Thor's Haven

by Richard S Young

  “The guy that wrote it, Heri Jorgensen, I met him once a while back, when I was up in the Faroe Islands. He’s a dreadful individual and pretty repulsive to the eye when you meet him in the flesh. He’s a politician and passes his spare time being an author and historian.

  He defrauded some people I’m rather fond of out of their lawful inheritance and used bureaucratic red-tape and loopholes in the law to get away with it. When I saw his name as the author of the article, it just brought back the memories of what a piece of shit the man really is. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I understand. Anyway, give me hand loading the printers with that paper and we’ll get these brochures printed off. Once we’ve done that, I’ll contact Rama to arrange things and then I’ll drive you back to your hotel so you can be fresh as a daisy when I pick you up at 6.00am tomorrow morning.”

  Daniel picked up a ream of paper. “Let’s get started then, shall we?”

  12.22pm – 9th April, present day.

  Wagah - Lahore District, Punjab, Pakistan

  Situated on the old Grand Trunk Road between Lahore in Pakistan and Amritsar in India, the village of Wagah serves as a goods transit terminal, railway station and the border crossing between Pakistan and India. To cross from one country to the other, legally, by foot, road vehicle or train, Wagah is the sole point to do so. The village is only 15 miles from Lahore in Pakistan and 20 miles from Amritsar in India and is close to the Radcliffe Line, the boundary demarcation line that divided India from Pakistan upon the Partition of India in 1947. The village itself lies a few hundred yards west of the border with its railway station only a stone’s throw away from the international boundary separating the two countries.

  Rifat and Daniel had parked the landrover some distance away on the outskirts of the village as Rifat had explained that the border closing ceremony created a lot of traffic to the area. With the landrover parked away from the village, when leaving to head back to Mirpur, it would be easier to avoid the throngs of tourists and the inevitable pedestrian congestion that they cause when leaving, as well as the carnage of vehicular traffic on the roads in and around the place.

  A crowd of young boys had watched them park the vehicle and Rifat called them over. He talked away to them, showed them a roll of paper currency that he had pulled from his pocket and shouted “Jildy, jildy” at them. The eyes on the faces of the young lads had grown to the size of saucers when they saw the roll of currency, and when Rifat shouted at them to get a move on, they turned and ran excitedly towards some houses not far away.

  Daniel asked Rifat what was happening and Rifat went on to explain that if the young lads hurriedly went and sourced themselves a barrow or a hand-cart, and then helped him transport some boxes to the border crossing, he would give them the roll of money, but on the added condition that they then looked after the landrover while he was away for a couple of days into India. If they did that, he would then give them another roll of money for looking after the landrover when he returned.

  Daniel smiled and pointed at the fast approaching group of boys who had gone and procured themselves a hand-cart from somewhere. Rifat unloaded the four boxes from the rear of the landrover onto the hand-cart and advised the young boys on how to commence their task by guiding it in the direction of the border crossing buildings. Each one of them had either taken a hold of the handles, or grasping the sides of the cart, as they undertook their latest commission of delivery with some fervour.

  As Daniel and Rifat walked slightly behind them, the lads conducted a conversation with Rifat who laughed and joked away with them. Daniel couldn’t help but hear a particular word being repeatedly mentioned by the boys when they spoke directly to Rifat. He asked Rifat what ‘chacha’ meant?

  Rifat smiled.

  “The boys are calling me ‘uncle’. Because I am considerably older than them, it is their way of showing respect to an elder, especially one that that’s about to give them an awful lot of money.” Daniel just nodded and called Rifat ‘chacha’. Rifat just laughed.

  Just outside of the entrance to the first building at the border crossing, Rifat took the four boxes from the cart and stacked them on the pavement. The young lads surrounded Rifat as he knelt down to speak to them. They gathered around him while he held a brief conversation with them as a group and then handed the roll of money to the tallest of the boys who pocketed it immediately. They all thanked Rifat and shook his hand and continued calling him ‘chacha’, after which they pushed the hand-cart around and headed back in the direction that they had just come. Daniel watched them depart and beholded that they all turned and waved goodbye as they headed back to wherever they had got the hand-cart from.

