Friends, neither words nor mega pixels can do justice to where I went on Saturday. Forgive me for writing so sparsely, I will consider how better to put it. I do assure you, though, that these are not 'desk-haiku', which is why there aren't the 'correct' number of syllables per line and so on, but they are heart-felt, which is apparently real criteria fot haiku anyway.
tall mountains
poplars at their feet learn height
the heavenward stretch
stone power
avoiding an avalanche
cars creep round
white peak
silver lined in the sky
clouds close in
ice above
fire lines the roadside
the valley in fall
Monday 27 October 2008
Friday 24 October 2008
No-man's-land
"Miss Hannah, What is the difference between a tavern and a goblet?"
My other job is a grammarian and living Oxford English Dictionary.
The question prompts a discussuion of the drinking habits of Great Britain. While we don't have that particular brand of hostelry here, we do have tea houses, where I have glimpsed men gathering to drink well-brewed beverages in aged-oak cabins. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment eeked out his living, I imagine, in just such places, shabby, perfect for profound if gloomy reflection.
But I am the one feeling guilty. I am a thief, stealing glances. My eyes have trespassed into territory not my own. The decree is that they stay down-ward, to the gutter, but they stray. They creep up above the pavement when I hope no-one is looking, to grab fragments of colour and life and then retreat behind the dupatta again. Mostly I get caught, if not red-handed, then at least wide-eyed, for I am the obvious intruder, a female, behind enemy lines and the men have got their eyes on me first. Worst of all, I sometimes look up at passing soldiers and policemen and see guns before faces and look away quick before my eyes make it beyond the boundaries of their helmets to see who knows what expressions.
So the lines between the sexes have been drawn, but there are breaches and some sunny stretches of no-man's-land. Well, there are men there, but it is not their land.
Cooking greens, my company has been solely girls. One chops, another kneads dough, one wires a hob into a dodgy socket, another paints my nails with henna. Then it is time for the huge rounds of bread to be baked in the hearth. A brother is sumoned to wield the paddle, beat and flip the roti. I am in Naples all of a sudden, at the pizza oven in an alcove. And for the first time it's ok that boy meets girl. The kitchen, it seems, is safe.
We unfurl pink cotton and two different polyesters in blue. We discuss necklines and hems. "What's a fashionable cut of trouser these days?" I ask, and am given pen and ink sketches in reply. Very fetching. Then, with deft wrists and flourishes of a tape-measure, my vital statistics are taken. Last time I had this done was in the underwear section of M&S, but that was by an old dear, not by a burly man with a black beard and no English. This particular bit of intimacy is completely normal and I wonder how it is that women defended by so much swathing ever allowed this breach to occur.
But it is school where not even rumours of a battle between the sexes have been heard. We are at peace and I am at peace. As I enter the gates in the morning, tiny children and boys on the brink of manhood all extend their hands to salaam me. Twice I have been offered apples the size of a grapefruit and this afternoon Abdullah shared a couplet of Shakespeare's with me. That's what happens to real teachers, I think. I keep my head covered - but only till the sun shines enough to warm my face. At school I can raise my head and my voice. My spirits rise in turn. I am a story-teller and singer of songs. I am a sportswoman, director of plays and mathematician. I lead discussion and enquiry. I cut, paste, play in the sand and edit poetry.
Every day is a family get-together where the children whoop and run between trees and the legs of us who are in locus parentis while we try and catch-up like brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. Sharing a bench, a kettle of tea and a loaf of bread for lunch, we discuss: algebra; the merits of porridge v roti for breakfast; childcare; the soul's struggle for perfection; the teachings of Buddha, of whom there is a statue nearby.
We teach too, but sometimes even then on adjacent carpets trying to catch the last of the autumn sun between the trees. The spirit of picnicing pervades.
We had our Eid Milan party last week, with the help of a fuzzy cassette player. I was in a mood to celebrate. Strutting and twirling, clicking and flouncing, arms wide, the children from these mountains gave me all the colour and life I could wish for and not, this time, as a guiltily stolen snapshot, nor even as a paid-for souvenir, but as a generous gift one would share with family.
My other job is a grammarian and living Oxford English Dictionary.
The question prompts a discussuion of the drinking habits of Great Britain. While we don't have that particular brand of hostelry here, we do have tea houses, where I have glimpsed men gathering to drink well-brewed beverages in aged-oak cabins. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment eeked out his living, I imagine, in just such places, shabby, perfect for profound if gloomy reflection.
