INDO-PAK BORDER

'Hidu-stan!'
'Paki-stan!'
Voices shouting slogans rent the air like the sounds of Partition once did.
But the air is light and the faces smile amidst the melodrama of the soldier's dance.
Like a military pantomime, they overact their roles-frowning, pouting, strutting, shouting.
Legs kicked to painful heights
Shoulders back
Heads a-cocking, to flare the plumes.

And deep amidst the maddening crowds
the green men wander.

Raising chants and fists when silence threatens to reveal any sign of inferiority.
On the side of the smaller Pakistan, the passion runs higher,
as if they could outshout their obvious geographical disadvantage.
....and I remember tartan faces in sweating pubs, convinced they were meeting King Edwards army once more on the football pitch.

PAKISTAN: Lahore- lady, lady, toot, toot, toot...

A rickshaw ride in Lahore...

Man carries a tray of coconut dripping on his head
Donkeys idle, their coloured pom poms mask protruding ribs
A cow roots through a dustbin
A sheep with drooping ears the size of a horse, is sprawled by the road side
A bicycle with umbrellas tied front and back

spirits balloon animals up the main street at midnight

Rickshaws rickshaws rickshaws
Tooting tooting tooting
Shawled women clutching babies draw in as we stop at the lights
Eyes dark and hard
Their empty hands reach mournfully through the doors
These gritty women sit on street corners, perch in the alleyways
The others hidden at home, streets are the mens domain
Boys weave at waist height, trays of tea cups in hand

The Azan trembles at first tentatively through the heavy smog.
With time it becomes riotous, a holy war of chanting beckons us to mosques

Lit by flashing florescent strips. Dried fruit stalls- dates, raisins, figs strung Like the marigold necklaces on Sufi tombs. A small donkey hurtles up the main street, its cart jumping, two boys lolling atop. Pomigranite stalls beating off flies, a skip askew amidst mounds of waste.

Men sort it into sacks,
A bloated cat seems to slumber on the pavement

staring with dead eyes through swarms of flies
The severed head of a goat is disguised as a pile of mud,

Chapati ovens like underground caves,

Dough balls flattened on sacks of straw

like pin cushions thrown against oven walls
Dishes washed in bowls of brown water on the street
Armed guards at the churchyard ask where we stay,
In the bishops garden a man squats, potting plants


Women in burqua, eyes pearing, women loosely scarved, women not scarved at all
On the TV they writhe, scantly clad, hair flailing
Celebrities and prostitutes.
No man would bear the shame to marry a women who has appeared on screen like this

But the cinemas are full.

we sit on the stone cold of the empty mosque's floor.

we sit and we watch.

we watch and we sit.

he murmurs low into his tightly clasped hands,

not to the Lord,

but some girl on his mobile.

we sit and we watch.

we watch and we sit.

Thursday is Sufi holy day.
Thursday smells of pungent flowers freshly picked.
Thursday feels like rose water sprayed on my body hot under headscarf thick.
Thursday sounds like rhythmic clapping and pleading cries of song.
Thursday looks like orange men, in spinning revery gone.

and Thursday nights, are nothing like Thur's Day....for at night the drums emerge, the hash flows freely, the spinning is harder, faster and time is no longer here but steps outside reality all together- spinning off into its own moment....

Swarms of police idle at intersections
Barbed wire barricades cluster
Court buildings hazy and languid
Beneath a blanket of smog and silence
Rumours of Bhutto, rumours of suicide bomb alert, whispers of fighting in the streets
Silence amidst the tumultuous noise of the city.

A lawyer in subway with a bright eyed wife has not slept at home for two nights for fear of arrest.
500 lawyers taken into custody 315 later released on bail

M. was a journalist. The hostel, once clacking with the hurried outpour of hungered for news, now sits slow in the smog of travellers chain smoking.

M. was a journalist, his life an action packed movie America could never write.

M. was a journalist, until he got too close to publishing a story that would ruin the government.

M. was a journalist, until they smashed his head with a brick and left him for dead....

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.

