Himalaya (2004) Page 4

  It’s picturesque and soothingly quiet, but as we walk through the village there are signs that all is not well. Children have runny noses and dirty faces, their clothes are grubby and their eyes often red and watery from the wood smoke that fills the houses. Faces show the effects of in-breeding and for each smile we get there will be another dull, dejected, vacant glance. Though Saifullah is proud and protective of his community, he can’t disguise the problems. The Kalash, infidels, squeezed to the very edge of their country, are neither powerful nor numerous. Rumbur consists of 50 families, about 300 people, and the combined population of the Kalash villages is around 4000.

  Their best hope of survival is tourism. Aware of the potential, the government has given them better roads and schools that teach Urdu and English, but of the money charged for permits to visit the Kalash valleys Saifullah reckons only 5 per cent finds its way through to the community.

  In a stone hut with an irrigation channel running through it, an old man on his haunches watches barley being ground between two stones turned by the force of water. A few yards further on there is a handsome new suspension bridge that allows vehicles right up into the village. The road passes a long, low building with a high wall snaking around it. This is the menstruating hut. Kalash theology has very strong notions of purity and impurity. Menstruation is confirmation of women’s impurity, and when their periods begin they must leave their homes and enter a communal house.

  Mothers must give birth in the hut and remain there for 20 days afterwards. Only after undergoing a purification ceremony can they return home and rejoin village life.

  We climb a hill above the village through glades of juniper and mulberry. Halfway up, I catch the sharp, sweet smell of something rotten. Ahead of me are small piles of wood and glass and I realize we’re picking our way through a graveyard. Saifullah seems unconcerned as he points out decomposing coffins on top of the ground. That’s the Kalash way of death, he says. The bodies are never buried and the tops of the coffins are often left open to let the souls escape. I fear souls must have escaped quite recently.

  At the top of the hill the modern world intrudes again in the shape of a long, open-sided building that looks like a bus shelter. This is another government perk, provided for the village as a permanent arena for the music and dancing for which the Kalash are renowned. Every year there is a music festival here that pulls in the tourists, many of whom come to see something unheard of in Pakistan: women dancing together in public. The emancipation of Kalash women has brought them the unwelcome attention of men from outside, seeking a sexual freedom denied to them in the rest of Pakistan.

  Supper is very jolly. Saifullah’s cooked some locally caught trout for us and produces a bottle of his home-brew, grape juice from last summer, which is still fermenting and tastes like fortified sherry.

  Day Nine : To Chitral

  Wake to the sound of water and the smell of wood smoke. After a couple of nights here I no longer feel cut off from the world, but protected from it, and not particularly anxious to move away. I can understand why Saifullah values the isolation that has shaped and strengthened this tight-knit community, and why he loves visitors so long as they don’t want to change anything.

  As our jeep rolls over the bridge and down the hill, the Rumbur valley narrows behind us until the village and the thin strips of green fields that sustain it disappear altogether, and we find ourselves descending through a tight, treeless gorge onto whose steep sides the track hangs by its fingernails. Nadir Begh, my driver, anxious at the best of times, never unfurrows his brow. He’s less concerned by the precipice below than the rock wall above. Recently descended loose grey shale lies scattered across the road and he peers up in the air, accelerating forward at the slightest trickle of dust.

  We’re all relieved as the valley widens and reveals a perspective of broad mountain slopes that lead the eye remorselessly upwards to the solitary bulk of Tirich Mir, 25,228 feet (7708 m), the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush and, I realize, the highest mountain I’ve ever seen.

  As we near Chitral, orchards and tranquil stretches of woodland cluster beside the road. We pass groups of men shaking mulberries from the trees with long sticks, and a line of very small children coming out of school, all dressed in vivid green shalwar-kameezes and looking like a procession of parrots.

  The Hindu Kush Heights Hotel is set on the side of a hill with a fine view of the valley and Chitral town. Recently built, the emphasis is firmly on local design and craftsmanship at the expense of televisions and mini-bars. In the garden the heat smells of rosemary and jasmine.