But I am the one feeling guilty. I am a thief, stealing glances. My eyes have trespassed into territory not my own. The decree is that they stay down-ward, to the gutter, but they stray. They creep up above the pavement when I hope no-one is looking, to grab fragments of colour and life and then retreat behind the dupatta again. Mostly I get caught, if not red-handed, then at least wide-eyed, for I am the obvious intruder, a female, behind enemy lines and the men have got their eyes on me first. Worst of all, I sometimes look up at passing soldiers and policemen and see guns before faces and look away quick before my eyes make it beyond the boundaries of their helmets to see who knows what expressions.
So the lines between the sexes have been drawn, but there are breaches and some sunny stretches of no-man's-land. Well, there are men there, but it is not their land.
Cooking greens, my company has been solely girls. One chops, another kneads dough, one wires a hob into a dodgy socket, another paints my nails with henna. Then it is time for the huge rounds of bread to be baked in the hearth. A brother is sumoned to wield the paddle, beat and flip the roti. I am in Naples all of a sudden, at the pizza oven in an alcove. And for the first time it's ok that boy meets girl. The kitchen, it seems, is safe.
We unfurl pink cotton and two different polyesters in blue. We discuss necklines and hems. "What's a fashionable cut of trouser these days?" I ask, and am given pen and ink sketches in reply. Very fetching. Then, with deft wrists and flourishes of a tape-measure, my vital statistics are taken. Last time I had this done was in the underwear section of M&S, but that was by an old dear, not by a burly man with a black beard and no English. This particular bit of intimacy is completely normal and I wonder how it is that women defended by so much swathing ever allowed this breach to occur.
But it is school where not even rumours of a battle between the sexes have been heard. We are at peace and I am at peace. As I enter the gates in the morning, tiny children and boys on the brink of manhood all extend their hands to salaam me. Twice I have been offered apples the size of a grapefruit and this afternoon Abdullah shared a couplet of Shakespeare's with me. That's what happens to real teachers, I think. I keep my head covered - but only till the sun shines enough to warm my face. At school I can raise my head and my voice. My spirits rise in turn. I am a story-teller and singer of songs. I am a sportswoman, director of plays and mathematician. I lead discussion and enquiry. I cut, paste, play in the sand and edit poetry.
Every day is a family get-together where the children whoop and run between trees and the legs of us who are in locus parentis while we try and catch-up like brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. Sharing a bench, a kettle of tea and a loaf of bread for lunch, we discuss: algebra; the merits of porridge v roti for breakfast; childcare; the soul's struggle for perfection; the teachings of Buddha, of whom there is a statue nearby.
We teach too, but sometimes even then on adjacent carpets trying to catch the last of the autumn sun between the trees. The spirit of picnicing pervades.
We had our Eid Milan party last week, with the help of a fuzzy cassette player. I was in a mood to celebrate. Strutting and twirling, clicking and flouncing, arms wide, the children from these mountains gave me all the colour and life I could wish for and not, this time, as a guiltily stolen snapshot, nor even as a paid-for souvenir, but as a generous gift one would share with family.
Monday 20 October 2008
Animal Kingdom
Ready to make a good impression at school I step out onto the street in tailor-made suit, neat headscarf and polished shoes. The gutter beneath runs red. Upstream, in the neighbouring field a butcher washes his hands and knife and a goat with a bloody neck breathes his last, bismillah.
Later when the makeshift abatoir is finished for the day and the bones put away a cat reposes there, replete.
Animals dead or alive are prominent here. Members of the livestock community take their place among the good citizens of the town, going about whatever business they might have with a purposeful air, turning right here, left there, if you please. I wander down my friends' garden path and their cow comes out to greet me; my colleagues and I plan a lesson and are interrupted by a goat who needs to get between our chairs; a row of children in assembly is scattered when this same goat needs a path through it; a bull outside the chemist's keeps me waiting till he is finished and ready to clear a path from the doorway; I arrive home to a goat and her family waiting on my doorstep.
On Saturday we took a trip to the river. While a horse chilled out up to his neck in the glacier-melt, I gazed across to the other side, a land of barren rock - brown as far as the eye could see. Suddenly from the west came three men, the proudest and happiest I have seen here, bolt upright, on handsome horses. The land belongs to such as them.
