Where the Indus is Young

by Dervla Murphy

  From the Post Office we continued west into the New Bazaar; it struggles for half a mile with the only stretch of tarred road in Baltistan. We stood transfixed with astonishment on coming to it. ‘This is like London!’ exclaimed Rachel, a trifle hyperbolically. Most of the new stalls that line the road (a dual-carriageway) are either closed for the winter or as yet unoccupied, and a few have already collapsed under the weight of recent snow. Halfway up the street is a stone column surmounted by a bronze eagle looking down on his prey; it commemorates the many Baltis who died fighting for the right to join Pakistan.

  To new arrivals from Thowar, Skardu seems truly metropolitan, yet its range of merchandise is limited. There are some totally unexpected items – Imperial Leather soap, Parker pens, Rothmans cigarettes – but these have either been sold off by expeditions or imported from Landicotal. In the Old Bazaar, where most of the trading is done, the many small stalls carry virtually identical stocks – bales of cheap cotton, a sack of rice, a few sacks of pulse, a sack of sugar, tinned milk from various countries, tinned ghee from Denmark, tea, possibly a few onions, cigarettes, matches, trinkets, bars of soap, tin kitchen utensils, ‘Tibet’ cold cream, mouldy biscuits at Rs.5 for six ounces, rock salt, plastic footwear, exercise books and ink so inferior as to be unusable (I speak this evening from experience). Almost everything is of the worst possible quality but nothing is cheap. I sought in vain for meat and eggs, and even the ubiquitous tea-houses are rare here because a cash economy is new to Baltistan. Moreover, the few we did locate are closed at present: no Balti Shiah would do anything so frivolous as drinking tea in public during these Muharram days of deep mourning. Food-wise Hallam came off best with a seer of pulses, which he greatly relishes, and a bale of good sweet hay. It seems odd to be feeding high-quality red lentils to a ghora but no grain is to be had at any price. His treat is a lump of beautifully glittering pink rock-salt, which he crunches with a look of ecstasy.

  One cannot fairly judge the collective personality of the Skardu citizenry during Muharram. This annual season of mourning may be likened to a medieval Lent taken very, very seriously. The majority of Baltis are Shiah Muslims, who venerate the descendants of the Prophet by his daughter Fatima and regard Sunni Muslims as phoney. (Most Pakistanis are Sunni.) Muharram is celebrated by Shiahs all over the Islamic world to mourn the deaths of their revered martyr Hussain, of his small son and his relative Hassan. Hussain was the second son of Ali the son-in-law of Mohammed, who was killed at Kerbela on 10 October 680 while fighting the army of the Sunni Caliph Iasid.

  During the ten days preceding the Muharram procession no merriment – or even relaxation – is considered proper. No smoking, no gambling, no sex, no listening to a transistor (should you happen to have one), no eating big meals even if such could be conjured up in Skardu in January, no frivolous chatting in tea-houses, no foot-polo for the children, no laughter for anybody. As a result the whole silent town has at present a brooding, tense, rather sullen atmosphere. The comparatively few citizens to be seen in the bazaars look grim and often unfriendly. They are always male; Skardu women rarely leave their domestic territory, which explains why I get some hostile sideways looks from those who have correctly diagnosed my sex. To them a bare-faced woman wandering through their town during the season of austerity and abstinence must seem devil-sent.

  The population of Baltistan (about 200,000) is very mixed. Fearsome as these valleys are, they have for millennia been important channels of communication – for lack of anything better – between different empires and cultures. Their present cut-offness is new, brought about by the exigencies of modern politics and the development of air transport, and walking through the bazaars today we saw faces that could have been Irish, Tibetan, Arab, Russian, Afghan, German, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Italian: there is no type one instantly picks on as ‘typically Balti’. Yet most Baltis obviously belong to that far-flung anthropological category known as the ‘Eurapoid group’, which includes most West Asians and a number of North African peoples. In 1880 Roero di Cortanze was the first to note that the Baltis are on the whole ‘of the Caucasian or white race, in contradiction to the Ladakhis, who are Mongols and copper-coloured’. But naturally there is a pronounced Mongoloid strain and as far as our observations went today the Tibetan-type Baltis are the poorest of all. A persisting tradition in the Skardu and Ronda areas says that the aboriginal Baltis were Aryan Dards who gradually became fused with various groups of Mongol invaders. But what astonishes me is the number of distinct unfused types to be seen here, despite the fact that there has been little recent migration into these valleys.

