Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  Pakistan averts its gaze from many things. We make friends with Nigit, a stunning, slim and elegant woman with wheat-coloured skin, deep brown kohl-ringed eyes, a thick mane of hair and an astoundingly posh English accent. Nigit and her husband Imran were living in London during the eighties and came home to try to spread the word about HIV/AIDS. Their progress is slow. Nigit writes pamphlets and runs workshops but can’t mention sex, homosexuality, condoms, prostitutes (who are called ‘dancers’ here) and pedophilia. She has to pierce through the widespread belief that Muslims don’t get AIDS by constantly arguing that good Muslims can’t control the behaviour of bad Muslims. And, of course, there are some bad Muslims in Pakistan – men pay one dollar to have sex with street boys, apprentices serve their masters sexually, there’s cheap Afghani heroin but not many needles, and close male friendships often become sexual. The Koran forbids homosexuality but Nigit worries that ‘the men don’t see it as sex, they see it as fun. So there’s a huge state of denial here. It’s just so difficult.’

  Sexual looks, touching and, of course, kissing are also denied on television. For safety’s sake I’m told to stay inside the house under the mountains. In my self-imposed purdah I grow bored and brainless watching a lot of terrible TV, while Jonathan works twenty-hour days. Pakistan’s movies and song clips make Indian popular culture look raunchy. Goofy guys with beards, tight black jeans and Cuban heels skip clumsily between tall trees and morph into Mujahadeen fighters brandishing knives or guns. (Former Dictator General Zia banned dance, so there’s a lot of catching up to do before Pakistan can match the Indian disco moves.) Women dreadfully dressed in polyester suits and shoulder pads look on with downcast, adoring eyes but don’t even seem to touch the heroes. When an American movie gets too rude, a yellow censorship sign saying ‘MOVIE MAGIC’ comes up over a pair of red curtains.

  MTV, which I access by cable, is not so funny. It’s ninety percent American, so nearly every film-clip features girls gyrating in bras and writhing in G-strings below big black guys in gold jewellery. No wonder Pakistani people accuse westerners of sexual immorality. I see the Islamic perspective – these women are playthings out to please men. It’s a concept just as offensive as the top-to-toe burkha that reduces women to blue blobs. The houseboy Mustafa often cleans behind me so he can watch the TV over my shoulder. One day as Shaggy dances with sixty near-naked babes he giggles.

  ‘Do you like the American movie, with the girls so shameful in nakedness?’

  ‘Not really,’ I answer, wondering where this will lead.

  ‘That is how women will be in paradise for men. It is sign of what is to come.’

  In Allah’s heaven men will be surrounded by succulent, scantily clad virgins who will have eyes as adoring as American lap dancers.

  ‘Where do good women go in heaven, Mustafa?’ I ask hopefully, wondering whether there will be sweet boy-toy orgies for us. He bites his lip and stammers, ‘Women? I-I-I-I dddon’t know.’

  At least Mohammed did advocate giving wives sexual pleasure in the Koran; in India there is no Hindi word for female orgasm. But in Islam sexuality is to be secluded from all but husbands. An ex-diplomat friend warned me before I left Delhi that I mustn’t get a bikini wax here because the beautician will take it all off. Women aren’t going for the ‘Brazilian’ to be trendy – in Islam it’s recommended for women to remove all body hair every twenty days or so to stay clean and attractive for their husbands. Many men here also shave their genitals – which possibly explains a lot of the scratching going on.

  One day I catch Mustafa and the cook looking at a Vogue magazine belonging to a Canadian journalist. They stare confused and quizzical at scrawny women in lacy underwear with their legs open, lips loose and eyes saying ‘fuck me stupid’ who are advertising a bag that costs an average Pakistani’s yearly salary. From here the western worship of sex and consumption seems shameful. As does America’s apparent willingness to engage in a war with powerful religious overtones. When George W. Bush talks of a ‘crusade’ and ‘infinite justice’ he only further alienates people already suspicious and resentful towards his country.

  The bombing of Afghanistan begins.