A lady I know from local aristocracy pours the nicest tea and serves it with cake. She talks about the state of education in the area, her land and its produce and local gossip. All is overheard by two silent Himalayan ibexes, heads erect, fur glossy, with horns to make a stout heart faint. Her husband, a big-shot in the world of shikar, hunting, got them, and these are the only two trophies she allows in the drawing room. "One can't go on sweeping up the hairs that do tend to fall, after all," she explains, then after a pause adds in a quieter voice, "nor tolerate them staring at each other with their beady eyes."
No, nor can one tolerate being stared at by beady eyes in the kitchen. In a land apparently beset by violence it is rodents that have been my terror by night. Why do they torment me, I wonder. Is it because while these 4 walls encompass our women's world, our fears - of disease, violation and destruction - are similarly proscribed? They shrink down, focussed on these tiniest of bodies. Whether this is it or not, Oh how I would love to see the river run red with their blood or a hundred tiny winter coats made of their hides.
Later when the makeshift abatoir is finished for the day and the bones put away a cat reposes there, replete.
Animals dead or alive are prominent here. Members of the livestock community take their place among the good citizens of the town, going about whatever business they might have with a purposeful air, turning right here, left there, if you please. I wander down my friends' garden path and their cow comes out to greet me; my colleagues and I plan a lesson and are interrupted by a goat who needs to get between our chairs; a row of children in assembly is scattered when this same goat needs a path through it; a bull outside the chemist's keeps me waiting till he is finished and ready to clear a path from the doorway; I arrive home to a goat and her family waiting on my doorstep.
On Saturday we took a trip to the river. While a horse chilled out up to his neck in the glacier-melt, I gazed across to the other side, a land of barren rock - brown as far as the eye could see. Suddenly from the west came three men, the proudest and happiest I have seen here, bolt upright, on handsome horses. The land belongs to such as them.
A lady I know from local aristocracy pours the nicest tea and serves it with cake. She talks about the state of education in the area, her land and its produce and local gossip. All is overheard by two silent Himalayan ibexes, heads erect, fur glossy, with horns to make a stout heart faint. Her husband, a big-shot in the world of shikar, hunting, got them, and these are the only two trophies she allows in the drawing room. "One can't go on sweeping up the hairs that do tend to fall, after all," she explains, then after a pause adds in a quieter voice, "nor tolerate them staring at each other with their beady eyes."
No, nor can one tolerate being stared at by beady eyes in the kitchen. In a land apparently beset by violence it is rodents that have been my terror by night. Why do they torment me, I wonder. Is it because while these 4 walls encompass our women's world, our fears - of disease, violation and destruction - are similarly proscribed? They shrink down, focussed on these tiniest of bodies. Whether this is it or not, Oh how I would love to see the river run red with their blood or a hundred tiny winter coats made of their hides.
Friday 17 October 2008
Signs of winter
These are the signs that winter is coming.
In the market there is a run on sawdust to burn in iron stoves. I joined in and have stockpiled 15 sacks, each as tall as a man.
The market is bright with cold-weather cast-offs from the west: jumpsuits, boiler suits, shell suits, anoraks. An elderly gent outside my house sources his winter wardrobe differently. He straddles a goat and neatly strips of its hide with a glinting knife. The underside, the leather, is bright white and the fur thicker than the man's beard. A head with a bloody stump on the ground beside him seems amused by the proceedings in that smiley way goats have.
There is a chill in the air and smoke curls around pine trees, each embossed with one of the 99 names of Allah on one path. It is the stuff of fairy tales, where to see a gingerbread cottage or meet a big bad wolf would seem quite normal.
And with no apparent concern for buffering anyone against any cold, a platoon of soldiers have been commanded to work on the borders - by which I mean the herbaceous borders of the mess. The have dug up whole sides of the road and are planting rose bushes, proving the truth of their banner, 'Pakistan Army, Men at their Best.' They follow up Project Pot-Plant with Project Papier-Mache: there's a replica mountain under construction on the lawn. It's likeness looms overhead.
