Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  It was noon when we left Haji Nasir to look for the house of another friend, who had invited us to lunch today and carefully inscribed his name and address in my notebook: ‘Mir Aman Shah BA, cotracter, House No. 700.’ He, too, had come to our room last evening, with a gift of half a bottle of Punial water under his blanket, and had sat on his haunches by the reeking little oil-stove telling me the story of his life. Aged thirty-five and a native of Punial, he graduated from Lahore University but failed to get a job down-country, where he knew nobody; so now he works as a part-time building contractor in Gilgit. The rest of his time is spent farming at home. He talks of his wife with an eloquent affection rare among Muslims, has great dignity and is a most entertaining and congenial companion. His forefathers migrated from Afghanistan, but so long ago that none of the family now speaks Pushtu.

  As we were doggedly looking for No. 700 Behram and his best friend came beamingly towards us. There are only two streets in Gilgit, so after a few days’ residence one is bound to meet acquaintances as one perambulates. Even with Behram’s assistance it was not easy to find No. 700, which is one of scores of tiny dwellings tucked away between the two bazaar areas. This is a much slummier district than the Haji’s. Domestic rubbish blocks the foul open sewers, the mud compound walls are crumbling and the children look filthy and starved.

  When eventually we found No. 700, with the aid of a skinny one-eyed little boy, Behram and his friend accompanied us into the compound. Aman Shah had never met them before but this worried nobody. They were entertained to home-distilled arak while I enjoyed Punial water, and then Behram was sent out to fetch our lunch from an eating-house – the usual chapattis and stewed, stringy goat. In these Muslim circles the drinking of alcohol creates the sort of daring, conspiratorial atmosphere which might have been created twenty years ago in Europe by drug-taking. Yet here the use of hash, opium or anything else smokeable is as respectable as going to the pub at home. There is even a government-licensed drug-merchant in the bazaar, so no wonder the hippies are moving in.

  Aman Shah apologised for his room, a small rented bed-sitter furnished with two unsteady charpoys and a wooden crate. The sky had clouded over again and we sat huddled around another tiny reeking oil-stove. Chunks of mud fell off the walls as we talked, the bedding was flea-spotted and the earth floor was littered with discarded bones, cigarette ends, pomegranate husks and broken apricot stones from which the kernels had been removed.

  Last evening I was very touched by the wistful longing with which Aman Shah looked at my few precious books. So I lent him one – Ian Stephen’s Pakistan and today his conversation revealed that he had been up half the night studying it. His is a type too often met in Asia – sad with unfulfilled potentiality.

  During the afternoon we went for a walk through agricultural suburbs overlooking the river. The sun was setting when we turned back towards the town and in one dusky alley we almost collided with a web of collapsed electric wires, near a fallen pole. As we hastily stepped back a youth materialised from a doorway vaguely brandishing a length of red cloth on the end of a stick. ‘No pass!’ he said. ‘Alive wires!’ And to prove his point he indicated a dead calf …

  At this season the local livestock are the most miserable I have ever seen, with calves hardly as big as our sheep, and cows the size of our calves. My tender-hearted daughter has more than once been reduced to tears by the plight of wandering cattle in the bazaar, who ravenously eat every scrap of paper thrown to the ground – including cigarette packet tinfoil, which must surely have dire effects. All the tea-houses use condensed milk, tinned in Germany, Holland, San Francisco or Singapore and costing Rs.3.50 for fourteen ounces.

