by Danny Bent
* * *
I was taken to a tea house below the glacier with a view of the mountains where Rahim told me stories of the fairies that live in the hills.
It is believed that fairies take away their children and offer them a bowl of milk and a bowl of blood to drink. The children who drink the blood are allowed to return home, but the others have to stay with the fairies.
Another story concerned a woman known to have good relations with fairies. When guests arrived unannounced, they would find her cooking their favourite meal, even though the vegetables were out of season. They firmly believed that she was given food by the fairies.
Belief in fairies runs deep in Pakistan and, as there are so many woes, many believe that only a cruel person would attempt to debunk these myths.
I smiled and laughed at the right moments and eventually asked, “Do people really believe in fairies?”
The teacher replied that he did. His grandma had once fought a fairy who was determined to take him from his parents' house with the result that she was left physically scarred for life.
We didn’t fancy the long walk back to the hotel, so we tried to hitch a lift. Unfortunately, most of the vehicles were rammed packed with animals, vegetables and minerals. Eventually we managed to persuade one radiantly decorated truck to stop. It was carrying potatoes, so we all had to squeeze in the cab with the two other occupants. Each of these trucks has a driver and a boy apprentice who, I was led to believe, doesn’t pay for his tutoring but is supposed to offer himself up to the driver for sexual purposes. This seemed like quite an presumption but in a society where sex with a woman before marriage, or infidelity, results in the death penalty, I guess anything is possible.
* * *
I was invited to spend the night at one of the local homes which comprised one room about the size of my bedroom at home. In the centre was the stove which kept the house warm and was used for cooking up master meals. A chimney rose to the top of the hut, keeping most of the smoke out of the building. In winter, having the chimney open lets in too much cold so they shut it off and suffer the smoke which stains the wood and, I suspect, their lungs equally. Mats are laid out in the evening near the fire and then packed away in the morning when the area is converted into a lounge with a TV. A small section is reserved for eating. There are no chairs or tables, and very few pots and pans. Just the essentials. People are used to sitting cross-legged and, unlike us Westerners, they can do it for hours without the cramps and numbness that assailed me halfway through the meal.
Being invited into a home in Pakistan is something not many people experience because of the social restrictions. If something were to happen to the guest, it would bring shame on the entire village and hence people tend to choose not to get involved.
The meal started very politely with us sitting cross-legged as we discussed work and studies while our meal was cooked in front of us on a wood stove. We were eating traditional Hunsa food. Bread cooked on a wood burning stove was broken into a pan containing cheese, butter and milk, and served. It didn’t look too good but the taste was fantastic. The pudding was made of honey and apricots. It was all served on the floor in front of us where we sat eating with our hands.
After dinner people started to relax. First Sonia (my host) sang, then I sang some Chris De Burg and we all sang the Beatles. Sonia's mum danced and sang but only after the dad had been sent to the bazaar to pick something up. He knew full well what was going on but couldn’t be seen to be encouraging this freedom in his wife. It was quite beautiful seeing him leave the house. After he returned, the finale to the evening was him teaching me to dance Pakistani style. Everyone was in hysterics, not because I was rubbish - I’m a groover - but because of the surrealism of the situation. Two cultures, poles apart, enjoying a night of dance and education together.
Before I slept, I logged on wondering about the fate of my friends. Matt had replied to my email. “Everything is closed in Gilgit after secular violence between Sunnies and Shias resulted in a grenade being thrown into a shop and then retaliation of machine gun fire into a full bus. But Ali and I are safe. We’re staying at the Madina guest house awaiting your arrival.”
Perfect.
Chapter 30
Who would have thought I’d experience life in prison in Pakistan?
Saying goodbye to Zahir and my friends in Gulmit, I wondered to myself what else this wonderful country had to show me. It didn’t take long to find out.
Dropping below 2,000 metres through the Nagar Valley, the air gets thicker and the soil more fertile. The panorama was awash with reds, gold, greens, yellows and oranges. The colours of the trees in autumn were phenomenal.
Roadworks on the KKH seem to be as common as the beautiful peaks. Two different labour forces were at work: the Chinese with their high tech equipment moving tons of rocks using dynamite to widen the path, and the Pakistani workers who were using pick-axes and chisels to hack away at the rocks and shape them for the walls that were being built to protect the roads in notorious landslide territory. As an alien concept to the Pakistani workers, there were female Chinese operating some of the big machinery.
I was invited by a Pakistani road builder for tea in a tent that the workers live in whilst they’re not on the road. Bahaar, a good looking student who was working for $5 a day to fund his own education, apologised for not having something better to offer than the chapattis and curry that I was gratefully gulping down. Inside the tent it was absolutely freezing, Bahaar wrapped a blanket round me. It was still the middle of the day with the sun beating down. What must it be like at night? Sleeping on wooden makeshift beds, fully clothed with just your shawl and a blanket, I just couldn’t imagine getting warm enough.
