Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  Next morning Rachel was taken to visit the family village near Nowshera and I went shopping. A riding-cum-pack saddle cost the exact equivalent of £6, plus £1.50 for a girth and crupper, all new. The leather was inferior, and the saddle’s mulberry-wood frame had a few woodworm holes, but as these purchases would have cost at least £60 in Ireland I was not disposed to complain. (From England we had brought a hard riding-hat, with safety chin-strap, and irons suitable for a six-year-old.) I also bought a large canvas zip-bag, which could be worn as a rucksack if necessary, five yards of strong rope, a Chitrali cap for myself, a woollen balaclava for Rachel, a kerosene-stove (£1.25), a kettle, a saucepan and two electric-blue plastic bowls out of which to eat. Only our emergency supply of tinned food was expensive: over £7 for a dozen small tins of meat, fish and cheese.

  These purchases took up most of the day; bazaar shopping is an essential antidote to staying with a family whose wealth and education set them apart from 95 per cent of their countrymen. I collected much fascinating gossip – especially from the young leather-merchant, who claimed to have a cousin working on the international telephone exchange. His scandalous stories about the love-lives of Asia’s leading politicians (and their wives) would undoubtedly involve me in several libel actions if repeated here. For over two hours I waited in that tiny shop, surrounded by piles of suitcases, handbags and saddlery, while finishing touches were being put to the cotton-padded girth. The smell of new leather mingled with the smell of spices and frying onions from a small, shadowy eating-house across the way, and at intervals our detailed consideration of cosmopolitan sex was interrupted by the arrival of customers. Many were tall Pathan tribesmen from the hills, with splendid hawk faces and untidy turbans. These carried perfect Afridi-made copies of Enfield rifles over their shoulders and invariably wanted to purchase holsters, bandoliers or tack. They were very hard bargainers. The merchant spoke Punjabi, Urdu and English but most of the tribesmen spoke only Pushtu, so there were occasional misunderstandings during which Pathan eyes flashed. Then the little merchant would look nervously around at me – sitting in the background between cliffs of suitcases – as though I were a remnant of the Raj and somehow capable of defending him from his unpredictable compatriots.

  We left for Swat at noon next day, having spent two hours sitting in a full bus that had been supposed to start at ten-thirty. Pakistan’s bus-services are less well-organised than India’s. By this stage our gear formed a daunting pile: my big rucksack, Rachel’s small rucksack, that large canvas bag, a cardboard carton securely roped, a heavy saddle made of wood, iron and leather and a two-gallon plastic jerrycan. For the first time in my life I was travelling with more luggage than I could carry single-handed and a great nuisance I found it. But in that battered bus, full of Swatis on their way home, everybody was extra helpful because we had been driven to the bus-stand in a friend’s car – and that friend was Aurangzeb, son and heir of the recently deposed Wali of Swat.

  Between Pindi and Nowshera the countryside looked like a semidesert – grey-brown, cracked, parched. The farmer sitting beside me stated with curious precision that if no rain came within six days next year’s wheat crop would be ruined. For me this journey awoke many memories. On my way to India from Ireland, I had cycled along the Grand Trunk Road in June 1963, against a scorching headwind that kept my speed down to five m.p.h. And now my daughter, undreamt of then, was sitting beside me excitedly pointing out various objects of interest along the route – which she had travelled over the day before on her way to and from our friends’ village.

  The attraction of the Frontier Province is quite extraordinary. As the red-brown-grey landscape became more broken and rugged and harsh, and the mountains became more distinct along the horizon, and the houses became more fort-like – their windows mere slits, the better to fire through – I felt a surge of nostalgic excitement.