  Gilgit – 23 December

  Ghulam Mohammad had assured us it would be possible to get a jeep to Skardu today but this morning there was no sign of any such vehicle. Moreover, the young government official with whom we were supposed to be sharing costs had evaporated. At 7.45 I set off to look for him but he was not in the doss-house where he had said he would be, or in the other doss-house to which I was directed, or visiting the sentry outside the Residency, who is his first cousin and the brother of his wife-to-be. Finally I wrote him off and asked Ghulam Mohammad to help me make independent arrangements. I was then told that no jeeps will be leaving here for three days because of the Id festivities; but when Behram reappeared at my elbow, in his genie-like way, he said this was nonsense – Id had nothing to do with it – it was because bad weather had made the track through the Indus Gorge too dangerous. ‘It is not a good track,’ Behram explained, ‘always jeeps are falling off into the Indus.’ An unfortunate turn of phrase, conjuring up Doré-esque visions of black yawning chasms receiving a cascade of jeeps from which shrieking victims tumble through the air en route for the river …

  But now I feel very glad that we did not leave this morning, today has been so blissful. At ten o’clock we set off in brilliant sunshine with pockets full of dried apricots to do a little gentle climbing, and by four-thirty we had walked twelve miles and done a little ungentle climbing organised by Rachel. She is taking to the Himalayas like a camel to sand. ‘Why don’t we go to the top of that?’ was her constant refrain. At times I was terrified by her casual approach to precipitous slopes above 500-feet drops; but small children are naturally sure-footed, like animals, and I insisted on guiding or lifting her only when we were moving across ice. What really made our expedition so worthwhile, for me, was the degree of pleasure she derived from being among these mountains. We came closer today as human beings (never mind the mother–daughter bit) than ever before.

  Gradually we climbed from river-level on a sunless slope where in places, along irrigation channels, vast masses of ice formed intricate and astonishingly beautiful edifices, sometimes five or six feet high. Rachel walked delightedly along those solid channels, making footprints on their thin carpet of powdery snow, and soon we reached the sunny side of the mountain, where clear glacial water leaped swift and sparkling from terrace to terrace. The tiny pale brown fields were new-ploughed and an occasional leafless tree bore its huge golden burden of maize-straw, like the nest of some fabulous bird. From here Gilgit’s gigantic suspension-bridge seemed a lost Meccano toy.

  On a wide, sunny terrace stood three primitive mud dwellings, amidst apricot and walnut trees. We were greeted by five women – unveiled, uninhibited and handsome, in total contrast to the hidden, tongue-tied, pallid females of Gilgit town. Unwashed within living memory, they wore elaborate but clumsily made silver ornaments on their foreheads, over heavily-embroidered brocade caps. Three were suckling flyblown babies of indescribable filthiness, normally kept under Mamma’s ragged cloak but proudly displayed for our benefit. While I made admiring noises over these infants a little girl was sent to fetch a dozen walnuts. As we walked on I reflected that this gift meant more than all the lavish hospitality of our down-country friends, who are endlessly kind but so rich their generosity could never have the significance of that fistful of nuts.

  Higher up the mountain, on another, narrower ledge, an elderly woman was breaking ice to fill her water-jar. She insistently beckoned us to follow her into a compound where she put her jar down beside an ancient hand-loom that was leaning against the dry stone wall. Then she took my arm, with a smile of welcome that needed no words, and led us into the living-room. A few embers smouldered in a stone-lined depression in the centre of the earth floor under a square hole in the roof, and we sat on a mud platform built around the fire. Tea was made for us in an enormous dechi, which meant the squandering of several fistfuls of precious donkey-dung fuel. I then saw that our wrinkled hostess could not be as elderly as she looked; she was still feeding a two-year-old boy, the youngest of her nine living children. She indicated that four others had died. The eldest was a strikingly beautiful fifteen-year-old girl who sat beside me with her first-born at her breast, encouraging me to help myself to dried apricots and occasionally leaning forward to blow the slow-burning dung. Three boys, wearing ragged home
spun jackets and Chitrali caps, sat beside Rachel staring at her with comical expressions of disbelief. They all had sore eyes – not surprisingly, for dung-smoke is very acrid and as it swirled around us it made everyone cough.

  Two built-in sets of four shelves held the family’s few possessions – a minimum of cooking utensils and spare clothing – while straw mats on the platform indicated that this was where everybody slept, in padded quilts stacked against the wall during the daytime. From the ceiling hung two goat-skins used, as in Tibet, to make butter in summertime. A dishevelled but obviously cherished ginger cat kept close to the flames and in the doorway stood a very small, very woolly sheep, meditatively chewing a long twig.