Bahaar wanted to question me on politics. Election fever was striking in the northern areas. It was the first time the government had allowed the people of Northern Pakistan to vote in an election, and people were very excited about it. Groups of men gathered in the streets talking on every corner, outside every shop. Flags and banners adorned every village.
Seeing a group of old men playing draughts about fifty metres from a lively political broadcast, I couldn’t resist sitting down and challenging them to a game. Within ten minutes the political broadcast was all but over. All the people who had attended it were now grouped around the draughts board. I’d been well and truly beaten in three games and the crowd enjoyed poking fun at my incompetence.
When I arrived in Aliabad, the elections had got a bit out of hand. A mass of men marched up and down the road in trucks or by foot in front of a huge police and artillery presence. The police motioned for me to come with them. We walked into the police station and Shirley and I were given our own room. The door was shut and the key turned in the door. We were prisoners. After I had sweated it out for ten minutes, the chief came in bearing gifts of tea and biscuits, explaining that they thought it was too dangerous outside for me and that I’d be safer being locked away until the riot stopped outside.
* * *
When it was considered safe for me to leave – much to my relief – I rode on to Gulmet, a village overlooked by the towering giant of Rakaposhi with its 7,788 metre peak. From the road it rises 5,800m in just eleven kilometres and is the 27th highest peak in the world. There was one guest house at its foot. I knocked on the door and enquired about accommodation, to be told that only their expensive rooms were available. My heart sank; my money was running out fast. Were they just playing me because I was a tourist? I asked hesitantly how much they were asking for, with damage limitation to my budget firmly on my mind. With a pained look on his face that said 'I don’t make up the prices, I just work here', he replied “400 rupees”, which roughly works out at around £3. For a further seventy pence I was treated to the sweetest milky tea, dhal and two roti – an unleavened flatbread made from atta flour.
Lying in bed I tried to construct a life for myself out here. Here in the north the people seemed much more open, more giving, more accepting tha
n I’d expected of a devout Muslim country, and they needed tourism to return as soon as possible. Was there something I could do, perhaps organising cycling trips for tourists wanting a back-to-basics experience or a marathon up the KKH? Could I help fund one of the orphanages or schools? I wanted to give something back to these kind, honest people.
The next day I strove to get to Gilgit. The road was in a terrible condition. I could feel the organs in my body getting entangled as I hit bump after bump. Dust encrusted my face. Pulling my sun glasses off, I looked like a panda, my blue eyes shining out of a black face. I passed buffalo with blue eyes and assumed they were blind, but was reassured that they could see perfectly well – they were just like me. They had the same genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes that gives people blue eyes.
* * *
I never knew seeing grown men beat the hell out of each other with mallets could be so much fun. Occasionally they would hit a ball up and down a pitch. I was at a ‘No Rules’ polo game. A game originating in Persia (Iran), it dates back to 5,000bc and was developed as a training game for cavalry units. To the warlike tribesmen, who played it with as many as a hundred to a side, it was a miniature battle. A team sport played on horseback, the objective is to score goals against an opposing team by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a long-handled mallet.
I wandered through Gilgit town feeling so proud of myself for having got so far. It was perfect timing; the National ‘No Rules’ polo match final was taking place that evening.
Habib, the manager of the hostel, wanted everyone there so he had an excuse to lock up the hostel and see it himself.
In a stadium overlooked by the mountains, the Northern Scouts, the local team, were playing Chitrali. The Scouts took an early lead and the crowd went absolutely mental. Sitting in the first class area, we had protective mesh to stop the mallets and balls smashing into us. On the other side of the field, the stand came right down to the pitch and had no protection so, when the ball headed their way, the spectators had to scramble up the stand to avoid being smashed with mallets.
The disadvantage of being in the higher society bit was that there were lots of people with guns. The man behind me kept jabbing his machine gun in my back. I would have turned round and told him to piss off if I hadn’t been scared half to death that it might accidentally go off. The action on the pitch, though, soon took my mind off it and I was leaping around and whooping with the best of them.
Despite blood dripping off their knuckles and down their legs, the players kept going. It seemed dangerous, but not as dangerous as the job done by a single member of each team. The stick man’s job was to run onto the pitch when any player had broken his mallet over some poor unsuspecting player on the other side. The match ended with Chitrali just pinching it in the last minute.
In celebration, the winning team did a traditional dance as the crowd whooped and cheered at their exploits. A door to the first class area was opened and an overly-excited Westerner was thrown ungraciously out there too, Habib being the ring leader who orchestrated my demise. The dancing stopped and the crowd went silent. I stood still, star struck for a moment. I was expected to perform. The pressure was on. I thought of the guns. I started self-consciously to mimic the dance I’d just seen, swinging my hips and waving my arms, and the crowd let out its biggest roar of the day. The players came and danced around me, smiling and laughing. One gentleman even handed me his broken stick with blood all over it 'n' all.
* * *
My dancing talents, or lack of them, had made me infamous around Gilgit. People were even more generous with tea than ever, and I was invited to play volley ball for the Muslim League. The Muslim League was the party that had orchestrated a free independent Muslim State of Pakistan in 1956 and helped eject the Brits from Indian as it was handed back from our occupation. It felt ironic really that I was now helping them win a game of volleyball. All good for international relations.
