Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  We were welcomed by Zaffir Khan’s elder daughter, a handsome young woman, self-possessed and charming. Like most Dambudass buildings, the Khan’s house is new, but sapling poplars are already growing in the small, neatly-kept courtyard. Against the sunniest wall was a charpoy, spread with a clean quilt, and we sat beside the younger daughter, aged ten, and her little Balti friend, who wore a weighty necklace of silver ornaments. There is no girls’ school within reach but this young Pathan was practising Urdu with a reed pen and charcoal ink on a mulberry-wood board. The elder girl had attended school down-country, before their father decided to become a pioneer, and she is teaching her sister the three Rs. When I asked why the Balti child was neglecting this educational opportunity I was told, ‘She does not like to learn.’

  After about half an hour our hostess carried into the courtyard a table covered with a spotless white cloth. Then a small servant-boy appeared with a pitcher of hot water, a cake of soap, a basin and a crisp, clean towel. There is never any escaping Pathan hospitality. And the meal, of predictable chapattis and goat-stew, was varied by small chunks of potato which for us transformed it into a New Year’s banquet.

  This has been an unusually social day. On our way back to Thowar we were waylaid outside the Hotel by Akbar, the fifteen-year-old son of a Pathan government ‘contractor’ who for the past year has been living with his wife and family in a hovel-cum-godown near the Hotel. It seems that in Ronda District a government contractor is the man responsible for transporting and distributing the subsidised foods. Akbar invited us to have tea with his mother and two married sisters, whose husbands assist their father-in-law. As these Peshawar women keep strict purdah they find life in Ronda excruciatingly boring. None of the local women speaks Urdu or Pushtu, so they have no one to talk to apart from Zaffir Khan’s daughers and the ladies of the medical team. Akbar, however, obviously enjoys life here. He has offered to guide us to Mendi tomorrow, a trip which involves crossing the Indus by ghrari – a box suspended from a steel cable. I would prefer to go unaccompanied but can think of no way of politely evading him.

  Mazhar has just been in for his regular evening chat. I have developed a real affection for him – something much more than the casual liking one feels for a fellow exile – and I am going to miss him greatly when we leave. He is the finest sort of orthodox Muslim, high-principled and serious-minded, yet with an effervescent sense of humour, a mature quality of compassion and an intelligent curiosity about other cultures. He is not at all looking forward to doing his postgraduate course in the permissive United States, but he admits that in Pakistan it is impossible to get a first-class medical training.

  This evening he told me of his marriage plans. When he returns from America he will tell his mother that he would like to marry a particular girl from the dozen or so that his parents will have selected for his consideration. An approach will then be made to the girl’s parents and if they consider Mazhar suitable it is most unlikely that she will refuse him. Mazhar does not doubt that this method of arranging marriages is best and the behaviour of young Western couples revolts him. In the tones of one who has witnessed some peculiarly depraved orgy, he described a boy and girl he had seen walking on the street in Pindi with their arms around each other’s shoulders. ‘This is all right behind curtains,’ he said, ‘but in public it offends every Muslim. It is a sight that makes us sick with disgust. How can civilised people behave like this when children and young people can see them? We do not understand.’ Poor lad! He is going to need treatment for shock when he gets to his Brooklyn hospital.

  Thowar – 2 January

  This morning when we met Akbar at the Hotel we were directly opposite Mendi, but the local landscape is so chaotic that to approach the ghrari a four-mile detour is necessary. What an approach this is! We had already partially explored it, in the course of our wanderings, and at a certain point had turned back in the honest conviction that we had come to an impasse, humanly speaking. A faint path was discernible continuing down the sheer cliff at an outrageous angle, but I had assumed that this was used only by the more youthful and agile Ronda goats. Today, however, we were led to realise that here lay the high road to Mendi.