  The owners and creators of this remarkable hotel are both of that great Chitral dynasty, the Ul-Mulk family. Siraj, a man of my own age and a one-time Pakistan Airlines pilot, is one of several sons of the last ruler or Mehtar (Persian for prince) of Chitral. His father was married to Siraj’s mother for 80 years.

  ‘They were two and four when they got married.’

  Clean-shaven and soft-spoken, and wearing a Western shirt and trousers, Siraj is pale enough to pass for a suntanned Suffolk farmer, except for the flat, felt Pashtun cap, the pakol, which perches on top of the head in summer and rolls down for extra protection in the winter.

  Though the Mehtar surrendered all his political powers to the Pakistani state in 1972, Siraj is still technically a prince and his wife Ghazala, with the piercing, dark eyes and intense good looks of the Pathan, a princess.

  Three pet dogs help complete a sense of sharing a family house, rather than an impersonal hotel, and their guest book shows that they are by no means cut off up here in the valley. A framed photo shows the staff posing next to General Musharraf and on the wall by the door hangs a signed photo of thanks from Robert De Niro.

  Ghazala is much amused that when De Niro came to stay, Siraj asked him what line of work he was in.

  Despite their international clientele they observe the local custom. Ghazala, for instance, has elected to observe purdah and cannot walk into the town uncovered.

  I join her and Siraj as they walk the dogs on the hillside behind the hotel. She enjoys this walk because she doesn’t feel trapped by having to wear the veil. As we pick our way through artemisia scrub we talk about the two standards of behaviour. Though Pakistan’s constitution makes no discrimination on grounds of gender, for traditional reasons most women choose to remain behind the veil. This cannot but result in some inequality, however self-inflicted, and it shows up in national literacy figures. For men literacy in Pakistan is around 60 per cent; for women, 35 per cent.

  Day Ten : Chitral

  Chitral, a compact riverside town and centre of a close-knit valley community, has grown and prospered in recent years with the influx of Afghans, who came over the mountain passes during the Taliban years. Siraj reminds me that the border is less than 50 miles (80 km) to the west.

  ‘You see, in winter we’re cut off from the rest of Pakistan, but we’re not cut off from Afghanistan.’

  He’s complimentary about the Afghan influence. They rejuvenated the sleepy town, bringing new cafes and restaurants, improving the choice of food in the shops, opening butchers, greengrocers, carpet-weaving and other businesses and generally demonstrating their talent as entrepreneurs. Now many of them are returning home and Chitral is once again reverting to its natural sleepiness.

  There was a time, a hundred-odd years ago, when it was the British who were the new arrivals in Chitral. Seeing Chitral’s western passes as potentially vulnerable back doors through which the expansionist Russians might steal into their Indian empire, they installed a garrison at the fort. The Great Game, as the rivalry between the two 19th-century superpowers came to be known, saw one of its more dramatic moves played out in Chitral in 1895.

  The Ul-Mulk family were at the centre of events. Siraj’s great-grandfather Aman died in 1892 after a 35-year reign, instigating a vicious war of succession in which his various sons quarrelled with, plotted against and killed each other, until one decided his best ho
pe of survival was to create a local alliance aimed at throwing the British out of their kingdom.

  The siege of Chitral may not be as well known as those of Khartoum or Mafeking, but it was pretty heroic stuff, as the defenders, mainly Sikh troops under British officers, forced to eat their horses to survive, held out for 48 days before being relieved by a force of men, mules and cannons that had marched over the high passes of the Hindu Kush in the middle of winter.

  The fort where the horse-eaters held out is still there, sitting low on a promontory round which the muddy grey river swirls. Its 25-foot-high, 240-foot-long walls still stand, but they look a little sad, with plaster cracked and fallen away, revealing the bare bones underneath. Groves of tall trees loom over the bedraggled ramparts and beneath them contented cows chomp their way through fields of wild cannabis.

