WAGAH BORDER CROSSING, INDIA — I was not allowed to sit in the foreigner’s section, given that I didn’t look foreign, and I didn’t want to tell them that I was. This was ironic, given that — as a Pakistani sitting on the Indian side of the border — they would consider me to be even more foreign than most foreigners.

The two people I was traveling with were allowed, and found themselves the choicest seats from which to see the spectacle. I had to sit way in the back, where the crowd was aggressive and male, and the soldiers were far-off and blurry.

The spectacle that my friends and I had come to see was the border ceremony at Wagah that takes place between Pakistan and India every day at sundown. The ceremony is as colorful, loud and grotesque an exhibition of nationalism that you will ever see.

The soldiers — massive, seven-foot men brought in to out-measure their counterparts in a region where the average male height is 5 feet, 5 inches — shout, stomp and strut before a frenzied crowd as they lower the flags and shut the gate. The crowds do their part as massive speakers blare jingoistic anthems meant to drown out the noise from the other side. People dance, sing, flex their muscles and deride the soldiers across the border.