  Akbar went bounding blithely ahead, while I gripped Rachel by the hand, commended the Misses Murphy to Allah and cautiously followed him. As this path was not designed for leading people by the hand I had to proceed crabwise most of the time, thereby giving myself an excellent view of the Indus, getting gradually closer, and always ready to be fallen into if one made the slightest slip. Today, for the first time this winter, the river is carrying many large chunks of frozen snow, which give it a sinister look. It would probably have been safer to proceed in single file but the maternal instinct is not always rational and I couldn’t bring myself to let Rachel go it alone, as she was perfectly willing to do. To her my quaint precautions seemed hilariously funny, but when the famous ghrari at last came into view she quickly sobered up.

  A man was crossing from Mendi and we paused to watch that tiny figure in a swaying, shallow wooden box – the size of a small tea-chest, with one side missing – suspended on two wire ropes from a steel cable and pulley. The cable stretched 110 yards from cliff to cliff, 200 feet above the river, and on both sides solid landing-stages of cut stone have been built at the ends of the pathways.

  After an ’orrible ’ush, Rachel asked in a small, unamused voice, ‘Will I have to go across by myself?’

  ‘Most certainly not,’ I replied decisively. Then I began to hope there would not be room in the box for two – or even one and a half – in which case I could beat an honourable retreat from this singularly unalluring mode of transport.

  We continued down, trying not to watch that box jerking and swaying in the gloomy depths of the Gorge. As we reached the landing-stage the passenger was disembarking and Akbar beamed at us and held the ghastly contraption steady for Rachel to get in. I could see now that there was just enough room for one and a half persons.

  ‘Do you really want to go to Mendi?’ asked Rachel in faint tones.

  ‘It’s the very last place on earth I want to go!’ I replied frankly and fervently. Then, as I was about to suggest that we should turn tail, Rachel continued, ‘But if we went back now it would be not brave.’ Thus was an allegedly intrepid traveller shamed into bravery by a child.

  The box rocked sickeningly as I lifted Rachel in and for one fearsome moment I thought it was going to run away on its pulley before I could join her. We were wedged tightly with our legs dangling over the river, and I gripped the two wire ropes as Akbar let go and we went swaying off at the mercy of that one little wheel running along the cable.

  Oddly enough, the moment the ordeal started it ceased to be an ordeal. ‘It only looked frightening!’ exclaimed Rachel. ‘Being in it is fun!’ And I quite saw her point, though to describe this ride as ‘fun’ seemed to be going a little far. One felt surprisingly secure, however – even when the ghrari stopped in midstream because the chowkidar who has to haul on the rope for the second half of the trip was chatting to a crony. It was certainly a memorable experience to look up at the soaring walls of dark rock on either side and then down at the swift, snow-laden Indus. I was relieved to note that here the river is deep; if the cable did snap at least we would not be smashed to bits on boulders.

  As the chowkidar pulled the box up it proceeded slowly in a series of jerks, some of which felt violent enough to make me grasp the wires even more tightly. I reminded myself that scores of men from Mendi, and several other villages, uneventfully use this ghrari every day of the year; but it would be idle to deny that I felt relieved when we reached the landing-stage. My relief, however, was short-lived. Akbar admitted that the upward path to Mendi is ‘very dangerous’; even the Baltis go to their Maker from it with some regularity.

  The Mendi side of the river is more fertile than ours, its habitable ledge extending for a few miles. But of course this is not a level ledge; traversing it involves crossing a deep, roc
k-filled ravine on a rickety, narrow plank bridge, climbing 300 feet up slithery grey scree slopes, climbing 500 feet down almost sheer brown cliffs, crossing acres of burnt yellow pastureland strewn with gigantic black boulders the size and shape of barns, scrambling up 200-foot embankments of friable cinnamon earth – and so on.

  I found it difficult to distinguish between human and animal dwellings; some of the former are rudimentary while some of the latter are elaborate. Many stables are constructed of layered wood and stone, with upper storey of woven willow-wands.

  Akbar pointed out the two ‘palaces’ of the local raja. The old one is high on an impregnable mountainside and fortified; the new one was finished only a few years ago and is not far from the ghrari. Both are much bigger than a peasant’s house but built in the same style.