  Today I have again been assured, for about the sixth time, that all Baltis are not as poor as they seem. While living in hovels and wearing rags some may have a fortune buried under the floor, and the old British Rs.400 note quite often turns up in Skardu, though it has not been legal tender for years past. But I still find it hard to believe that there are many rich Baltis.

  Skardu – 14 January

  This morning we set off with Hallam to explore the far side of the Rock, going first through the Chasma and New Bazaars and then out along the Gilgit track for half a mile. To skirt the western end of this extraordinary mountain we followed a broad sandy path across a snowfield with the grey slope of the ‘liner’s’ bows towering above us. We met many little groups of bent men wearing tattered homespun gowns and carrying eighty-pound loads of firewood (mainly mulberry) tied to their shoulders with yak-hide thongs. The majority had conspicuous goitres and several were dwarfs – scarcely bigger than their load – and/or cretins. Ahead was a jumble of rugged, lowish peaks (about 12 or 13,000 feet) and when we topped a slight rise we saw the Indus, broad and slow, between us and those mountains. On their lower slopes are a few hamlets from which the wood-carriers had been punted on zhak – rafts of inflated goat- or yak-skins, to which planks are tied.

  Where our path descended, to curve around the Rock, Rachel dismounted and I led Hallam while we were investigating the equestrian possibilities of the route. Then we turned a shoulder of the mountain and before us lay the mile-wide confluence of the Shigar and the Indus – seemingly a turquoise lake, from which the snowy northern face of the Rock rises sheer. And beyond the rivers, to north and east, were giant peaks like great white scars on the intensely blue arc of the sky. We walked on until the path became unhorseworthy, and the silence, beauty and peace on that ‘forgotten’ side of the Rock reduced even Rachel to wordlessness for about three minutes.

  Before turning back we rested on a boulder where we could look straight down a sparkling white slope into the Indus and watch it being augmented by snow melting off the foot of the mountain. I remember that was one of those ‘special’ moments which unfailingly bring out the animist in me. Sitting there beside one of the greatest rivers of the earth, at the foot of some of the greatest peaks, it seemed entirely natural to worship the power and the glory of water and rock.

  When we got back to the sandy track Rachel remounted: and that was the last I saw of my daughter for an hour and a half. Watching Hallam disappear over a rise at a reasonable trot I thought nothing of it, expecting them to wait for me nearby, but when I topped that rise they were already far away. I immediately assumed that Hallam had bolted. Then, focusing better across the undulating snow, I saw that far from his being out of control Rachel was using her switch on his rump like a jockey coming up to the finish. As they disappeared over another rise I yelled ridiculously, ‘Rachel! Stop! Rachel!’ And besides me the great grey wall of the Rock echoed – ‘Achel!’

  I walked on at my normal speed, seething with rage and sick with anxiety. This sort of caper is all very well on a soft sandy track where there is no traffic, but how was Rachel going to cope if she met a military jeep being driven by some lunatic young conscript at sixty m.p.h.? Hallam is intelligent and responsible, but also quite highly-strung: and no Balti animal is at ease with motor-traffic. I noted from the depth and setting of his hoof-prints that he had galloped all the way. A
pproaching the jeep-track I looked desperately for the black riding-hat and scarlet snow-suit – and then came my worst moment, when I saw what appeared to be a riderless Hallam. Almost at once I realised that it was in fact a cow of the same colour, but the bad moment had lasted long enough to make me tremble. During the long walk into and through the New Bazaar I saw scarcely anybody and began to feel reassured; had she been thrown and injured someone would have been searching for me. Then at last I saw the pair of them in the distance, waiting near the Old Bazaar, surrounded by a puzzled crowd. Even from a distance I could tell that Rachel was feeling inordinately pleased with herself. ‘Hello, Mummy!’ she called over the heads of her bewildered entourage. ‘You took a long time to catch up – we’ve been waiting ages! I hope you weren’t worried?’ ‘Of course I was,’ I said sourly, repressing all the other things I wanted to say. ‘I was afraid you might be,’ said she, showing the belated beginnings of remorse. ‘But I’ve discovered galloping is much easier than trotting! And Hallam was very good when two jeeps passed, so you were silly to worry, weren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I replied crisply. ‘He might not have been very good – or the jeep-drivers might not. You were silly, not me.’ But despite this snub she continued to expatiate on the delectable sensation of galloping as we proceeded homeward.