  Pakistan becomes jumpy and tense. There are riots in the hard-line heartland cities of Quetta and Peshawar. The trouble is stirred by Islamic ideologues, Afghan refugees and Pakistani Pashtuns, who are bound by bloodlines to Afghanistan’s dominant ethnic group who form the bulwark of the Taliban. It’s an ugly minority but I willingly submit to staying indoors even more. Outside, emotions are unpredictable and enflamed with rumours. Pakistani chai stalls are awash with the conspiracy theory that the Israeli secret service – and not Osama bin Laden – masterminded the twin towers attack. Many are convinced that thousands of Manhattan Jews knew it was coming and didn’t turn up to work that day. Another theory states that the US is dropping food packets to lure Afghan civilians into the open so that they can shoot them. But the hardliners’ protests against the American bombing are small in Islamabad and they die down quickly.

  At the Marriott Hotel the journalists are ecstatic that they finally have a story – for weeks they’ve been chewing their nails waiting for bombs to drop. The hotel roof is a mass of satellite dishes, director’s chairs and steaming lights. A halo of hairspray sits in the chilly air. The restaurant is full of (mostly male) Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, English and – loudest of all – American accents. The lobby is packed with pony-tailed cameramen and journalists dressed in brand-new equipment vests looking like frustrated fishermen who have yet to get their feet wet. In this five-star foyer the only sign we are in Pakistan is a bronze statue of Allah’s name mounted on a big black marble block. To many of the cameramen, it’s a handy place to park their arses unaware of the offence it causes. It’s a five-star frontline complete with poolside analysis – legs jiggle with stress, excitement fills the air, egos clash, war stories and hangover comparisons are exchanged.

  I am too bored to sit still any longer and the journalist lurking within me dislikes missing the story of the decade. I ring Triple J and Radio National and begin some interviews and stories; Radio New Zealand calls Jonathan and he hands the phone to me. It’s fun to be on air again but I feel distant from the thrill and the adrenaline. I have lost the hunger for the chase and have stopped seeing the world as a story; as something I can package, explain, reveal and talk about as if it’s distant and different from myself. It occurs to me perhaps that’s why I feel so sad and depressed – as a journalist and a broadcaster I was so busy regurgitating information and analysing words and events I didn’t make the emotional space to truly process them and let them sit still with my soul. Now I am a citizen again and I’m viewing the current war as an ordinary human watching my species fail. I don’t want to go to war, to learn missile names or to be part of the action in a bubble of bravado. I feel more vulnerable to sorrow but more connected to humanity.

  I now feel slightly ashamed of my fear for Jonathan’s safety. Afghans have begun to die – nameless, faceless and out of way of the world’s media, they will never be mourned by many. My concerns for one man seem petty and cruel – yet I’m thankful he’s stuck in Pakistan waiting for permission to enter Afghanistan. I miss our simple life in Australia so sharply it hurts. But I’m realising my long-distance love affair with my country has been blinkered by nostalgia and distance. Australia is supporting the war against Afghanistan but is refusing to accept Afghan refugees; it’s at the end of an election campaign fought over a boatload turned away, while poor crowded Pakistan somehow struggles with two million Afghan refugees. What I’ve missed most about Australia is its low density, its space and its capacity for solitude. I understand my compatriots want to preserve this space but such a pursuit seems selfish here. This war has shattered my Great Australian Dream – the fantasy that I could be part of the world community with all its benefits but isolated enough to be safe and separate from its violence and brutality.

  The morning John Howard wins the elec
tion I sit in the garden of our house and interview the bravest women I’ve ever met. ‘Rafat’ may be too scared to tell me her real name but she’s forthright about what she wants. With a sweet open face, a scarf around her head and a black cloak around her body, she kisses me on both cheeks and tells me about life in Afghanistan. She escaped during the days of the post-Soviet Mujahadeen when warlords ruled, which she says were not much different to the days of the Taliban that followed. She couldn’t go to school, appear unveiled or feel safe. She talks of wanting a role in a future government and then leans forward to touch my knee.

  ‘Why do the people of Australia hate us so much?’