  At Nowshera we turned north towards the Malakand Pass and beside an octroi post stood a freshly painted notice saying – among other things – ‘Foreigners are advised not to travel by night and to carry no valuables in this territory’. I had cycled over the Malakand through a deluge and seen nothing, but now we enjoyed a dramatic bronze and smoky-blue sunset as our overloaded bus chugged slowly into the hills. From Pindi to Mingora is 165 miles so it had been dark for half an hour when we arrived at the bus-stand, loaded everything into a covered motor-cycle rickshaw and went bouncing noisily off through the cold black night.

  At the empty Waliahad – all Aurangzeb’s family were in Islamabad – I was touched to find myself remembered and warmly welcomed by the senior servants. Since my last visit a lot of water had passed turbulently under Pakistan’s political bridges. In 1963 Swat’s legal status was that of a princely state within Pakistan: the Central Government had a right to intervene only on foreign policy and the Wali administered justice according to custom, Islamic law and his own common sense – which was abundant. I had stayed with Aurangzeb and his wife Naseem, eldest daughter of the late Field-Marshal Ayub Khan, who was then at the height of his power as Pakistan’s benevolent military dictator. And I had been impressed by the efficiency of Swat’s non-bureaucratic administration and by the state’s comparatively high level of prosperity.

  In April 1974 Ayub Khan died in Islamabad, five years after the collapse of his régime and his resignation as President of Pakistan. Meanwhile the new parliamentary government had abolished all the princely statelets: Swat, Dir, Chitral, Hunza, Nagar, and the numerous tiny chieftainships of Baltistan. Hunza, Nagar, Baltistan and the former Gilgit Agency are now known as the Northern Areas, while Swat, Dir and Chitral are administered by a District Commissioner who has his headquarters at Saidu, just across the road from the Waliahad. Aurangzeb still represents Swat in the National Assembly – as a member of the opposition, naturally – and is on the friendliest terms with Captain Jamshed Burki, the very able and charming DC who has been appointed by Mr Bhutto to replace the Wali. To me this seems a measure both of Aurangzeb’s fair-mindedness and Captain Burki’s tact.

  I have no head for politics and I cannot pretend to any deep understanding of political developments in Pakistan over the past decade. But most knowledgeable commentators seem to agree with Gilbert Laithwaite’s assessment that ‘Ayub was concerned to establish for Pakistan a halfway house to democracy – a democracy that could be understood and worked. His eleven years as President were marked by substantial achievements in the fields of economic advance, of Pakistan’s standing in world affairs, of order combined with progress …’

  However, many Pakistanis deny the ‘benevolence’ of Ayub’s régime and will accuse me – no doubt correctly – of being biased. I cannot deny feeling a natural sympathy for the Pathans, a deep admiration for what Ayub Khan tried to do and a great personal affection for his widow and family. He certainly made mistakes, but often these were based on military forthrightness and an impatience with the sort of humbuggery that distinguishes too many of the subcontinent’s more successful politicians. A good example of this sort of ‘mistake’ was his uncompromising commitment to Family Planning. He even appeared on television in an attempt to counteract a widespread campaign of anti-contraceptive rumours which was being cleverly organised by unidentified groups. Probably these groups were led by Muslim equivalents of Ireland’s more unsavoury bishops, whose fanaticism had been harnessed by Ayub’s political opponents. The President’s determination to lower Pakistan’s birthrate was a most valuable stick with which to beat him, in a country mainly populated by illiterate, gullible, hidebound peasants. Indeed, many observers believe that it contributed even more to his downfall than the charges of corruption – much publicised but never proved – that were brought against his immediate family. At any rate, it is perhaps worth recording that one of India’s most distinguished public figures – a man full of years and wisdom – said to me in March 1974, shortly before the Field-Marshal’s death: ‘If only India had had one leader like Ayub Khan!’

  To everybody’s
relief, it rained heavily throughout our first night in Swat and until noon next day. After lunch Rachel and I explored under a grey sky patched with blue. As the cloud was not low we could enjoy the craggy mountain walls that enclose Saidu on three sides, but the snow-peaks to the north remained invisible. Near the Waliahad hundreds of flat-roofed stone and mud hovels cover the steep hillsides and between them run narrow alleyways or flights of steps. Purdah is strictly observed in Swat and because I looked male to local eyes our progress was marked by the scurrying indoors of numerous veiled figures, some of whom abandoned heavy water-jars in their flight. Even little giggling girls of eight or nine completely covered their faces while peeping at us around corners.

