to Rs.28, 290 which was to be in the 'exact amount'. When I argued they could make an adjustment as the amount of the draft was higher, I was told that it had to be the exact amount The demand draft thus became useless and I did not have enough cash on me. What could I do? I was mortified to reflect I might have to go out, arrange money and stand at the end of the cue again with my application. But I was just about to begin an argument with the supervisor over the issue when a medium height young man with an unshaven beard, T shirt and blue jeans, about 30, slightly built, walked up to me and offered to give me the required amount of cash Without ado, he took out his wallet and pulled out the money as if this was the most normal thing to do. I was aghast in disbelief, and just looked at him. The young man insisted and gave me six five thousand rupee bills which I took and went to the cash counter to deposit the fee. But as I turned after depositing the amount he was gone pursuing, I suppose, his own application. There are a lot of people at any given time in the visa office and several stages of submitting the application as you move from one hall to another. In that process I seemed to have lost him. I was now quite worried that I did not even have the name of my benefactor Luckily, more than an hour later, I found him in the application submission hall, the final stage in submission of application. Almost in panic, I rushed up and exchanged name, mailing address and phone number with him. Like me, he had come from Islamabad and was to return on Tuesday. Another hour or so later, we had both finished the process - interview, finger printing, photographs - and came out together. We had entered the centre about three: it was now well past six. The night had fallen as we finally came out on the busy Fatima Jinnah Road. I volunteered to go to a cash point and use my ATM card to return the loan; but he said I could do it in Islamabad. The man who last Monday reinforced my faith in the people of this country is Syed Mazhar Karam, a truly extraordinary man. A communication engineer, he belongs to Quetta but is presently based in the UK. Returning his loan in Islamabad Wednesday evening I thanked him profusely. Slightly embarrassed, he told me not to mention it and walked away. The writer is a former ambassador at large