  I noted that the tea had been imported from China, though it was what we call ‘Indian’ tea, and when it had been brewed, with a little fresh goat’s milk, it was strained into two grimy tumblers (made in France) and a tin mug holding sugar was taken down from a shelf and offered to us. But sugar is very expensive here, despite its being subsidised, so I told Rachel to decline it. Our hostess then held up a lump of pink rock-salt and looked questioning. I nodded, so she quickly dissolved some for addition to my glass – further shades of Tibet.

  As we left, the fire was being stoked with maize cobs. These burn more quickly than dung and so are reserved for the cooking on an iron griddle of maize-flour chapattis. We were of course invited to lunch but everyone looked so undernourished it would have been unfair to stay. When I explained this to Rachel she said, ‘But couldn’t you have paid them for the food?’ So then I had to try to explain the revulsion I feel at the thought of desecrating this ancient tradition of hospitality with offers of money. Coming from the greedy West, one realises that what such people have to give is truly beyond price. It comforts me to think that less than four miles from Gilgit town the tourist-belt has been left behind. At least half the people we met today invited us into their homes.

  Still higher up that mountain, on a slope that was treeless and no longer cultivable, we crossed a desolate burial-ground. The graves were nameless and dateless, so that the difference between an adult’s and a child’s was apparent only by the size of the outline in stones, or of the hump of earth. Amidst such anonymous barrenness death seems much more dignified than in our own macabre, flower-be-decked cemeteries where futile monuments with verbose inscriptions perpetuate the rat-race of life.

  Just beyond the burial-ground we turned the shoulder of the mountain and found ourselves looking into a hidden side-valley, some 1,000 feet below – a most spectacular drop. No wonder Rachel was overcome today by the sheer scale of the landscape. We continued up our mountain and then descended by another route to the narrow head of the side-valley. In winter this is permanently shadowed and ten-foot icicles, thick as a man’s body, glinted on the towering dark walls above us – cliffs immeasurable by the eye. We followed the sunless nullah down to the level valley floor: quite a feat for Rachel, as we had repeatedly to cross from side to side by scrambling over massive boulders encased in ice. This must be a tremendous torrent when the snows are melting but now the water is so low that to have fallen in would merely have been uncomfortable.

  From the warm, bright fields of the side-valley we climbed again, to rejoin the main Gilgit path, and on our way home we were facing, in the near distance, a superb trio of sharp, soaring snow-peaks, dazzling against the deep blue sky.

  Ghulam Mohammad was waiting for us in the Jubilee restaurant with the news that a Pathan jeep-driver, named plain Mohammad, will take us towards Skardu at 8 a.m. tomorrow – for Rs.100 if Rachel wants a seat and Rs.75 if she goes on my lap, leaving more cargo-space. This seems very reasonable for a 146-mile journey that takes two days in winter, though it can be done during the summer in one fourteen-hour marathon. Many jeep-drivers smoke hash before a journey, to calm their nerves, and as a result are often incapable of the judgment necessary to avoid the Indus. But Ghulam Mohammad assures me that Mohammad smokes only cigarettes and is reputed to be the most cautious and skilful driver on the Skardu route.

  Gilgit – 24 December

  At 7.55 a.m. Begum Sahib and Missee Sahib were standing with their gear beside the relevant jeep in the jeep-yard opposite the Jubilee. We seemed unlikely to start within five minutes, but I fondly imagined that we might be on the road by about ten o’clock.