Gentle rain fell the other night. In the morning, solid rock soaring above us had turned to glitter and dairy cream; the first snow of the season. I was surprised, but then I have woken with wonder every day for two weeks now. New mountains reveal and hide themselves constantly as veils of cloud are lifted and draped again. Sometimes a misty purdah remains and transforms a high valley into a distant dreamland. I am reluctant to go indoors for too long and miss the show. I sometimes stop mid-sentence when I see a new peak.
"Because it's there," said Sir Edmund Hillary to explain why he climbed Mount Everest, and you can't argue. They are there. Close, sometimes too close, are the barren rock mountains walling us in all around, heavy and hung with gravity. Further off and elusive are the high peaks, which through their snow, strive against the serious substance of geology to sublimate into some spiritual state. No one will ever hear their silence, for climbers are always accompanied by oxygen tanks and kerosene stoves, hissing away.
Nevertheless a good walk to one of their base camps from here may help me to connect up the three worlds I see but which do not hang together in my mind. Here I am in that vortex of humanity and activity in the bazaar which hammers metal, greases axles, hews wood, fries pastries, spits and splatters blood from butchering, imports-exports, pushes cart-loads of fruit, shouts into mobiles, banks money and arranges packets on shelves. I am in Anywhereabad, South Asia.
Above all this is a terrace of corn fields, exhausted after bearing a crop in such a cruel climate, withering leaves on orchard trees and, where channels flow down to the Indus, green.
And then those mountains.
Awe has become the tenor of my life.
In the market there is a run on sawdust to burn in iron stoves. I joined in and have stockpiled 15 sacks, each as tall as a man.
The market is bright with cold-weather cast-offs from the west: jumpsuits, boiler suits, shell suits, anoraks. An elderly gent outside my house sources his winter wardrobe differently. He straddles a goat and neatly strips of its hide with a glinting knife. The underside, the leather, is bright white and the fur thicker than the man's beard. A head with a bloody stump on the ground beside him seems amused by the proceedings in that smiley way goats have.
There is a chill in the air and smoke curls around pine trees, each embossed with one of the 99 names of Allah on one path. It is the stuff of fairy tales, where to see a gingerbread cottage or meet a big bad wolf would seem quite normal.
And with no apparent concern for buffering anyone against any cold, a platoon of soldiers have been commanded to work on the borders - by which I mean the herbaceous borders of the mess. The have dug up whole sides of the road and are planting rose bushes, proving the truth of their banner, 'Pakistan Army, Men at their Best.' They follow up Project Pot-Plant with Project Papier-Mache: there's a replica mountain under construction on the lawn. It's likeness looms overhead.
Gentle rain fell the other night. In the morning, solid rock soaring above us had turned to glitter and dairy cream; the first snow of the season. I was surprised, but then I have woken with wonder every day for two weeks now. New mountains reveal and hide themselves constantly as veils of cloud are lifted and draped again. Sometimes a misty purdah remains and transforms a high valley into a distant dreamland. I am reluctant to go indoors for too long and miss the show. I sometimes stop mid-sentence when I see a new peak.
"Because it's there," said Sir Edmund Hillary to explain why he climbed Mount Everest, and you can't argue. They are there. Close, sometimes too close, are the barren rock mountains walling us in all around, heavy and hung with gravity. Further off and elusive are the high peaks, which through their snow, strive against the serious substance of geology to sublimate into some spiritual state. No one will ever hear their silence, for climbers are always accompanied by oxygen tanks and kerosene stoves, hissing away.
Nevertheless a good walk to one of their base camps from here may help me to connect up the three worlds I see but which do not hang together in my mind. Here I am in that vortex of humanity and activity in the bazaar which hammers metal, greases axles, hews wood, fries pastries, spits and splatters blood from butchering, imports-exports, pushes cart-loads of fruit, shouts into mobiles, banks money and arranges packets on shelves. I am in Anywhereabad, South Asia.
Above all this is a terrace of corn fields, exhausted after bearing a crop in such a cruel climate, withering leaves on orchard trees and, where channels flow down to the Indus, green.
And then those mountains.
Awe has become the tenor of my life.
Saturday 11 October 2008
Provisions
Dusk is turning to dark and my room is lit with candles, strewn with roses. Soft music mingles with a distant call to prayer.
I should explain.
The electricity is off and the entertainment for the night is provided by small speakers. I have also been shopping for bedding. I picked the reddest rose velvet bedcover - and there were plenty to choose from - and the pinkest rose sheets. Had the plastic-flower seller's story been as sad and sweet as the linen man's I'd have ended up with armfuls of his roses too.