  “Do you think they will look after the landrover?” queried Daniel.

  “They will guard it night and day until we return.

  They will wash it, they might even polish it, but they will guard it very diligently as if their lives depended on it. The amount of money I gave them to share around was far greater than the total monthly incomes of all their families combined. Their families will make sure that the landrover is looked after, especially when ‘chacha’, and his funny looking white friend, have promised them the same amount of money, perhaps more, if they do so.”

  “I see.”

  “It makes perfect sense for me to establish some extra eyes and ears on the ground around here. Those kids will tell their parents how they got the money and what they have to do to get some more. They’ve been promised the same again when we come back from India. To the kids I’m just some rich ‘chacha’ who has asked them to do something for him, but the parents will ask lots of questions about me, and you, and those parents will understand that I’m not just a nice ‘chacha’ but obviously someone quite important or powerful who is going across the border on business with a white male companion. The only time that these locals ever get to see a white person around here are when the occasional tourists and trekkers come a-calling and very rarely do they see a Pakistani in the company of a white man.

  These people may be poor but they aren’t stupid. They’ll work out I am something else and that I will probably return here from time to time. I will and I might have to get some information or need something to be done, and because of that possibility, the kids will remember me in the future but the parents and their families will ensure that whatever I need done in that future by them will be done. Simple.”

  Daniel just nodded in agreement and thought about his military service days and what he and his fellow Frømandskorpset troops had operated to get the local populations on their side in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. But instead of money, they had used food, medicines, confectionery, cigarettes and toiletries to win them over.

  They each picked up two boxes and entered into the Pakistani Immigration and Customs office. Rifat spoke to the officials and showed them the documentation about the four boxes and why he was crossing over into India with them. The four boxes were opened and every brochure was examined, shaken to see if anything was hidden inside the pages, sniffed and then placed back in the boxes. Rifat’s passport was examined and handed back to him. Daniel handed over his passport and was asked a number of questions by an official. Daniel showed the official a waiver permit he had been given for working at the dam and also the work visa that had been issued to him. The official demanded to know why he wanted to go over the border into India. Daniel explained that he was just helping his assigned driver, Rifat, deliver some brochures to an address in India. Daniel had a few days off from working at the dam and had never been to India before and just wanted to cross it off his ‘places to visit’ list. He pointed at the recent Brazilian, Chilean, Vietnamese and Pakistani entry stamps on his passport and smiled at the official. The official snapped shut the passport and handed it back to him, opened a door and pointed at the empty road towards the border itself.

  “Let’s go” said Rifat as he scooped two b
oxes up and off the counter, nudged Daniel in the back and nodded at the open door. Daniel picked up the other two boxes and followed Rifat along the tarmac to a gate where a Pakistani Ranger checked their passports one last time before opening the gate to allow them to walk over the short ‘no mans’ land and onto Indian soil. Once they had crossed over, an Indian Border Security Force soldier opened up a gate for them and said “Welcome to India” before directing both of them to the Indian Customs and Immigration office to their left. Inside, it was a repeat of the same process on the Pakistani side, only this time, the officials were more interested in Rifat than Daniel. Both of them filled in various forms, had the boxes and brochures searched, their passports checked and were then escorted to an open doorway by an official.

  “Enjoy your stay” and ushered them through the door to the roadway outside. A smart but casually dressed man was sitting on the bonnet of a parked BMW. He uncrossed his stretched-out legs, raised his sun-glasses onto his hairline and smiled at both Rifat and Daniel. He stood up from the car and walked towards them. He took a box from Rifat and placed it on the ground and Rifat placed his on top of it. The two men embraced, bounced their shoulders of each other and shook hands. Daniel just stood looking at all of this while peering over the top of the boxes he was carrying. He coughed.

