PAKISTAN: Karimabad

Marched to the front of the festival to be given seats of honour in full view of the crowds. We'd arrived in time for the speaches...the arabic tones, harsh and guttaral shouted. The hands waved and pointed with fists curled...the picture perfect of the 'Muslim fanatacist'. Until we learned the speach was a cry and call for unity in the face of a crumbling country. "It doesn't matter whether you are Sunni, Shia or Ismaili." Above all, we are human and we must stand in peace together.

A little bit of Monty Phython style humour was also on the cards...a trio of youths dressed as Islamic fundamentalists, fake beards included, and a hash smoking old man depicted the dangers of both extremes and the need for a moderate line.

And then in true Pakistani style, the slow dance, the 'strut' as I like to call it, began. Arms raised, a frown and a pout, chest out and head high. The dancer and the drummer speak through raised eyebrows, a challenged duel to match each rhythmic move. If the crowd approves the peacock dance then money is thrown at the dancer or curled under his hat.

Baltit Fort...high on the hill over Karimabad, the old palace of the 'Mirs' who once ruled the valley.

Mr Kanjudi led me up the stairs to the fort and through a battered wooden door that my tour guide had rushed past the first time I visited. Smelling of wood and sagging with age, the office was over the old prison. I imagined the groaning that must once have been heard from the prisoners locked in the dark below. From the mud walls hang several old frames displaying hotch potch old photos of British generals who controlled Hunza for almost a hundred years before the partition in 1947. Mr Kanjudi pointed them out to me proudly- told me he gathered them himself and typed the little labels beneath each face.

The entrance to the library is concealed- a small door, no bigger than a chair. Inside, shadows hang deep into the spaces between the shelves. In the far corner a desk is illuminated by the thin light of a skylight and Mr Kanjudi stood in his red sweater curling the corners of his moustache and shuffling papers anxiously while I fingered through the rows of aged books.

I was looking for folk tales. Lots of the stories were about witches, several of whom the residents believed had been pinned into boulders by local Shamen. There is one rock which juts out over a cliff that the locals believed held the spirit of a Dadi, a female Shaman or witch. The people used to go every year to sacrifice twelve goats at the rock and pour the blood over it to feed her. As they did this, some said the steel peg which had been driven into the rock by the Shaman, would twist in its spot. Looking at the enormous boulders littering the river bed in the valley later on, I could imagine why people felt they contained some kind of untamed power.

Munulum Dado (From 'The Burushaski Language- Vol II, Texts and Translations' by Lt. Col. D Laurimer)
One day a man named Derbesho was grazing his goats far from his home. Leaving the goats he lay down to sleep and was awakened by a beautiful woman who had come up to his head. 'My Father is calling you', she said, and led him to the foot of Hunamun Mun, a small spot in the next valley.

As he approached a door openned in the mountains. Inside a man with a golden moustach was sitting accompanied by seven beautiful maidens with sitars. The man asked the women to play a tune for Debesho, and instructed him to dance. 'Dance my Son, do not fear', he said, 'I am your grandfather. My name is Munulum Dado.' Pointing toward the woman who had led Derbesho to their house he explained, 'This is my wife, and these seven are my daughters.'
Debesho danced to the music of the Sitars and when he had finished Munulum Dado asked his wife to make him a loaf of diram bread with ibex fat. Having eaten the bread Debesho was led back to the pasture, where he became unconscious for some time. When he awoke and described his story to the other herders they were astounded.

This story was printed with another about Munulum Dado, who was rumoured to inhabit the 'Shisper Nala', a valley very near the fort. There was a legend that each evening a cry of 'hulloo' could be heard from the valley, which was once lived in by herdsmen, but became long ago the passage of a glacier. The storyteller claimed to have heard the cry which the locals beleived was a signal from Munulum Dado.

These stories are also linked to a series of stories about the hero 'Kiser'. Stories about Kiser can be found in Tibet, Mongolia and around the Lake Bakail region of Siberia.

As Kiser was preparing to marry Bubuli Gas (which means princess), his Grandmother asked him to bring her a husband to marry as well. 'In the Shisper Nala they say there is a man with a golden moustache. You fetch him for me and we shall celebrate our marriages at the same time.' she said. Kiser went off and found the man, Munulum Dado, weaving a peice of pattu (a long thin woolen scarf). He threw him over his shoulder and carried him home.

His Grandmother was on the roof drying corn as Kiser approached bearing her future husband. Trying to climb down to greet them, she fell off the roof breaking three ribs. Kiser applied remedies to her (the traditional method was to apply paper with paste, herbs and gum to broken bones) and after some time she recovered. The two couples were married happily together.

The fairy tale is the story of the surreal amidst the every day...we went to a bank were invited to lunch by a local 'natural healer'. Over the spice of dal, we were taken across the history of mystical practices in the great religions: the laying of hands, healing prayers, reiki, the kaballah, spells, the use of herbs and the power of belief. Ejaz called himself a natural healer in a Muslim community. At first he said there was mistrust, suspicion and fear. But through his strict avoidance of asking for any money for his services, and through his positive results, he says he has gained the trust and respect of the locals. From headaches to depression, Ejaz claims he has cured it all through prayer, hands, thought and spells. No matter what you believe, don't believe, agree, don't agree...his dream of healing had a power to it. As he talked we sat beneath a television blaring news of bomb blasts, mass arrests and street violence.