They were playing the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) and it seemed the fate of the election hung on this game. As a member of ML, I first had to learn their chants. Rasha rasha sher rasha, Come, Come, Lion Come. If I’d had time it would have been good to have learnt how to play volleyball too. MQM took advantage of ML's weakest link and each and every ball was smashed at me. I threw myself all over the place, and once or twice even made contact with the ball, getting whacked on the nose in the process. Fewer hands from the ML were extended after the game, but I’d found a new fan club - the MQM.
The Madina Guest House is the only place to go when you are in Gilgit. All travellers seem to congregate there and many find it hard to leave. People travelling in Pakistan all seem to have a story, or issues, which makes the Madina a lively spot to be if you fancy a discussion on politics, religion, or simply travel adventures.
Matt was slowly collecting a room full of gems, so much so that he had to upgrade his room because hiding them under the bed wasn’t working any more. He had one piece of aquamarine that was as big as my thigh and worth $100,000 in the US.
Pete was an Aussie who wanted to be the photojournalist of the year, travelling round all the hot spots in the world taking photos that he hoped would launch his career.
Antonia was working for the government in Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s sister city. She spoke Urdu and had been living in Pakistan for a year. She was currently pregnant by a Pashtun (a Pakistani warrior) and seeing whether she could have an abortion in Pakistan. Seeing as abortions, sex before marriage, sex with an infidel and sex with a white lady were all punishable by death, I suspected that she would struggle on that one.
Nat and Simon had just returned from the Chinese border. They were trying to walk back to Switzerland with their donkey, affectionately called Bert. The Chinese had rejected their application to take the donkey across their borders.
Enjoying the town, I saw a man with the long beard, sunglasses, and the looks and confident swagger I associated with the Taliban. I lifted my camera to take a picture of him for the people back home when a passing salesman hit my hands down hard and said “No photo. Taliban.” People involved with the Taliban walk around unopposed in these areas. The power they wield is immense in such humble towns.
The US funded the Taliban when they were fighting the Russians in 1979 - the year of my birth - hoping to weaken the Russians at a time when the Cold War was particularly heated. The money and arms they pumped into the regime are still being used against the US army today. The US interfered with the Iran / Iraq War funding the little known Saddam Hussain in his battle with another arch-enemy of the US. Again the tables turned and the weapons started to be pointed at their providers.
* * *
The stones I’d seen in Matt’s collection would one day be sitting on the finger of a Western woman as her prospective husband kneels in front of her with the words “Will you marry me?” still ringing in her ears. A girl from England, Sue, was sitting by her husband to be. I was the only member of her family in the room. I’d only met her once before.
She had come to Pakistan to teach at a school for girls, and I’d been introduced to her as a fellow teacher. The girls live in a hostel throughout the year where they aren’t allowed visitors and they aren’t allowed to leave the school. They are, however, against historic Muslim principles, gaining an education that could change their lives in the future, and change the lives of every girl born in Pakistan. In the course of her teaching stint, Sue had met a Pakistani man, Muhammad – or Munti as she affectionately called him. Love story.
“I came to Pakistan as one step on a long backpacking trip. It was winter so I planned to come to Gilgit for just two or three days. Everyone said I was mad to come at all, but three other backpackers I met in Lahore were brave enough to join me. On our second day here, we met Munti and his cousin, Kamran. Munti wanted to learn English and so Kamran encouraged him to just say hello to the boys in our group. The next day we went on a trip together and got
on fantastically. I stayed in Gilgit, and Pakistan, longer than I had planned as we got to know each other. After three months I continued on to India but not before securing my visa to return. Three months in India was a long time away from Munti and I rushed back to Gilgit to see him. Here I lived in a girls' hostel and taught English while we made some life decisions and I got to know his family, friends, town and a very different culture to my own.”
Sue’s family weren’t prepared to travel out to Pakistan and, in their absence and as the only white man invited to the wedding, I was proclaimed her brother and asked to be her chief witness.
In preparation, Habib lent me his best Shalwa Kamis and I thought it was only fitting that I should arrive in a Pakistani-styled mode of transport. I headed down to the shop where the Pakistani trucks get made to look beautiful and showed them the vehicle I wanted to have pampered, painted and polished. They finished the job moments before the wedding and I went to pick her up. Nervously I pulled off the sheet hiding my ride from me. She looked beautiful. Shirley stood there shining like a star.
I rode in convoy with the bride’s car to the wedding celebrations at her friend’s house (it would normally have taken place at her family's house but that was obviously in England). Celebrations in Pakistan tend to revolve around a buffet full of food at which one stuffs oneself silly. The bride was nervous and couldn’t touch a thing. However, when we went onto to the groom's house afterwards, he was in an even worse state. It’s at the groom's house (their future home) that the main ceremony, Shia nikah, takes place. The wedding had been in full swing for two days already whilst the assembled horde of relatives observed certain traditional ceremonies.