  Skardu – 15 January

  Last evening I opened our one remaining tin of Pindi Complan and found it very mouldy; but with my usual parsimony, reinforced by hunger, I attempted a mugful against Rachel’s advice. It tasted so repulsive that I was forced to give up, though not before drinking enough to cause havoc within. This morning, having fed Rachel and imbibed tea, I only wanted to crawl back into my bedding, I felt poisoned, and no doubt to some mild extent I was.

  However, I had recovered sufficiently by eleven o’clock to accompany Rachel on Hallam six miles up the valley towards Khapalu. Here the landscape is wilder and more broken. At the base of the mountains, grey and black boulders stand gauntly in deep snow, interspersed with occasional large thyme-clumps or juniper bushes. Then come level white stretches – probably fields – often surrounded by Connemara walls and with orchards nearby; and there are unexpected 200-feet deep cleavages in the soft earth, which necessitate long detours. Some of these cracks must be recent since the old track runs to the edges on both sides. For much of the way the Indus is again visible, far below. As it wanders mildly in its deep, wide, gravelly bed it seems quite unrelated to that rollicking torrent which forces its way through the Gorge. At river-level lines of poplars and willows look like toys and make one newly conscious of the scale of the landscape. Beyond the Indus stretch miles of pale brown sand-dunes, beautifully wind-moulded, and from these rise two more isolated, oblong rock mountains, not quite as high or long as the Rock but scarcely less dramatic.

  We passed through two hamlets where an appalling number of the visible inhabitants had goitre; and many of the inhabitants were visible, sitting on their roofs enjoying the midday warmth while they pounded apricot kernels, or spun wool, or wove lengths of blanket. Both men and women greeted us cheerfully and seemed either temperamentally more amiable than the folk of Skardu town or less oppressed by Muharram privations.

  On the outskirts of the town a little building stands on its own in the snow not far from the hospital, with ‘Goiter Clinic’ writ large over the door. It was built a few years ago but has not yet been opened. This is typical of Skardu, where those with worthy ambitions to improve things for the locals repeatedly find themselves thwarted by inter-related staff/communications/transport problems.

  We managed our equestrian affairs more rationally today, arranging that Rachel could go ahead of me for half a mile or so, but must pull up and wait. Tedious for her and Hallam, but one can’t have one’s young permanently out of sight.

  On the way home I suddenly felt very weak, thirsty and hungry; but the two tiny tea-houses we passed had neither tea nor food. Then, when I went to put the kettle on, our dratted stove played us up and had to be dismantled. When I had broken two fingernails, while trying to adjust the intractable wicks, Rachel observed maliciously, ‘You’re using a lot of new words today.’ And after all that the small kettle took forty minutes to boil. New wicks are indicated.

  Skardu – 16 January

  This has been the sort of day that would drive one to screaming point at home; but here, because everyone is completely indifferent to time, it was positively relaxing.

  We were told that kerosene would be available at the Government Supplies Depot in the New Bazaar at eleven o’clock, so off we went at ten-thirty to join a patient throng bearing every imaginable sort of container – including a chipped enamel chamber-pot the origins of which I studiously investigated. I should have been able to guess that it once belonged to a touring British Official.

  As we sat in the sun near a tethered Hallam, we were approached yet again by a harassed-looking young policeman who has been haunting us for days. Abbas Kazmi has repeatedly assured him that our passports are in order, our characters unblemished and our motives of the purest, but he still seems to feel it his duty to throw doubts (most politely) on the legality of our presence in Baltistan. To allay the poor man’s anxiety I offered this morning to show our passports to the Chief Superintendent for Baltistan and the relieved young PC arranged to meet us at 3 p.m. outside Police Headquarters.

