by Simon Reeve
Mercifully the killings stopped, but the misery went on. With the deforestation growing worse and worse, patches of scrubland were set aside for the Aché to live on, but their traditional hunter-gatherer way of life had already been ripped away. Instead there was casual work on farms with little pay and cheap alcohol.
When Margarita was five years old her village was attacked by Paraguayans and razed to the ground. She was found cowering in the bushes and dragged away. Kidnapped, she was sold into servitude on a farming ranch to serve the family as a slave. She was forced to work cleaning the house and looking after the children of the family. But she did manage to learn Spanish, and when the family left the farm and moved close to a city, she managed to escape. She was caught and returned to the family, but then ran away a second time and made it to the city and got work in a house as a cleaner. She found a local priest and asked him to help her locate her remote village. It took two years to work out where she had been kidnapped, but eventually the priest drove her out to meet the community. By then Margarita had forgotten the Aché language and couldn’t tell them who she was. But then a man appeared who recognised Margarita. He threw his arms around her and wailed. It was her brother. He hadn’t seen her for fifteen years.
I was almost in tears when I heard all this. It was fantastically moving. But Margarita’s story wasn’t just one of return. It was one of hope. Of promise. Margarita relearned her language. She struggled with the temptations of alcohol. But she got through it and became a nurse. Then she was made chief of the community of Kuetuvy. Later, she stood for election as a senator in Paraguay. Eventually she became the government Minister for Indigenous Affairs.
I was reeling with each turn of the tale. A slave who became a senator and then a minister. Yet I have travelled across a planet full of stirring human stories, and I have heard astonishing and inspiring stories of profound life-change almost everywhere. Surely that, more than anything, is a reason to travel.
A year after travelling in Paraguay, I went to Bangladesh, and met an extraordinary guide called Tanjil, a bearded and bespectacled slip of a man, who guided me and a crew from the BBC around his country, which, although unbelievably poor, is a place I love with a passion.
Shortly afterwards Tanjil was in London and I invited him over for dinner. He was late and when he finally arrived, he explained that he had stopped to take a call on his mobile phone.
‘All because of the tigers,’ he said with a tired sigh.
‘Eh?’ I said.
Then Tanjil started to explain that many, many years before he had been on a dangerous trip with a film crew who were looking for huge tigers that had attacked farmers in the Sundarbans region of Bangladesh, an enormous area of river forest. Tanjil and the film crew were travelling on a large wooden river-boat with cabins and kitchens, and on their way into the Sundarbans they stopped in a very poor, very remote village for a few hours. The cook on the boat went out looking for supplies, and eventually he returned to Tanjil and said: ‘Boss, look, I could really do with a bit of help on this trip, and there’s a boy in the village who is enslaved and in shackles.’
‘Apparently,’ Tanjil told me, ‘he had been sold into slavery by his family to pay a debt.’
The cook told Tanjil it would only cost a few pounds to pay the debt and the boy could be released and he could help out on the boat.
‘No,’ said Tanjil, ‘it’s dangerous, we’re going to look for man-eating tigers, and we don’t need anyone else on the boat, certainly not a boy.’
The chef pleaded with him: ‘Oh boss, please, he looks like a bright lad, and I could really do with the help. I’ll train him up.’
Tanjil sighed and agreed. So they paid off the family debt, and the shackle and chain on his leg was released, and the boy went on the boat with Tanjil and the film crew, and he was given some new clothes and shoes in place of the rags he was wearing, and he helped the cook on the trip.
Tanjil was telling me this in London while sitting at my dining table. The roast chicken was getting cold.
‘Well, that’s a lovely story, Tanjil,’ I said, ‘but what’s it got to do with you being late?’
Tanjil looked at me. ‘That was the boy, on the telephone. He called me as I was walking up your street. He worked for me for years. I trained him. He’s now a man, and he was ringing me from Nepal, where he’s setting up a tiger conservation sanctuary. He’s now a leading expert on tiger conservation. He’s co-authored science papers on tigers that have been published in the most prestigious science journals in the world.’
That boy had been enslaved. He would have rotted in that village. But he had talent and ability, just waiting to be discovered.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Kalon Minaret
Sitting with Shahida, Will and Dimitri on the plane to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, at the start of both my second TV trip and the second leg of my journey around Central Asia, I was almost sizzling with excitement about the adventure ahead. But there was also apprehension about the country we were due to explore first.
We planned to travel west through Uzbekistan to the ancient Silk Road cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and then south through mountainous Tajikistan to the border with Afghanistan. The first leg of the journey, through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, had been an extraordinary tour of a beautiful, bizarre and unpredictable region. Now we were flying to the most violently repressive of the Stan countries.
All the countries of Central Asia had, and still have, political problems, but at the time of my travels in the area Uzbekistan seemed the most troubled. The country was facing the real prospect of armed conflict. Many Uzbeks were angry with their authoritarian leader Islam Karimov and there was talk of revolution. In response tens of thousands of militants and activists who opposed the government were being tortured, jailed or executed. Many men were mysteriously disappearing, often into secret prison cells, but also because they were the victims of extrajudicial killings, simply for growing their beards and being pious Muslims. Sermons at Friday prayers were required to follow government guidelines and the secret police were infiltrating mosques to check rules were obeyed.