  “Daniel, let me introduce you to my oldest friend, Rama Shresth”. Daniel put his boxes down and shook hands with Rama. Daniel was impressed at the firmness of the handshake.

  “Welcome to India Daniel. What has this old rascal, Rifat, got you involved in?”

  10.03am – 10th April, present day.

  The Rozabal Tomb, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India

  The long, and somewhat tortuous, drive from the Indian border to the city of Srinagar had been a fairly uneventful trip. Daniel had been glad to finally escape the heat of being inside a car and was enjoying the air-conditioned coolness of Rama’s spacious house. He had mainly been an onlooker to a conversation during the journey in the car, as Rifat and Rama had caught up with all the news that they had to tell each other, but, in fairness, Rama had been an earnest listener when Daniel had explained discovering the stone, how his current interest had been piqued by its strange markings, and why he needed to find out more information about them, and all as a direct result of reading about the Rozabal Tomb in the article by Heri Jorgensen.

  Daniel had relaxed and decided he had nothing to lose and told Rama, and Rifat, everything that had happened to him over the last two years or so. All he really wanted in his life was peace and quiet and to ‘disappear’ from being a person of interest to reporters and journalists.

  Rama and Rifat had listened intently to Daniel’s story and Rama blew out a long whistle when he had finished.

  “That’s a great story Daniel and it would make for a really good book or even a television series. Seriously.”

  Daniel agreed with him that it probably would, and maybe, if he ever got some time to himself, he would use the opportunity to sit down and write a book about it all.

  He gazed out the wide window of the living room at the view in front and below him of Srinagar, the largest city, and summer capital, of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Lying in the expansive Kashmir Valley, on the banks of the Jhelum River, the same river that Mirpur sits beside and submerges the old city with its artificial lake, Daniel realised that the city of Srinagar straddles the river in a similar way to how Budapest straddles itself across the River Danube in Hungary. The Jhelum River passes through the city of Srinagar as it slowly meanders a path through the valley’s contours, moving onward, relentlessly. Daniel started counting the number of bridges that spanned over the river to connect the two parts of the city, and as he did so, observed lush gardens, waterfronts and houseboats situated all along its length.

  Rama joined him at the window in admiring the view. “Welcome to what has gone on to become my second home, Srinagar, the Kashmiri Venice of the east. Because the city is surrounded by the Himalayas on all sides, the climate is cooler here than the rest of India. We have an awful lot of water, what with the river and large lakes to the north and south, hence why everywhere is so green.

  It’s an old city with a maze of back streets and canals. If you aren’t a local, you’ll get easily lost within minutes if you were to stray off a main road.”

  “Thanks. This Rozabal tomb that you are taking me to see, is it far from here and can we go to see it today? I just want to satisfy my curiosity about the stone. With the Aramaic writing on one side, I can understand that there is probably a religious aspect to the stone, which is fair enough, but for there to be a Norse rune written on the other, I can’t see the significance or any connection. That’s what has intrigued me and why I’m here.”

  “I know what you mean. We’ll be leaving to go to the tomb shortly and you can have a look around for yourself but if you want to find out stuff about the stone, you are going to have problems. The tomb is the subject of a lot of tension between differing religious groups and the locals have been known to throw stones at visitors and chase them away from the site. There’s an old man who lives close by though, some might call him a mystic, but people go to see him for advice and guidance. He’s a Hindu like me, but many non Hindus seek his counsel. He’s called Jnyandeep Medhansh and his two names mean ‘Light of knowledge’ and ‘One who is born with intelligence’. That maybe gives you an indication to the reverence that the man has with the locals, as well as the reputation that he has gathered as an answerer of many different questions. I’m certain he will know what the stone is for and what the markings mean.”

  “I’d like to meet him. He sounds like someone who could really give me the answers to my many questions. Forgive my ignorance, but to satisfy my curiosity, can you explain the basic concepts of the Hindu faith to me please? I know there are many different deities and that there are many festivals celebrated, but I don’t actually know anything at all about Hinduism as a religion. I understand Christianity, Islam and the Jewish faiths as they are Abrahamic religions but to get an appreciation of your own will be helpful.”