"You are like me, sister," he began, "far from home and all alone."
They know too much this bedding wallahs. You answer their simple question, "Single ya double ma'am?" and they know all your secrets. He told me his secrets too.
His family are from Lahore, a city he loves, for when I praised its architecture and food his eyes misted over. They had fought over land and he and his brother lost everything. He fled here and his brother to Germany. They doubt they will ever see each other again.
This shopping trip had become more than just about furnishing a house with carpets, cushions and covers but about making this town home with conversations and cups of tea.
"Oh, and I forgot to ask," I say as I leave, "Is it ok to handwash the velvet?"
"So we really are the same! Far from home, all alone and even washing by hand."
I catch a public taxi home and walk the last stretch up the path home. A lady ahead paused for breath and to let me catch up. We salaam and she invites me in for a cup of tea. Across the corn field outside my room, she is my nearest neighbour. Hungry, I am glad when a cup of tea turns into meat and swede stew, naan, yogurt to drink and milk tea with a choice of sugar or salt to taste (mine's white no salt, they know for next time).
Her daughters' hands are red with Eid henna. Less than a week ago I was with my neighbours in Bradford celebrating this same festival, recent enough that their henna is still dark, fresh. What's more, tea is served with left-overs from Eid, shrikar. "What's it made of?" I ask as I chew. "Flour, milk, oil..." the daughter begins. There's still a flavour I can't quite place. The mother interrupted. "And the hard part of the fat of a sheep."
Next morning I am stopped at the same place on the path by another lady, weighed down by a thermos and a basket. Again, we salaam and chat. She turns to join her sisters-in-law and cousin-sisters at the far side of the field. They are beckoning with wild arms that I should come too. Pharmuk points to a safe place to cross and we walk through freshly plucked stalks of corn.
We squat on a stack of these and husks. I am introduced as the ladies finish their gleaning. Ammi from yesterday's visit is there and is proud she knows me.
The thermos is unstopped and the basket is opened. The picnic begins. I am poured the first bowl of tea (bowls for friends, cups for guests, they apologise) and offered the first snack. The tea is salty and the snack is shrikar.
I am Ruth among the gleaners, being provided for. My kinsman-redeemer is good to me.
I should explain.
The electricity is off and the entertainment for the night is provided by small speakers. I have also been shopping for bedding. I picked the reddest rose velvet bedcover - and there were plenty to choose from - and the pinkest rose sheets. Had the plastic-flower seller's story been as sad and sweet as the linen man's I'd have ended up with armfuls of his roses too.
"You are like me, sister," he began, "far from home and all alone."
They know too much this bedding wallahs. You answer their simple question, "Single ya double ma'am?" and they know all your secrets. He told me his secrets too.
His family are from Lahore, a city he loves, for when I praised its architecture and food his eyes misted over. They had fought over land and he and his brother lost everything. He fled here and his brother to Germany. They doubt they will ever see each other again.
This shopping trip had become more than just about furnishing a house with carpets, cushions and covers but about making this town home with conversations and cups of tea.
"Oh, and I forgot to ask," I say as I leave, "Is it ok to handwash the velvet?"
"So we really are the same! Far from home, all alone and even washing by hand."
I catch a public taxi home and walk the last stretch up the path home. A lady ahead paused for breath and to let me catch up. We salaam and she invites me in for a cup of tea. Across the corn field outside my room, she is my nearest neighbour. Hungry, I am glad when a cup of tea turns into meat and swede stew, naan, yogurt to drink and milk tea with a choice of sugar or salt to taste (mine's white no salt, they know for next time).
Her daughters' hands are red with Eid henna. Less than a week ago I was with my neighbours in Bradford celebrating this same festival, recent enough that their henna is still dark, fresh. What's more, tea is served with left-overs from Eid, shrikar. "What's it made of?" I ask as I chew. "Flour, milk, oil..." the daughter begins. There's still a flavour I can't quite place. The mother interrupted. "And the hard part of the fat of a sheep."
Next morning I am stopped at the same place on the path by another lady, weighed down by a thermos and a basket. Again, we salaam and chat. She turns to join her sisters-in-law and cousin-sisters at the far side of the field. They are beckoning with wild arms that I should come too. Pharmuk points to a safe place to cross and we walk through freshly plucked stalks of corn.
