I'm in a whitewashed space, as huge and silent as a Medieval Tughlugh tomb. I am all alone inside, as overwhelmed by the alone-ness as one might be by a crowd: an opposite but equal sensation. The absence of noise, people, motion and colour is almost tangible.
I am glad for an hour to be able to look at Lahore frame by frame. Sometimes at a single tree, sometimes a solitary face, sometimes whole bazaars, but here it is still and soundless; I am in the Al Hamra gallery.
Lahore is fragmented by a hundred kite-strings in one picture, one orange kite obscuring its centre. Yes, this is it. I have seen fun as bright as this kite here, hiding much behind it. Even the narrow streets around my home, otherwise muddy and poor, boast a pool table, table football, an arcade of old gaming machines, a trampoline and a mobile roundabout a doddery gent pushes around to children holding coins.
Fun can come from the sorriest sources. While there are not many beggars here, the hungriest know Lahore's appetite for fun and sell balloons, balls, teddies, masks and spider-men. When I buy from one I make three people happy: the two little boys at home who gain a toy and the sad-eyed boy who loses one. Here, the cakes are lurid, the music is loud and the driving is a game; "Death Game" as someone has stencilled onto one motor bike.
Ever since Kim sat "in defiance of municipal orders astride the great gun, Zam-Zamma on her brick platform," in Kipling's 1901 classic, Lahoris have had their fun atop platforms of danger. The canon is guarded with chains now, municipal orders having been so flagrantly defied, but children still play. On a sunny Sunday morning, they swung, climbed and laughed, astride equipment on a construction site. Parks are for sleeping, hard hats for the girls.
I envy the artists' abilities to capture Lahore's lovely light, the urban landscape of stacked clay cubes coloured with drying clothes and the markets crowded with merchandise. If each picture speaks a thousand words and each rickshaw ride is a thousand pictures of a thousand details I will need more than Sherazade's 1001 nights to tell the stories, but I get tired. I lie down for a rest in the afternoons.
Pursuing quiet, I go to a smart cafe and pick up a paper. The terror and the war upon it are in the local pages and I can not believe that the street filled with red heart balloons saying "Ich liebe Dich" outside, nor the promotions for candlelit dates are in this country US Ambassador Holbrooke calls a 'nightmare'. The iced coffee has a bitter aftertaste.
Like the artist's jagged shapes between the kite strings, Lahore is confused. I leave the gallery and there's a circle of men in tartan playing the bagpipes. No audience, mind, this is an undeveloped space behind the National Football Development offices.
Wearing tinsel and roses, sufi pilgrims have flocked to town this week, some on bikes decorated like X'mas trees. It is the Urs festival of Saint Data Ganj Baksh. My sightseeing trip to a dead emperor's tomb on the outskirts turns frenzied when the bus drives through the melee where the whole crowd shares a heart, one dhol drum that beats to make everyone jump together, like a giant organism pulsating. On the tops of buses they're jumping, dancing with death again.
The kite festival, on the other hand, has been cancelled this year. The sky will not fill with a jungle of colour, the children will stay off the roofs. Too many people had their heads cut off by kite strings last year.
I am glad for an hour to be able to look at Lahore frame by frame. Sometimes at a single tree, sometimes a solitary face, sometimes whole bazaars, but here it is still and soundless; I am in the Al Hamra gallery.
Lahore is fragmented by a hundred kite-strings in one picture, one orange kite obscuring its centre. Yes, this is it. I have seen fun as bright as this kite here, hiding much behind it. Even the narrow streets around my home, otherwise muddy and poor, boast a pool table, table football, an arcade of old gaming machines, a trampoline and a mobile roundabout a doddery gent pushes around to children holding coins.
Fun can come from the sorriest sources. While there are not many beggars here, the hungriest know Lahore's appetite for fun and sell balloons, balls, teddies, masks and spider-men. When I buy from one I make three people happy: the two little boys at home who gain a toy and the sad-eyed boy who loses one. Here, the cakes are lurid, the music is loud and the driving is a game; "Death Game" as someone has stencilled onto one motor bike.
Ever since Kim sat "in defiance of municipal orders astride the great gun, Zam-Zamma on her brick platform," in Kipling's 1901 classic, Lahoris have had their fun atop platforms of danger. The canon is guarded with chains now, municipal orders having been so flagrantly defied, but children still play. On a sunny Sunday morning, they swung, climbed and laughed, astride equipment on a construction site. Parks are for sleeping, hard hats for the girls.
I envy the artists' abilities to capture Lahore's lovely light, the urban landscape of stacked clay cubes coloured with drying clothes and the markets crowded with merchandise. If each picture speaks a thousand words and each rickshaw ride is a thousand pictures of a thousand details I will need more than Sherazade's 1001 nights to tell the stories, but I get tired. I lie down for a rest in the afternoons.
Pursuing quiet, I go to a smart cafe and pick up a paper. The terror and the war upon it are in the local pages and I can not believe that the street filled with red heart balloons saying "Ich liebe Dich" outside, nor the promotions for candlelit dates are in this country US Ambassador Holbrooke calls a 'nightmare'. The iced coffee has a bitter aftertaste.
Like the artist's jagged shapes between the kite strings, Lahore is confused. I leave the gallery and there's a circle of men in tartan playing the bagpipes. No audience, mind, this is an undeveloped space behind the National Football Development offices.
Wearing tinsel and roses, sufi pilgrims have flocked to town this week, some on bikes decorated like X'mas trees. It is the Urs festival of Saint Data Ganj Baksh. My sightseeing trip to a dead emperor's tomb on the outskirts turns frenzied when the bus drives through the melee where the whole crowd shares a heart, one dhol drum that beats to make everyone jump together, like a giant organism pulsating. On the tops of buses they're jumping, dancing with death again.
The kite festival, on the other hand, has been cancelled this year. The sky will not fill with a jungle of colour, the children will stay off the roofs. Too many people had their heads cut off by kite strings last year.
