The Lie of the Land

I travelled a great deal in February with my companions, Kevin and Harry, aged 4 and a half and two and a half respectively. We once even made it to the park. They taught me the texture of the ground, that Lahore is not flat. Every shop and every house has its own platform of concrete, clay or marble. Between each is a ditch so that to walk anywhere is to climb. If purdah is one reason women stay in, the lack of pavements and pushchairs must surely be another. In the child-sized valleys and peaks of the city-scape is another world. They see the cat in every corner and rejoice in the litter, for here is another way Lahore ties its fun to danger. Matchboxes are decorated with delightful cartoon characters laughing out at you and your children, who will forever associate their early arson attempts with Bambi and Noddy. So to look at the litter is to read a comic.
But I see now the joke is over as the knot tying pleasure to pain has strangled the city. Lahore's premier stadium has become a place of killing and sportsmen are martyrs.

As I cross Punjab by train, I see that the built environment reflects the rural. The land is deeply furrowed, a scratch pad for the Himalayas ahead. No, the earth is not flat.

"Welcome to the City of Serenity" reads the sign between Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The driver puts his seat belt on, signalling a departure from the rest of the land. Roads suddenly bulge out into four lanes and the cars are like those polo horses, so glad to be let out onto the pitch. If the cars had manes, they too would stream out behind these cars, careering around trying to decide which lane they'd like. My taxi, however, has contracted a limp of some sort, due to a flat tyre I suppose, or some misalignment. We hobble between lanes. But where are the real horses that add life to other cities? There are no rickshaws, qingchis, wagons or tongas. They are banned. I feel more welcomed to a city of sterility than serenity.

Islamabad from the air is a sheet of graph paper where other cities are Jackson Pollocks. The blocks have names my guidebook describes as Orwellian: F-6 1, I-10 2, H-9 1. You ask for a street named after a good Muslim like Sir Justice Abdul Rahim and the taxi men stare blankly back. Give them a number and you're there.

I walk miles here on the flat and get lost in the right angles and the streets that all look alike. I am hungry but where are the chai, chat-pattay and gol-guppay wallay? Where are the malta, fruita and mamphalai men? They too are banned. You want a cup of tea, ma'am, you go back to your hotel and you dial 4 for room service.

But the germs have got to crawl somewhere and here they go to the edges of each block, the strips of wasteland. It's a car's city, so I walk to see what we're meant to speed past. Is it the warmed water grown foetid? Or the goodly crop of class b drug fertilized by it? Could it be plastic bags in the gutter? No comic strips here, it's too dark. Maybe it's the small colonies of poor people the city needs for labour but cannot spare a numbered sector for.

The happiest group I see is a circle of security men having a seminar in a car-park on aim. They practice by shooting head-sized bags of rubbish hung under a tree. It's one way, I grant you, of tackling the rubbish problem.

Done with walking I hail a cab. Technically he's full but I squeeze in between the cargo - pounds and pounds of cakes and cookies. Someone, somewhere, is having a party.
"Why wasn't I invited?"
Too late I realise I've spoken the joke aloud. I forgot I was here. The driver puts his hand on his heart and bowing over the steering wheel, invites me. I protest I cannot, I'm leaving. "Take what you like," he says, sweeping his arm magisterially over his kingdom of confectionery, "Whatever your heart says."
My heart says pink macaroon.

One group really has gate-crashed the party though, and that's the trucks, dolled up like gypsies in a world of white and grey. No one told them the fancy dress was off. They seem embarrassed, having made an inappropriate joke in a serious city. They scuttle through, trying not to let their petticoats of chains make too much noise.

Not worried about the noise at all, our bus blasts its Bollywood good and loud. As we head to the hills, we all seem happy to leave and would have been happier yet had we known we left the City of Serenity just as fires of unrest flared, stoked by tyres and anger with politics.

Out of earshot of the palins, the driver switches cassettes for some mountain songs. A thin flute carves out some notes which the singer settles on again and again in a hypnotic cycle. It could have been dull but as that music plays, those few notes are the entire sound world and they are perfect then and there. Through the badlands by night, it's time for another tape yet again, this time a perky number whose only lyric is 'Inshallah'. I make it my prayer: 'Thy will be done'.

He answers by bringing us home safely, al Hamdullah, but my eyes are blinded by the sun on the snow, the air is thin and my breath is taken away.