  ‘I’m not sure they hate Afghans, I think they are more scared of you,’ I mumble shamed and embarrassed.

  ‘How can you be scared of people who have nothing?’

  I don’t know what to tell her, for the hospitality in this part of the world is overwhelming. Goodness to guests is a God-ordered duty of a good Muslim. We are invited to countless homes, including that of Jonathan’s Pakistan fixer, Irshad, where we sit with his wife, their dimpled daughter and strong sons and are fed kebabs and love. After dinner we are presented with a pile of presents up to our chins – a pair of earrings, a necklace, a bangle, shawls, bags, cushion covers and a beautiful toy truck. I’m so overwhelmed I begin to cry.

  Of all the things I’ve learnt on my Indian pilgrimage, the lesson that makes the most sense to me now is that concerning the redeeming power of love. I have come here to save a personal love but at such a time in the world’s history I realise the importance of finding the love in Islam. I have read some Sufi poetry that talks of love and longing among Muslims. Jonathan recalls he has met some Afghan Sufis living in Pakistan and heard them talk of a ‘Muslim purveyor of love’. He makes some calls and discovers that this purveyor of love is a Sufi saint and refugee living in Peshawar near the border with Afghanistan.

  The following morning a taxi speeds me through Mad Max territory. Over pale brown rubble and dirt and under a weary sky, stone homes squat around whitewashed mosques; long lines of cattle stand under the sun on their way to the slaughterhouse. At the meeting of the dirty Kabul River and the glacial ice-blue Indus, the fort of Akbar the Great stands grand and stark. Beside the road, men’s suits match the dust, and black veils give way to big blue burkha tents. Peshawar is a frontier town on the modern Silk Road. There’s not much silk for sale but you can get cars, heroin, electronics, whitegoods and weapons duty-free and dusty after their trip through Afghanistan.

  In the family section of Chiefs, the local hamburger chain restaurant, I meet up with Hamid Iqbal who has helped Jonathan set up stories here before. Hamid doesn’t live in this smugglers’ paradise because he wants cheap whitegoods. He’s an Afghan and a Sufi who came here to educate his daughter; Sufis follow a softer form of Islam that is less concerned with the outer laws of the faith, which are often interpreted as non-supportive of women’s education and involvement in society outside the home. About a year ago, in a local Peshawar market, Hamid felt the nearby presence of a ‘pure soul’. He followed the feeling to the man who now helps him find heaven within – his Sufi saint. Well-educated and urbane, Hamid speaks softly with an American–Arabic accent and in a romantic, poetic manner.

  ‘Jonathan is my brother; here you are my honoured sister. I will take you to meet the man who makes music within my soul.’

  We travel down dusty lanes to a large house set around a courtyard. Inside a room seventeen men sit on cushions smoking strong cigarettes and drinking weak green tea. They are Sufis engaging in a form of worship that is illegal under the Taliban. All Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God, but most feel they will become close to Allah after death and the final judgement in paradise. However, Sufis believe it is possible to experience this closeness while alive. They follow a mystical, inner, esoteric psycho-spiritual dimension of the faith where they aim to access inner consciousness and spread love, peace and kindness across the world. Sufis feel a fervent love of Allah, and their saints, or pirs, are like the Hindu sadhus – pure souls who can help followers find God. The Taliban follow a hard-core version of Islam; they deem Sufis un-Islamic, arguing no man can be a conduit for Allah, and restrict some Sufi practices. In Pakistan, Sufism is still practised freely, so these refugees now feel free to worship; they meet regularly to speak in their own language and share common hardships.

  The Afghan refugees nod their heads in greeting as I cover my hair and sit to listen to them reading poetry. They bow before the wisdom of an unlikely looking saint. Asana Seer is a South Asian Robert De Niro with a short beard, a mole on his strong chin and a seventies-style leather jacket hangs on his angular limbs. The poetry stops and they begin an activity subversive in Taliban Afghanistan.

  Singing.