  A deep, dry, stony nullah-bed wound between the slopes and was in a disgusting state; being a general dump and public latrine, it stank most abominably after the night’s rain. Having spent the previous winter in India, I caught myself constantly making odious comparisons – for instance, between the filth of many Muslim villagers and the scrupulous personal cleanliness of even the poorest-caste Hindu.

  I spent that evening with the lively-minded Burkis, and as I was leaving Mrs Burki invited Rachel to play with her three children next day.

  Back at the Waliahad the chowkidar in what used to be the sentry-box was still rapidly knitting, as he had been when I left five hours earlier. The men of Swat are keen knitters and at first one is slightly taken aback on seeing six-foot sentries standing with rifles over their shoulders and incessantly clicking needles in their huge hands. They turn out an endless number of sweaters, scarves, socks, caps and gloves for themselves and their families – an aspect of Pakistani life that Women’s Lib would surely applaud.

  We woke next morning to a cloudless sky; thick frost sparkled on the burnt yellow lawn outside our window and a glorious glisten of new snow lay on the long, jagged line of the Himalayas, now clearly visible to the north. At nine o’clock I deposited Rachel on the Burkis, where I suspect she found the forceful Pathan young rather disconcerting after her malleable south Indian playmates of the previous winter. Then I spent a happy day climbing a mini-mountain, revisiting some of Swat’s Gandhara sites and gossiping around Mingora bazaar. Thirteen out of the fourteen English-speaking men with whom I discussed local politics were decisively pro-Wali and said so openly. I thought it an important point in favour of Mr Bhutto’s government that they felt free to criticise it thus to a total stranger.

  An innovation called the Tourist Wagon Service has recently appeared on Pakistan’s roads. These fast minibuses, each seating eleven plus the driver, operate non-stop between cities and are used by the less poor Pakistanis rather than by tourists. Our tickets for the 112 mile journey to Peshawar cost Rs.16 (eighty pence), whereas the ordinary bus fare would have been Rs.4.50. As females we were entitled to the two roomy front seats beside the driver; in all Tourist Wagons these, and the back seat if necessary, form the Ladies’ Compartments.

  When we left Mingora the valley looked superb in sparkling sunshine, with autumn colours still glowing on poplars, elms, birches and planes. Under a cloudless sky the Swat river was a gay ribbon of blue, tossed across the landscape, and hundreds of multi-coloured goats were grazing on the tawny mountainsides. We met three buses coming up the Malakand Pass on the wrong side, their roofs piled with a singing, waving overflow of passengers and their wheels inches from lethal drops as they swung around hairpin bends. Our driver seemed to keep his right hand permanently out of the window, in order to squeeze his bulbous rubber horn; no doubt he reckoned that negotiating such bends without a horn would be even more dangerous than steering with one hand.

  In my first book, Full Tilt, I described Peshawar as being ‘like an English city with a few water-buffaloes and vultures and lizards thrown in’. Those words were written the day I came over the Khyber Pass, after months of cycling through the remoter regions of Persia and Afghanistan. But in 1974, having come straight from the fleshpots of Karachi, Islamabad, Pindi and Saidu, I found this ‘Paris of the Pathans’ – Lowell Thomas’s phrase – a very special place. It seemed less a city in the modern sense than an agglomeration of medieval bazaars inhabited by attractive rough diamonds of many races. It is one of the three Pathan cities – the others are Kandahar and Jellala-bad, in Afghanistan – and since my first visit it has become one of the hippies’ main junctions.