We squat on a stack of these and husks. I am introduced as the ladies finish their gleaning. Ammi from yesterday's visit is there and is proud she knows me.
The thermos is unstopped and the basket is opened. The picnic begins. I am poured the first bowl of tea (bowls for friends, cups for guests, they apologise) and offered the first snack. The tea is salty and the snack is shrikar.
I am Ruth among the gleaners, being provided for. My kinsman-redeemer is good to me.
Sunday
How is it that an aeroplane window can contain such a scene? Below and around is all murky darkness. Above is light, streaming from behind this mighty butress of a mountain, Nanga Parbat, in whose shadow we fly, on and on until we are clear of its bulk and back in the blue. "He wraps himself in light, and darkness tries to hide" we sing later that morning, and this is the image that comes to me again.
We arose before dawn on the first day of the week and proceeded to the airport. We ascended as light broke across the foothills. The sky is bright by the time we land in what appears to be an English country garden at the end of a runway with neatly laid out flower beds in bloom. We are walled in by mountains so high you have to tilt your head right back to see where they end. Passengers amble through the garden to the potting-shed of a terminal. Some light cigarettes. I see a girl I've never met looking at me through mesh in the waiting area. We smile and smile at each other as if it's me she's been waiting for and as if it's her I've come to see.
It seems almost natural for such a relaxed airport that the person due to meet me in is still asleep when I call. No matter, for I go with my travelling companions and am dropped off later.
After the third breakfast of the day - the first was served by waiters in the departure lounge, the second on the flight - my friends and I have a time of singing. It is a fitting end for a Sunday morning spent gazing from above on God's mighty creative power, his ancient forceful moulding of solid rock on the vast scale.
We arose before dawn on the first day of the week and proceeded to the airport. We ascended as light broke across the foothills. The sky is bright by the time we land in what appears to be an English country garden at the end of a runway with neatly laid out flower beds in bloom. We are walled in by mountains so high you have to tilt your head right back to see where they end. Passengers amble through the garden to the potting-shed of a terminal. Some light cigarettes. I see a girl I've never met looking at me through mesh in the waiting area. We smile and smile at each other as if it's me she's been waiting for and as if it's her I've come to see.
It seems almost natural for such a relaxed airport that the person due to meet me in is still asleep when I call. No matter, for I go with my travelling companions and am dropped off later.
After the third breakfast of the day - the first was served by waiters in the departure lounge, the second on the flight - my friends and I have a time of singing. It is a fitting end for a Sunday morning spent gazing from above on God's mighty creative power, his ancient forceful moulding of solid rock on the vast scale.
My heart bursts its banks,
Spilling beauty and goodness.
I pour it out into a poem for the king,
Shaping the river into words.
Spilling beauty and goodness.
I pour it out into a poem for the king,
Shaping the river into words.
Psalm 45 from The Message
Saturday 4 October 2008
Flight
My days have started and ended with goodbyes for some time now. The postman has been bringing goodbye cards, school children I’ve seen in the street and supermarket have said goodbye, the phone has been ringing with goodbyes, the e-mail inbox is full of them. I have hijacked a baby shower, a birthday, several Eid parties and many lunches with friends and made them, at least for a moment, goodbye parties. I’m looking forward to another greeting.
Having said goodbye to some friends the other day I was sitting in the autumn sunshine, sad. The weather was indeed noteworthy for its loveliness, so it was not totally banal to comment on it to a stranger, making the only permissible conversation with strangers in England. I don’t know why, but I went a bit further,
“I’ll have left before these leaves fall.”
“Oh, where are you going?”
“Pakistan.”
She had grown up in Africa, and was able to relate a cautionary tale from Khartoum that I am mindful of as I approach customs and immigration. It was hot when she disembarked and her eyes had turned green. They change from blue to green according to heat, the colour of clothing or, like beauty, the eye of the beholder. In her passport photo, they were clearly blue. She fluttered her lashes, and though she is old now, I can imagine the effect this could have had.
“A lady is allowed to change her mind, is she not?”
She was arrested and put in jail for that. Her father, a diplomat, was furious.
I lower my eyes and am simple-sadhi-si, as they say of modest women.