  At 12.40 the Depot opened and we were informed that tomorrow we must go to the Office of Government Supplies and fill in an application form in triplicate for a ration of subsidised kerosene. So on the way home we borrowed a gallon from Abbas Kazmi, who always seems able to solve our problems. There is no unsubsidised kerosene left in the bazaar and without our stove we could scarcely survive: these are the very coldest weeks of the year.

  At 2.55 I was tethering Hallam to a verandah-post outside Police HQ and at 3.45 our young PC friend appeared to explain that the Chief had not returned to his office after lunch – so would we please come back at 11 a.m. tomorrow.

  We then went for an hour’s walk/canter and got home just before the night cold took the valley in its vicelike grip. On the way I tried unsuccessfully to buy some form of bread; food was much more plentiful in remote Thowar. Here the population has recently been artificially increased by an influx of Pakistani government officials and their staffs and sometimes their families – not to mention the military, who cannot have all their food airlifted in, though they try to be as self-sufficient as possible. However, Skardu is best for Hallam’s fodder and he is responding well to a good diet. He doesn’t look any fatter, but there is little in common between the wreck who dragged himself out of Thowar and the spirited steed who now goes streaking towards the horizon at a touch of Rachel’s switch.

  Skardu – 17 January

  Sadiq Ali visits us regularly every morning, often accompanied by one or more friends, relatives and neighbours. The locals say we are the first foreigners to have wintered here for over forty years, which may or may not be true. Certainly we are a novelty, the more so as we do not live aloofly in our own camp or in the Rest House, but are available for inspection at all times. Our door can be bolted from inside as well as padlocked from outside, but I have never yet used the bolt, even at night. (What greater tribute could be paid to the essential friendliness and goodness of the Balti atmosphere? One feels completely safe going to sleep at night in an open house.) In such places as this the foreigner must choose an extreme: either to live in the sort of isolation traditionally associated with Western travellers or to integrate and forget about privacy. In Hindu communities the latter course is difficult because of caste taboos, as I found in both Nepal and south India, but in Muslim lands there are no such barriers. The prolonged and often silent scrutiny of unknown chance callers can be very trying, yet it would be churlish to begrudge these wide-eyed visitors the pleasure they get from watching me washing-up, or brushing my teeth, or polishing the tack, or reading to Rachel, or peeling onions to give some air of reality to our packet soups.r />
  De Fillipi remarked that ‘By nature the Balti is … of a timid disposition with a mixture of respect and fear but without servility towards the European’. He is so without servility that when I go off to fetch my morning bucket of water it occurs to none of my breakfast-time callers – sitting warming their hands at the stove – to offer to fetch it for me. But in fact I like this attitude of leaving me to fend for myself; there is no unkindness implicit in it and that is how I want to live here.

  Sadiq Ali is full of good advice which he somehow manages to get across in Balti. For complicated explanations he enlists a nephew, Mohammad Ali, who speaks a little English with an effort painful to watch. Mohammad Ali is nineteen, spotty and ambitious; he has light brown hair, hazel eyes, a too-pale face and crooked teeth. Having had some contact with mountaineering expeditions he wants to migrate down-country where he believes he can get ‘best-paid job in office’. I have been trying to dissuade him from quitting his job here – he works in some recently-imported government department – because with a Skardu education he could not possibly get any job down-country. His ambition, however, is not uncommon. While the Pakistanis pine to escape to England or America, an increasing number of young Baltis pine to escape to Pakistan.

  Sadiq Ali – with his crinkly, tanned face, blue eyes and concern lest Hallam feel cold at night – reminds me of an undersized, bow-legged, horsey Irishman. He has insisted on lending us a ragged but still useful horse-blanket and he frequently brings us gifts of dried apricots and mulberries, mingled with a few tiny raisins and walnuts. He also buys Hallam’s fodder – undoubtedly a profitable occupation – and has even managed to locate a source of precious barley. His morning visits normally last about an hour; then he wanders off to his winter job, which is in the Government Supplies Office near the Police Bazaar, where we too were going this morning in quest of our kerosene chit.