  Here we saw Balti ponies for the first time; these sturdy, nimble little creatures are much pampered because this is a polo-mad area. But the abolition of the rajas is affecting polo: they bred the best ponies and generally subsidised and encouraged the game, usually leading the local team on the battlefield. Today we passed two long, beautifully kept polo-grounds, the only perfectly smooth and level pieces of land I can recollect seeing since we left Gilgit. On both, teams of boys were playing ponyless polo, which closely resembles hurling. They were using appropriately-shaped branches and the ball, made of leather thongs wound around a stone, looked remarkably like a sliothar. The strength and skill of even quite tiny boys was astonishing, as they went sprinting up and down those long fields at incredible speed. Several men sat in the sun on low, surrounding stone walls, shouting advice, and I had a narrow escape when one little demon, aged perhaps twelve, deliberately sent the heavy ball whizzing past my face so that I felt the wind of its passing. No doubt he was merely showing off his accuracy, but Akbar was rightly enraged. Had that missile got me on the temple I might not now be in very good health.

  We stopped for lunch high above Mendi, where Akbar knew the inhabitants of half a dozen hovels close to the snow-line. From here we had an unsurpassed view of the mountains; our whole horizon was bounded by a white fire of glittering peaks. When we sat on the ground a dirt-stiffened blanket was hastily produced to make us comfortable, but even after the regular midday wind had got up, and was stinging us with dust, we were not invited indoors. The only visible inhabitants were a few small children, ragged, filthy, undernourished and afraid to come near us. They made no response to Rachel’s overtures and the littlest ones were scared of my camera. But there were animals everywhere: yak, cows, calves, sheep, lambs, goats, kids, ponies and hens. Only man’s oldest companion was missing; I haven’t yet seen one dog in Baltistan, or one cat. Presumably this is because of the acute shortage of suitable food.

  Akbar fetched our lunch from a hovel whose inmates were too shy to appear. The meal consisted of one round of tasty maize bread and a tin plate of watery lentil soup flavoured with garlic and wild thyme. Thyme grows abundantly on these mountains and is still aromatic if one crushes the wiry brown clumps on which some dried leaves remain. A staple diet of thyme doubtless explains why the local goat-meat is so appetising. We stood up to go the moment we had finished our meal, for by then the wind was vicious, and as we moved away a woman’s voice called Akbar. When he rejoined us he was bearing a gift for Rachel of three tiny eggs, which at this season cannot be bought at Dambudass bazaar for love or money.

  Two hours later we were again on the edge of the Gorge, and now my heart sank not at the thought of the ghrari but at the prospect of negotiating that unspeakable path. Descents are always more difficult and Akbar had gone far ahead with a Mendi friend. Holding Rachel’s right hand (the drop was on our left), I moved down slowly and steadily, trying to keep my eyes off the river – which was not easy, since its noise and movement had an hypnotic effect. All went well until we came to a point some 250 feet above the water where the path simply ceases to exist. For a distance of perhaps two yards – only two brave, carefree steps! – one has to negotiate a cliff-face on which a bird could hardly perch. The rock has been worn smooth by generations of brave, carefree Mendi feet and this bulge overhangs the river so prominently that it is impossible not to look down, and my giddiness was increased by the sight of all those lumps of icy snow swirling and whirling below us. To circumvent the bulge one has to arch one’s body outwards, while keeping one’s head lowered to avoid the overhang, and there is no handhold of any kind.

  As I crouched there, with one foot on the slippery polished rock, trying to work out how to get by without releasing Rachel’s hand, a terrible, nightmarish paralysis suddenly overcame me. I felt that I could neither go on, nor, because of Rachel, retreat up the path, which just behind us was only marginally less appalling. I realised that I had completely lost my nerve, for the first time ever, and it was an indescribably dreadful sensation – by far the most terrifying experience of a not unduly sheltered lifetime. The next stage (I was on the very verge of it) would have been pure panic and almost certain disaster. But then Rachel asked, altogether out of the blue as is her wont – ‘Mummy, how are torpedoes made, exactly?’ And this question may well have saved our lives by momentarily taking my mind off the Indus.