PAKISTAN: Gulmit

The Karokaram Highway....the blinding white of snowy mountains rising steep all around. The road has literally been cut, blown and blasted through this tough rock. They say the mountains are still echoeing with the blows...they say for every 1.5km of the Highway, these imobile gods of stone claimed a life....and the road is long.

And so on a bus, through late October running, we bump and crash our way down the narrow path. At times the mountain edge opens to mock us-this little road of human acheivement is nothing in this world of white magnimanity. The mountains watch our slow descent. The mountains watch as we cling close round blind corners. The mountains watch....

Gulmit is the yellow of Autumnal orchards, lazy in the light breeze. Gulmit is the white of the watchful mountains, ringing close all around. Gulmit is the dust of narrow, windy paths climbing amidst the low stone houses.

Wedding Season has arrived in Pakistan, as food that takes almost four days to prepare lasts longer in the cooler weather. Drums pounding, horns blaring and wheeling through tuneless noise... here come the men to dance proud in the dust road. The flash of colour and the jingle of bangles...here come the women to sit and watch.

Elder men dance first and at the front of the line as a sign of respect, whilst young girls, still far from womanhood, run freely through the social boundaries. Their older siblings look on with longing at the lost freedom and eagerly await the all women celebrations where they will be able to dance.

But Ismaili Muslim communities are dramatically more liberal and open-women and men both pray together in the prayer hall. There is no call to prayer as it is believed it is up to the individual if they want to attend. Also, amidst the loosely worn head scarves, there are many women's development programes and employment centers.


Outside the house is a cobbled pile of stone, lying low amidst the apricot orchards and dusty courtyard. Inside, in a harry potter moment of unbelievable proportional inversion, the house opens to a spacious wooden center. Around the central hearth we gather for tea and chapati lessons- men on the right, women on the left. Intricate wood carvings amidst home woven bright woolen decorations. Despite the lack of windows, it doesn't feel claustrophobic. The feeling is one of being burrowed in the earth, the wood all around gives a sense of the earth being part of the home. The bodies of small children lie curled and hidden amidst piles of blankets in the corners. Different generations and multiple families all in the same space. Yet again, it is not a feeling of crowdedness so much as warmth, a feeling of connectedness and sharedness. It makes me wonder how much my private bedroom is really worth...and is it natural for humans to live in such isolation? Amongst earth's creation, what a freak of nature the moody teenage bedroom must seem!



Mr R. was born in 1934 in Gulmit but spent his early life touring across Pakistan with the Pakistani army. In his face I saw my own gentle grandfather the fisherman, smiling back at me again. I lost him before I had a chance to know him properly. It is only as I have grown more into me, I realise how much of him I would have loved to listen to. But sometimes we are given the chance to see lost faces in the living once more... a moment of illusion we cling to, catch and fold away, precious in our purse.

So at his feet, we listened to his life story as he sat grand, aged, exuding a calm and strength like the mountains he had grown up amidst.

He donned his white woollen cloak, embroided with pink and green flowers...his wedding dress from 1956. His wife had worn the traditional dress in red silk. They said their vows in the prayer hall...and the celebrations began. Four days of meat prepared by the men and bread and rice dishes prepared by the women.

Mr. R. always believed 'education was the key to peace' and he worked on committees and volunteer groups to bring the first school to Gulmit. He also believed that 'men and women were like two feet; without either, you fall' and was on the committee that brought the first women's college to Gulmit. And when given the chance to ask us about life in the UK, he was most keen to know if we really lived in separate families? The notion of the family is central to life in Pakistan and providing your identity. He could simply not conceive of elderly people living in homes alone...

The soft 1, 2..3, 4..4, 3...2, 1 of the traditional drum. The quavering, wavering, soft wail of songs of old. The strong, lumpy cheese of traditional wedding food. A night of culture, music, dance and stories.




Tales of love lost. Tales of friends gone. Tales of sadness with a rhythm that is still of joy. It is a music that is often about the harshness of life, but a music infused with a realists' optimism- the song will keep singing, the music will keep playing...life goes on and so we keep dancing.

Lucy Wrote:

love for Pakistan, for the mountains is up tight in my throat as I read this.