  I listen to songs that last for hours – steady drums and soaring melodies that swirl and loop; tunes that begin mournful and whirl towards ecstasy. The men sing or clap or close their eyes and smile with the joyful passion for inner harmonies. They are not playing my song but I understand their rapture. I’ve been apart from good music too long and my soul is missing tunes of transcendence. Prior to India, my church was a party, club or floor between two speakers, and Delhi’s nightclubs just don’t stack up. I travel with the Sufis to that place of bliss and true love for all.

  We return with the shadows to the cooling earth as the call to prayer wafts across the suburb. Some of the men go to face Mecca and repeatedly touch their heads to the ground in prayer, but most stay to listen in on my chat with their saint. He agrees to an interview for Radio National but mystics are not good at simple radio grabs; Asana Seer talks in rambling poems and Hamid has trouble translating. Basically, he tells me he facilitates pilgrims’ relations to God by communicating with the Sufi saints of the past in prayer – this magnifies the power of Allah whose miracles are everywhere.

  Suddenly an elderly man with a white beard and bad gout begins to scream at me in great excitement, throwing his stick in the air. Hamid softly translates his rave.

  ‘A week ago I lost the power of my left leg and arm. Doctors could do nothing. I had that crutch over there. I came and touched the master and his pure soul; look, now I’m perfect.’

  He hobbles painfully and slowly across the room to show me; he laughs with a lopsided smile on his face. It appears he’s recovering from a stroke.

  Asana Seer tells me he won’t answer any more questions, and says, ‘Why are you asking me this? You have the answers, you spend time alone with self. You know it deep inside, I know you do. What are you doing in India?’

  ‘I’m learning about different faiths,’ I answer.

  ‘What have you learnt?’ he demands.

  I stammer, ‘I-I-I-I’m learning different things from all – from Buddhism about controlling my mind, from Hinduism respecting other paths, from Islam the power of surrender.’

  The saint stares hard and unflinching while Hamid translates my words. Suddenly there’s a mini riot. The men begin screaming at each other, motioning towards me and throwing their arms up in the air and then banging them on the floor. Increasingly nervous, I ask Hamid what they are fighting about.

  ‘Some of them are saying as Muslims we have a duty to try to convert you to Islam, as you should not follow these atheist faiths like Buddhism and look upon the false idols of the Indians. Others say, no, we are Sufis, we show her with love that we respect all paths. She must find her own inner journey.’

  My head is reeling from the strong smoke, the deafening debate, the mystic music and the passion. The saint is impassive. He dismisses me curtly.

  ‘You have the answer. Follow your path, it will lead to peace and love.’

  I’m driven back to Islamabad reeking of cigarettes and feeling more cancerised than purified, but I do feel strangely peaceful. It’s a state not shattered by saying goodbye to Jonathan when he tells me he’s off to Afghanistan. Spending this week with him has been tense, fraught and rushed, but a
t least we have been together. I have been buoyed by the Sufi belief in the power of passion. Of course I’m nervous about Jonathan returning to Afghanistan but I attempt to abandon myself to love without fear.

  I fly to Delhi as Kabul falls and Jonathan drives across the border from Peshawar towards the Afghan capital. He stops in Jalalabad where he plans to join a morning convoy heading through the lawless war zone. At the last minute he gets impatient and sets off alone on a risky race with dusk. The next day I hear on the BBC that an Australian man has been killed on that road. The ABC doesn’t ring me and the name is not released. My imagination begins to run rampant – I think perhaps my mother is flying over to tell me I’m a widow.

  For two days I wait for news.

  I turn to music for solace, for songs are like religions; they mean different things to people at different times of their lives because they speak directly to the heart and soul. My favourite song, U2’s ‘One’, means something more than a break-up tune now. It’s a song I’ve returned to time and time again to ease or indulge in heartbreak but now I listen with a willingness to love another beyond togetherness and beyond death.

  I let go of the hurt, the need, the fear and I trust in love, the greatest power of all. The BBC announces the name of the dead. A wonderful, much-loved cameraman, Harry Burton, and his companions had been held up, taken over a mountain pass and shot. It was the group with which Jonathan was supposed to travel.