  Chitral’s ageing fort is upstaged by its neighbour, an exuberantly decorated mosque in a central Asian style with onion domes and white stucco, paid for by Siraj’s grandfather in the 1920s.

  I ask him if it was common for ruling families to sponsor mosques.

  He laughs.

  ‘Well, I suppose, like in England, they wanted God on their side.’

  The sound of chanting comes from a long, columned chamber off the courtyard. We step inside. Sixty young boys are learning the Koran by heart. They kneel before copies of the Book, rocking backwards and forwards on their haunches as they recite.

  A mullah sits at a small table, peering myopically at a text as he listens to a boy sitting in front of him.

  ‘These boys are being forced to learn the Koran in Arabic, a language quite foreign to them,’ whispers Siraj, as we watch.

  ‘It’s like reading prayers in Latin.’

  Many of the boys watch us back, clearly much more interested in what we’re doing than what they’re learning.

  Repetition of the Koran, at the expense of other subjects like science and maths, has become the main discipline of these madrassas, religious schools, which have increased in number since the Taliban was thrown out of Afghanistan and fled across the border.

  ‘It won’t last,’ says Siraj. ‘They have nothing much to offer the people.’

  Polo, on the other hand, seems to have a lot to offer. Chitral’s polo ground is a long, green rectangle behind the Mountain Inn, sloping up quite markedly at both ends.

  An early evening training game is in progress, and even this draws a crowd of several hundred. As Siraj explains:

  ‘Over here you don’t have to be a rich man to play polo. You could be the most important person in Chitral, but if you happen to be playing on the field here you could be written off by your barber or your shoemaker.’

  Polo thrived here on the border country after being introduced from Persia, and was known to be played on occasions with enemies’ heads and sheep carcasses.

  Unlike the international game, invented by the British, which is broken into seven-minute segments, at the end of which horses can be substituted, they play what they call ‘free-style’ polo, with no referee and no rules. Each chukka lasts 25 minutes, with no change of horses, unless one is injured.

  At half-time, Siraj introduces me to the captain of the Chitral team, his brother Sikander, ten years his junior. He’s hot and sweating after a first half in which he’s been evaluating his new horse, Bucephalus. (Another example of the resonance of Alexander the Great, Sikander being a derivation of Alexander, whose favourite horse was Bucephalus.)

  This is one of the last trial games before selection of the team to take on arch-rivals Gilgit in the biggest free-style polo match in the world.

  It’s to be played on the top of the 12,000-foot (3660 m) Shandur Pass, the highest point of the mountain road that connects the two competing communities. At least 5000 Chitral fans will make the journey up to the pass to support their team.

  Sikander grins broadly, and grips my hand in a firm Ul-Mulk handshake.

  ‘See you there!’

  Day Twelve : Chitral

  Therapeutic recovery time at Hindu Kush Heights. The food is good and varied here, cooked with a light touch and the emphasis on home-grown vegetables and treats like mushrooms off the mountains, quite a relief from the heavy curries of Peshawar. The scenery is magnificent without being overpowering, mountains with a human face, and our last night in Chitral is to be marked by a visit to a baipash, an old Chitrali house where local music and dancing will be laid on. My heart sinks as the dreaded spectre of a ‘folklorique’ evening looms. Siraj is enthusiastic, though, and describes what we shall see and hear as the last of its kind, a style of music and poetry that is ‘locked in the mountains’.

  We drive out, crossing the river over a sturdy suspension bridge built by the British in the 1920s at the personal request of Siraj’s grandfather. He’d been so excited by hearing of the invention of the car that he ordered a fleet of Baby Austins to be delivered to him in Chitral, without realizing that cars couldn’t cross rivers. The bridge was obligingly completed by sappers from the garrison in two months.

  His grandfather’s ignorance of cars sounds pretty comprehensive. Apparently, when the tyres wore out, he just sold the cars. A lucky dealer from Karachi bought the whole lot, changed the tyres and sold the fleet in mint condition.