  I was afraid to turn my head, lest Rachel might be infected by the fear on my face. I simply gave my standard reply to such technological questions – ‘I’ve absolutely no idea, darling’ – and the sound of my own voice uttering those familiar words at once steadied me. As Akbar stared at us from the landing-stage I shouted, ‘Please take Rachel!’ and he raced up the cliff. I passed Rachel to him across that horrific stretch of non-path and the moment she was safe regained my nerve. Nonchalantly manoeuvring myself around the bulge, I cheerfully imagined that if I did fall in I could probably swim out. But I shall never forget those paralysed moments. I seem to remember writing something yesterday about preferring to go to Mendi without Akbar. I take it all back. What would have become of us without him? Would the maternal instinct have restored my nerve – or had the reverse effect? I think the latter: I was pretty far gone.

  After that the ghrari held no terrors, though with an icy gale being funnelled down the Gorge it swayed much more than this morning. Nor was there any chowkidar on the far side. Instead, a rather weedy youth, about to cross to Mendi himself, made heavy weather of pulling us up the home stretch. When we had disembarked, and were waiting for Akbar – who was pulling the youth across – I noticed that about a yard of the cable has been frayed to one-third of its original thickness. Presumably it is still safe but I am glad I did not observe this detail before we started.

  The chowkidar reappeared to join Akbar on his journey and demonstrated how a ghrari can be operated solo, by the passenger hauling on ropes attached to iron rings which run along the cable; this is a much slower and jerkier method than being pulled. Two-thirds of the way over something stuck and the chowkidar had quite a struggle to get it unstuck. Meanwhile the little box was gyrating wildly and I felt for poor Akbar. Strangely, the ghrari was not designed to hold two adults comfortably and our friend was half-sitting on one side of the contraption. I judged him to be in extreme peril, yet clearly he himself was not at all apprehensive.

  Ponies are sometimes roped to ghraris and hauled across the Indus; but not often, because the mortality rate is so high. And when the frantic creatures plunge into the river they usually take the box with them, thus seriously disrupting local communications. No boat or raft can be used within the Gorge, and no fording place contrived at any season, which proves how sensationally anti-human this terrain is.

  We stopped at the Hotel for much-needed tea and there found another outsider, a neatly-dressed man of about thirty-five. He introduced himself in passable English as ‘Mr Aman, Officer Incharge for road-building in Ronda District’. A slightly awkward situation at once arose, for we are occupying the VIP suite that Mr Aman had expected to find ready for him. However, no one here thinks it odd for the sexes to share bedrooms so he is moving in with us. This entails my sleeping on the
floor. Aman did not quite ask me to, but he moaned so much about Ronda’s extraordinarily low nocturnal temperature, and the misery of having no bed, that I surrendered mine just to shut him up.

  I find Aman’s company singularly uninspiring. He is a Nagarwal who now lives in Skardu, from where he came today in a military jeep. Like many of his race he has brown hair, pale blue eyes, very white skin and conspicuously-developed jaw muscles – a result of having been reared on tough dried apricots and hard apricot kernels. For the past two hours he has been sitting warming his hands over our stove and watching me writing this. He has not spoken one word and his silent scrutiny is exasperating. It also underlines a basic difference between East and West. Although a man of some education, he is apparently capable of happily doing nothing for an indefinite period. I feel I am unlikely to discover any great affinity with a man who could come bookless to Ronda. But then the habit of reading books for pleasure has not yet really caught on throughout this subcontinent; even those with the necessary education and money usually read only magazines and newspapers.

  Thowar – 3 January

  When we arrived here we let it be known that we wanted to buy a pony, but the jeep era has banished working-ponies from most villages within a day’s walk of the track. However, this morning Mazhar told us that a pony is on offer in a hamlet high above Gomu, so our next step is to find out by trial – but not I trust by error – if he and Rachel are compatible.

  As soon as one embarks on a business deal in the Orient one has to change gear. Today I resigned myself to waiting for the pony-owner’s promised appearance, while not allowing myself (or the eager Rachel) to count on it. To get out of Aman’s way we spent hours doing sums and reading amidst the black rocks below the Rest House, from where we could see the pony coming if he came – which of course he didn’t.