  In 1963 the great eastward Hippy Migration had not yet started and Full Tilt has frequently been accused of increasing its momentum, which suggestion troubles my conscience more than it flatters my vanity when I see groups of drugged wrecks dragging themselves around Asia. However, Peshawar’s attitude to strangers has been only slightly modified by the hippy influence. Pesh Awar means ‘Frontier Town’ and for at least 4,000 years this city has been dealing with invaders of many types. The hippies are merely a source of local amusement – and of course profit, for the many drug-peddlers in the bazaars.

  We stayed on the outskirts of Peshawar with the Khanzadas, who in 1963 had entertained me at their Abbottabad home and nursed me through a devastating attack of dysentery. But having been unable, from Saidu, to warn Begum Khanzada of our arrival, we spent our first night in a doss-house.

  By five-fifteen it was dark and beneath a gold-flecked sky we set off through crisp frosty air to explore some of the ancient bazaars. Rachel was enthralled as we wandered from one narrow, dimly-lit alleyway to another. Above us loomed tall stone and wood houses, centuries old, and we passed butchers and bakers and candlestickmakers (literally: one coppersmith was at work on a candlestick). Often we paused to watch men weighing huge chunks of marble, or carving wood or mending transistors or cobbling shoes or beating brass or tailoring shirts – all by the light of lanterns hanging from the roofs of their little stalls. A flour-covered baker gave us a length of hot nan from his underground mud oven, and we were invited into one eating-house for juicy kebabs, and into another for small bowls of delicious tangy curds, and into two primitive tea-houses for little red and blue china pots of green tea – gahura, the Pathans’ national drink – which filled me with an almost unbearable longing for Afghanistan. As we sat cross-legged on filthy matting in one teahouse a small boy came strolling up the alleyway, noticed us, hesitated a moment, and then stood on tiptoe to hand up to Rachel a glorious pink rose bud, about to unfold. Before we could thank him he had disappeared into the surrounding shadows, his impulsive gesture having completed the perfection of our evening.

  A few days later we returned to Pindi to see how flights to the Northern Areas were faring. ‘No hope for you until the sixteenth,’ I was told. ‘Weather’s been terrible this past week.’

  As I turned away from the counter a young Punjabi army officer, stationed in Skardu, suggested that if I were to exert a little pressure the waiting-list might be cooked. I was uncertain what sort of pressure he meant – whether moral or financial – but I did not doubt that my debonair PIA friend would be genuinely insulted if offered a bribe. In any case, looking around at all the wretched men who had been stuck down-country for weeks, and were longing to get back to their families, I felt it would be unforgivable to jump this queue.

  We spent the next three days in Islamabad, as guests of Begum Ayub Khan. This was only seven months after the Field-Marshal’s death and his family were still mourning a beloved husband and father. Begum Ayub vividly reminded me of my own mother after my father’s death. My mother, too, was a woman of exceptional fortitude; and though such people tend not to give way outwardly to grief, its effects are all the more lasting for that.

  The Ayubs’ spacious new house is on the extreme north-eastern edge of Islamabad. Just behind it lie green, rounded hills, on which patches of light-brown earth or grey rock make an irregular pattern, and behind them rises the high blue ridge of the Murree Hills. We found the house and garden full of sons, daughters, in-laws, grandchildren, nephews, nieces and various unidentified relatives from the village. Yet Begum Ayub’s motherly hospitality is so boundless that within those walls we
felt not merely accepted but cherished.

  Aurangzeb and Naseem live about a mile away, down a long straight road bordered on one side by the homes of diplomats or rich Pakistanis and on the other by miles of open scrubland. Over this wide expanse at the foot of the mountains are scattered the National Assembly buildings, the Prime Minister’s residence-cum-government-offices, the Bank of Pakistan’s Headquarters, a colossal United Nations building, a colony of suburban villas for the British Embassy staff – looking as though it had strayed from Bexhill-on-Sea – and several of the larger embassies, including the Russian, Canadian, British and Chinese.