  At 8.20 a couple of grease-coated adolescents strolled into view, lifted the bonnet of our jeep, exchanged lugubrious comments, inserted a jack under the front axle and began complicated repairs which occupied the next three hours. We were repeatedly told they would be finished ‘in one quarter of one hour’ and though this seemed decreasingly credible we optimistically stood by. It was a dour morning, with snow falling heavily on the nearby slopes and occasional flurries here. I preferred not to leave our gear for very long but at intervals we had to retreat to the Jubilee to thaw out on tea. The local insensitivity to cold seems unnatural. Five ill-fed youths were lounging about all morning in the jeep-yard, wearing only cotton rags and open sandals made of old tyres. Twice they lit tiny fires to thaw their hands but they seemed not to feel any real discomfort. Lucky Gilgit has no litter problem; every minute scrap of everything is either devoured by wandering animals or collected for fuel.

  When at last the jeep was pronounced fit to travel Mohammad could not be found. An hour later he appeared to explain that the trip was off because of heavy snow towards Juglote, but he promised that if the weather improved we would start tomorrow punctually at noon. I’ll believe it when it happens.

  We joined Ghulam Mohammad and Aman Shah for lunch in the Jubilee – chapattis and stewed goat, need I say. Aman Shah observed that of course Mohammad had never had any intention of leaving today, because tomorrow at 9 a.m. he has to say his Id prayers at his own local mosque. This Ghulam Mohammad indignantly denied, but I fancy Aman Shah was right. Probably Mohammad was simply manoeuvring to keep our custom lest we take off with some less pious driver.

  After the meal we were introduced to Jemal Khan, a lively young Hunzawal with fair, freckled skin, light brown hair, a long, thick auburn beard and eyebrows that are one straight black line above hazel eyes. He comes from a village eight miles south of the Chinese border and is studying Political Science at Lahore University. He means to be a professional politician but seems unsure of the procedure for getting launched on this career. Like every other Hunzawal to whom I have spoken here – quite a number, the Jubilee being their Gilgit headquarters – he bitterly resents the Mir’s deposition and claims that his country’s whole way of life is being rapidly changed for the worse. As an example, he quoted the present fate of Hunza women. Before the introduction of soldiers and police from down-country they went about their villages unveiled, but now they are being put into purdah. A curious side-effect of ‘Progress’, recalling what happened in many remote Turkish villages when Ataturk the Secularist provided buses on which women could travel to the market-towns.

  Jemal condemned the general Pakistani assumption that Islamabad is entitled to dictate to the Northern Areas. True, these all gladly acceded to Pakistan in 1947–8 and some fought and suffered for the right to do so. But was it fair – I was asked rhetorically – to reward their Islamic loyalty by abolishing that degree of independence which had been left to them even by the British, who were supposed to be such villainous imperialists …? At which point people began to stare at Jemal, whose voice had been getting louder and angrier, and Rachel made the timely suggestion that we should do some more exploring.

  On our way through the bazaar we saw two groups of Chinese road-workers, getting into smart Range-Rover-type vehicles. They impinge very little on Gilgit town, despite being so numerous locally. Most of their supplies come from China, so they rarely need to shop here, and they have no other contact with Gilgitis. Yet one hears of them repeatedly doing good deeds, unasked and unrewarded, for villagers whose terrace walls or irrigation channels have collapsed; and everybody praises their energy and industry, as observed by road-users. All t
his is rather reminiscent of how Tibet’s invaders behaved during the early 1950s, but I doubt if the same ulterior motive exists here. Yet the present unrest in these Northern Areas could easily be used by interested outside parties. Especially, perhaps, in Hunza, which has always had very close links, both cultural and political, with Sinkiang.

  As we walked by the river, clouds were draping all the surrounding mountains and the air was raw and still, with bare branches black against an iron-grey sky. We passed several scenes of wayside carnage as sheep were being slaughtered for Id feasts, but these were the only symptoms of festivity. Returning at dusk through the dimly-lit bazaar, where most merchants had already closed and locked their wooden shutters, I pictured the streets of London or Dublin this evening and praised Allah for allowing me to be in Gilgit instead. But that was a selfish reaction: from poor Rachel’s point of view it is extremely bad luck to have missed the thrills of two successive Christmases. Fortunately, however, she has a passion for jewellery and Rs.10 will buy unbelievable quantities of bangles, brooches, rings and necklaces.