  Rama nodded assuredly at Daniel.

  “It sounds complicated but Hinduism is more about ‘a way of life’ and operates as ‘a family of religions’ rather than just being a single religion. All Hindus believe that there is a Supreme God, whose qualities and forms are represented by the infinite multitude of deities which emanate from him. Our simple existence on this earth is nothing more than a constant cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and all governed by the principles of Karma, in that every action we make has an equal reaction, either immediately, or at sometime in the future. All our good gestures or virtuous actions will have good reactions or responses, and bad actions will have the opposite effect, but not only in this lifetime, but across all our lifetimes.

  Humans will always create good or bad consequences for all their actions and might reap the rewards of those actions in this life, in a future human rebirth or even reap these rewards of action in a heavenly or hell realm where the self is reborn, reincarnated, for a period of time. This reincarnation becomes a continuous cycle in which the individual’s soul is reborn over and over again.

  Each and every reincarnation depends on how the previous life was lived. At death, many Hindus believe that one’s soul is transferred into a new physical body which can be either a human or non-human form, but the ultimate goal is to be eventually free from this cycle of action and reaction, and from rebirth.”

  “I can see there are many similarities with Christianity and its birth, life, death and resurrection concept, but then again, there are a number of religions, faiths and beliefs that have these principles of birth, life, death and renewal, or even associations that are analogous with the yearly seasons of summer, autumn, winter and spring. Thank you for explaining your faith to me. I really do appreciate you doing that. I quite like the Hindu ideal that how you conduct yourself in t
his life, good or bad, comes with a reward or a price. And if you miss out, this time around, you can rest assured you will get what you deserve in the next.”

  “Precisely.” said Rama. He drew Daniel’s attention to some bridges located in the middle of the city, and using them as reference point, explained where the Rozabal Tomb was situated. Rifat joined them and handed Daniel a bag containing a hooded top.

  “If we are going to go anywhere near this tomb, you better look like a local, and if you can’t, you certainly cannot look like a tourist. At the very least, you are going to have to keep your white face covered.”

  Rama went on to explain. “The locals are not allowing anyone who looks foreign to get anywhere near the shrine. These locals do not believe that Jesus Christ came to the Kashmir and certainly go out of their way to deter tourists from visiting the Rozabal Tomb, especially those seen wearing western clothing. There is an atmosphere of heightened sensitivity all stemming from a spate of recent demonstrations about the supposed occupants of the tomb itself. Reports of mobs of locals throwing stones at tourists or at those who aren’t dressed like a local are becoming sadly all the more frequent events. Put your top on and we can go just now.”

  Rama parked his car down a side road and the three men got out and started walking along the busy streets towards the Rozabal Tomb. The Rozabal shrine is located in the Khanyar quarter of Srinagar’s downtown area, and is found at the end of an alley, out of sight and away from the bustling main Rozbal Khanyar road. It stands in front of a Muslim cemetery. Daniel listened intently as Rama explained the shrine and its recent history.

  “Within the building itself, there is a shrine to a Youza Asouph, or Yuz Asaf, and the burial tomb of a Shia Muslim saint, Mir Sayyid Naseeruddin. The structure was previously looked after by the local community, but is now maintained by a board of directors consisting of Sunni Muslims. The Sunni Muslim authorities that are now in charge at the shrine, believe Youza Asouph and Mir Sayyid Naseeruddin to be Muslim holy men. In recent years, there has been a marked increase in visitors to the shrine, mainly as a result of some bestselling novel and a growing belief that Jesus Christ may have survived his crucifixion and came to the Kashmir looking for the lost tribes of Israel. He changed his name to Yuz Asaf and died aged about 120 years old. I don’t know, because it is not my religion, but this suggestion that this Yuz Asaf may or may not be Jesus Christ, has caused an awful of tourism, interest, debate, controversy and animosity.”