Making a TV programme for the BBC draws far greater attention from everyone, including the authorities, than if it was just me on my own writing a book. Will and I had spent ages discussing how we could have an objective guide who would give us a fair assessment of Uzbekistan without the risk of them being picked up by the secret police and potentially tortured the minute we left the country. Shahida was the answer. Guides and fixers are critical on my journeys and Shahida was right up there with the best of them. Strong, clever and erudite, she was also opinionated, young and supremely sassy. She proved to be fantastic company and our merry travel gang of three grew happily to four.
One problem with filming in a repressive regime is that much of the repression often goes on behind closed doors. At first glance Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, appeared to be a relaxed and modern city. We hoped Shahida would be candid and outspoken, and we weren’t disappointed. The morning after we arrived she spotted a series of posters depicting Islam Karimov lording it over Uzbekistan as if it were his personal fiefdom. His image was shown next to statements and slogans that echoed the oppression of the Soviet era. Shahida was contemptuous: ‘It’s a joke,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing here, an imaginary world. None of what he says is true.’
She was right, of course. It was a country with wonderful scenery but a wretched economy. The only growth industry appeared to be personal protection for the new breed of post-Soviet ‘beezneez elite’ as everyone called them. Rich businessmen did not trust the police and so were turning to private security firms.
Shahida took me to visit one training centre where strapping young men were being taught to protect wealthy businessmen by a middle-aged woman wearing a pair of Winnie the Pooh socks. She looked cuddly, like somebody’s favourite great aunt, but she was actually a former colonel in the KGB. A Russian national, she had been purged from her sta
te job by the Uzbeks after independence. The BBC producers loved the fact I noticed her socks and mentioned them on camera. It was a minor detail that was perhaps childishly funny and charming, but as far as the Beeb was concerned it humanised both the woman and the story.
The BBC also liked the fact I was happy to front up to one of the most controversial men in the country. Having seen the bodyguards training, I suggested we try and talk to some of the new business elite. A few phone calls later, Shahida informed us we’d been invited to visit the most powerful man in the country.
‘The President?’ I said. ‘How did you swing that?’
‘Not the President,’ she chided me with a smile. ‘Even more powerful.’
We drove into a leafy suburb of Tashkent, where homes were built behind eight-foot metal fences, and headed to the house of a wealthy businessman involved in what was described as the soft drink and cotton trade. About five feet ten, grey-haired and solidly built, he opened the door of our van as we arrived at his opulent villa and shook my hand with a grip like a Greco-Roman wrestler. With fountains and manicured lawns, the house wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Hollywood hills. There were Roman-style piazzas dotted around, as well as guesthouses and garages. We were treated to a feast, but then I started quizzing him about allegations that he was connected with organised crime. Eventually he decided not to talk to us any more, and we politely made our excuses and left. It all made good TV.
Back in Tashkent, Shahida took me for a wander around the centre of the city. A clue to the mindset of the President at the time was the way he was elevating Amir Temur to almost saint-like status. Temur was a fourteenth-century warlord who founded the Timurid Dynasty with a mission to restore the ‘glory’ of Genghis Khan. A few years before, the President had removed the bust of Karl Marx from what had been ‘Karl Marx Square’ and replaced it with a horseback bronze of the new national hero. Many Uzbeks were uncomfortable about being identified with a warlike butcher.
We wandered down what used to be Marx Street but was now Broadway. Young people were wearing T-shirts, baggy jeans, and baseball caps worn backwards. There were market stalls selling clothes, shoes and street food. We could have been anywhere in the world. Then we bumped into Dipsy the Teletubby, who responded positively but unconvincingly when asked if life was better under the Soviets or the President.
On the surface, at least in the capital, it seemed there was nothing wrong. But the economy was in a complete mess, and Shahida explained that almost everyone with an education wanted to leave, including young women whose more obvious assets were mainly physical. We popped into a marriage agency through which Uzbeks hoped to meet wealthy, and usually much older, Western men. There were literally thousands of women on the books. It was rather tragic.
I could understand why people wanted out. The longer we were in Uzbekistan the more obvious it was how limited the opportunities were. The main consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union, just over a decade before, had been economic disaster. Central Asia was still reeling. Shahida had seen it for herself but managed to pursue a career in London. It wasn’t just the lack of opportunity that was stifling; it was repression and ridiculous laws and edicts issued by the President that made many feel they lived at the whim of a medieval loon.
To illustrate the madness, that night Shahida took me to a suburb of Tashkent. We crept behind a burnt-out shop, knocked on a thick iron door at the top of a fire escape, and broke Uzbek law by entering a pool hall and picking up a cue. For no apparent reason, the Uzbek government had decided to ban snooker and pool. Rumours suggested the son of a top presidential aide had lost a huge sum on a game, and his father persuaded the President to ban the popular sport across the entire country in a fit of pique. It seemed arbitrary, but that small-minded and petty action suggested a government that was out of control and might do anything to anyone.