A Gandharan Buddha, the neat millennia-old streets of Mohendojaro and the slogan, ‘Travel Through Time’ is how the screen on this jumbo jet promotes Pakistan as a place of historical interest. A hundred years ago, adventurers maybe did Travel Through Time - 3 months anyway - by sea, to reach Pakistan. Right now I like the idea of arriving rested, without the immediate business of home buzzing into jetlagged sleeping and waking, possibly even having mastered the language and met the love of my life.
‘Heaven on Earth’ is the next advert for Pakistan, on a background of happy faces, glorious mountain scenery and...apricots. These same voyagers maybe took their coffins, too, knowing that working here was indeed their calling from and en route to Heaven.
Whether or not that is how I’m travelling, I am accompanied by near-angelic fellow travellers. On the way to the airport I was joined by two new friends, who, because of an Eid cancellation of my flight, I am now able to fly with. Just when it seemed hard to leave, one of them, whose name means splendour, sang favourite old Bollywood songs as he looked me in the eyes over the huge mound of luggage between us on the back seat. Even better, he told me his life story of miracles and transformation. I remembered with a thrill why I was going. A glance outside at snarled up traffic on the M62 served as another reminder.
We three ‘hamsafars’ (fellow travellers) switch into and out of Urdu. My friend carries my violin for me and we walk like Raj Kapoor, Bollywood’s Charlie Chaplin, onto the flight singing, ‘Jonny Joker, wiolin bajao’. The boarding-card collector asks if he will be providing in-flight entertainment and he kind of does, as he sings songs he makes up with a heart full of praise while others try to settle for sleep. Some stare. Our tall English friend who speaks Urdu curries favour with the steward so we have carte blanche to ask for seconds. I have indeed received a double portion, and not just of the korma.
Having said goodbye to some friends the other day I was sitting in the autumn sunshine, sad. The weather was indeed noteworthy for its loveliness, so it was not totally banal to comment on it to a stranger, making the only permissible conversation with strangers in England. I don’t know why, but I went a bit further,
“I’ll have left before these leaves fall.”
“Oh, where are you going?”
“Pakistan.”
She had grown up in Africa, and was able to relate a cautionary tale from Khartoum that I am mindful of as I approach customs and immigration. It was hot when she disembarked and her eyes had turned green. They change from blue to green according to heat, the colour of clothing or, like beauty, the eye of the beholder. In her passport photo, they were clearly blue. She fluttered her lashes, and though she is old now, I can imagine the effect this could have had.
“A lady is allowed to change her mind, is she not?”
She was arrested and put in jail for that. Her father, a diplomat, was furious.
I lower my eyes and am simple-sadhi-si, as they say of modest women.
A Gandharan Buddha, the neat millennia-old streets of Mohendojaro and the slogan, ‘Travel Through Time’ is how the screen on this jumbo jet promotes Pakistan as a place of historical interest. A hundred years ago, adventurers maybe did Travel Through Time - 3 months anyway - by sea, to reach Pakistan. Right now I like the idea of arriving rested, without the immediate business of home buzzing into jetlagged sleeping and waking, possibly even having mastered the language and met the love of my life.
‘Heaven on Earth’ is the next advert for Pakistan, on a background of happy faces, glorious mountain scenery and...apricots. These same voyagers maybe took their coffins, too, knowing that working here was indeed their calling from and en route to Heaven.
Whether or not that is how I’m travelling, I am accompanied by near-angelic fellow travellers. On the way to the airport I was joined by two new friends, who, because of an Eid cancellation of my flight, I am now able to fly with. Just when it seemed hard to leave, one of them, whose name means splendour, sang favourite old Bollywood songs as he looked me in the eyes over the huge mound of luggage between us on the back seat. Even better, he told me his life story of miracles and transformation. I remembered with a thrill why I was going. A glance outside at snarled up traffic on the M62 served as another reminder.
We three ‘hamsafars’ (fellow travellers) switch into and out of Urdu. My friend carries my violin for me and we walk like Raj Kapoor, Bollywood’s Charlie Chaplin, onto the flight singing, ‘Jonny Joker, wiolin bajao’. The boarding-card collector asks if he will be providing in-flight entertainment and he kind of does, as he sings songs he makes up with a heart full of praise while others try to settle for sleep. Some stare. Our tall English friend who speaks Urdu curries favour with the steward so we have carte blanche to ask for seconds. I have indeed received a double portion, and not just of the korma.
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