We left the capital in the company of Mr Amir, a human rights lawyer who was a contact of Shahida’s. Together we headed out across the country to an Uzbek section of the notorious Fergana Valley, a home to millions of peaceful farmers and villagers but also various old and new radical Islamic groups. Uzbek officials and secret police shadowed us closely, ferociously paranoid anyone we met might express some form of political dissent. They almost had a fit when we went to visit the family of Juma Namangani, the former leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terrorist group which fought alongside Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
Before his apparent death during fighting in Afghanistan, Namangani was one of the most wanted men in the world. His brother, however, was running a local village sweet shop, and his sister-in-law insisted we try tubs of their finest vanilla ice-cream and refused to accept payment. We were chomping away when the secret police arrived and tried to force us to leave. Mr Amir, however, lost no time in telling the police they had no right to tail us and no right to force us out. I was squatting on the ground eating ice-cream outside a run-down sweet shop in a far-flung backwater, while Mr Amir, who was only slightly more than five foot nothing, squared up to a much taller senior policeman and hectored him, literally wagging his finger in his face, lecturing him about arcane sections of the Uzbek constitution, which apparently guaranteed our rights and protection. The policeman was utterly bamboozled.
It was a comic but worrying scene. Small, middle-aged, alone; Mr Amir went up against the might of the dictatorship with a brave but reckless disregard for his own safety. We had no idea whether his outburst would cost Mr Amir dearly after we left. He knew he was taking risks. But he was putting his welfare and possibly his life on the line to campaign for human rights, and to make Uzbekistan a better place to live in. In the years since, I have met countless other human rights workers and campaigners who risk everything to share the reality of their corner of the world. People I have met on the journeys have been harassed, arrested, and even tortured after we have left.
Travelling and filming in Africa a few years later I met a brave young campaigner called Rashid in Western Sahara. Morocco had claimed the territory of Western Sahara after the Spanish left in 1975. In the years that followed there was a bloody war between the Moroccans and a guerrilla army made up of the indigenous Saharawi people, who wanted Western Sahara to be an independent country. We had communicated in coded internet messages, but actually getting to speak to Rashid in person late one night meant sneaking out of our hotel, avoiding secret police and spies, and following him in a vehicle to a safe house. Once inside, he introduced me to a group of other activists and felt able to chat openly, saying what the Saharawi people wanted was their independence, ‘no more, and no less’.
What he said to us was actually very simple. He said there was a lot of oppression, the secret police were everywhere, there was no freedom of speech, and activists couldn’t campaign openly for independence. ‘We can’t even raise the Saharawi flag or talk about the history of the Saharawi people,’ he added. We chatted for a couple of hours and then left.
For talking to us, Rashid said he was later picked up by the secret police, questioned explicitly about what he had said to us, and severely beaten by Moroccan police. He sent photographs of the injuries he said he’d received.
Was it worth it? Rashid thought so. He knew he was likely to be detained. He had told us that he was completely willing to face a beating or worse. Dozens of activists I have met around the world have said the same. They think it is worth taking the risks and enduring the consequences. We always warn them of the possible outcome. But usually they know exactly what is likely to happen. Many of them have endured abuse before. They are brave not once, but often multiple times. And the reason they take those chances and deal with the aftermath is that they are desperate to share their story with our viewers and the outside world. It is humbling, but also profound.
In the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan the Namangani family were careful not to express anti-government sentiment, but virtually every other family I met in the Valley raged against the governmen
t and seemed to have at least one male member in jail. The valley and the country felt tense.
We drove a few hundred miles across Uzbekistan to reach Samarkand, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Central Asia has long been a crossroads between the East and West; it was in Samarkand in the fourteenth century that Chinese traders are thought to have first met Spanish merchants and sparked a new era of globalisation. The centre of the city, graced by the breathtaking Registan, a three-sided square which is perhaps the finest built space in the Islamic world, was a joy. We climbed a secret passage hidden behind a carpet store into one of the famous minarets. I felt a real thrill emerging at the top of the tower to look out at a city that was once one of the centres of the world, a key stop and destination for intellectuals on the Silk Road between Europe and China.
We headed onwards to Bukhara, another ancient city 300 miles west. For years I had heard stories of the place. It sounded evocative and mysterious to me, like Zanzibar or Timbuktu. I was excited as we drew close to the city, but the motion of our four-wheel drive bumping along the road sent me to sleep. The sound of a huge wooden door creaking open finally roused me as we parked, late at night, outside a guesthouse in Bukhara. I picked myself off the floor of the van, where half my body appeared to have slumped rather unedifyingly as I slept, rubbed my bleary eyes, and peered out of the van's rear window, at one of the most powerfully evocative sights I have ever seen.
The guesthouse was next to the glowing domes of the majestic sixteenth-century Mir-i-Arab Madrassa, an Islamic college. Light streamed from tiny windows sparkling along its colossal wall like portholes in a ship and danced over striking blue tiles.