  The baipash is a carefully preserved 300-year-old house, approached through a large garden with tall and immaculate dry-stone walls, reinforced with horizontal timbers to protect against earthquakes. The layout inside is the traditional single chamber with a central hearth and opening in the roof above for smoke to escape. Around the walls are darkened wooden stalls where cattle would once have been kept. The columns that support the roof are also wooden and carved with plant and flower motifs. It’s dark, stuffy, cosy and presided over by a tall, gaunt man with white beard and thick, sprouting eyebrows. With a strong and piercing gaze, he reminds me of a manic Scots preacher.

  He’s 77 years old, with a wicked sense of humour. At some length, he expounds on the abundance of hallucinatory substances in the sylvan glades of Chitral.

  ‘Did you ever try any of these drugs?’ I ask him.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Oh no. But I’ve been smoking hash for 40 years.’

  Once the music begins I can’t take my eyes off him. Like the venerable leader of a jazz band, he’s at the very heart of the action, sometimes plucking skilfully at a sitar, sometimes singing, but always urging others on, holding out long thin arms and flicking his bony wrists in time to the beat of sitars, tambourines and a pink jerrycan that does for percussion.

  The pattern is the same each time. The music starts slowly, then one of the audience gets up and begins to move with delicate shuffles of the feet and upraised arms, gradually becoming more animated. As the tempo of the music accelerates, so does the speed and intensity of the movement, until both merge into a stomping, exultant crescendo, which leaves everyone exhausted, ecstatic and applauding wildly.

  There is a sense of real joy as the music and dancing goes on. The songs and the style of playing are improvisations on music that has been part of this isolated culture for centuries. Once small groups like these forget, it may disappear altogether.

  Which explains the intensity of Siraj’s pleasure as he listens, his description of the songs and the music as being ‘locked in the mountains’, and the infectious magical warmth that banishes my worst memories of things folklorique.

  Day Thirteen : Chitral to Mastuj

  On the road again. I have a different jeep, and a different driver. Raza Khan is younger and less earnest than Nadir Begh. Whereas Nadir used to comb his hair every time we did a shot, even if we were a tiny speck on a mountain panorama, Raza is a little more relaxed and wears a baseball cap, reversed. He’s a Chitrali and everyone we meet on the road seems to be either an intimate friend of his or a member of his family.

  Long before they were Chitralis, the inhabitants of these mountain areas were collectively known as the Kho, and I’ve acquired a modest, locally print
ed guide book that has a glossary of words in the language they still speak here, known as Khowar. It’s pleasingly phonetic and in between gasping with awe at the scenery I try out a few words on Raza. Father is tut, mother is nun, grandfather is bap, grandmother is wow and foot is pong. This is the sort of language I like.

  There is a page of Miscellaneous Phrases, which is short but has an interesting theme. ‘Have you a wife?’, ‘Do you love your wife?’, ‘Is it late?’, ‘At what time shall we start?’, ‘Well done’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Don’t go naked’, ‘There is a pain in my leg’ and ‘When will you come back?’ It conjures up images of a lusty life in the mountains.

  We climb slowly up the valley, the river rushing past us at great speed, huffing and puffing and occasionally leaping ostentatiously into the air as if trying to attract our attention.

  As the road deteriorates the mountains grow more spectacular and quite suddenly we turn onto a flat saddle of land to be confronted by the dazzling white bulk of a massif called Buni Zum, 21,000 feet (6400 m) high, trailing glaciers and massive hanging slabs of snow. It provides a backdrop for a huge cricket match being played among the rocks, with dozens of boys fielding over a vast area.

  We spend the night in the grounds of a crumbling, but still dignified fort, which commands the confluence of two rivers at the town of Mastuj. Another Ul-Mulk family house, given to them by the British in 1913 as thanks for their loyalty, it’s currently run by Siraj’s father Khushwaqt, a dapper, bright-eyed man who has just celebrated his 90th birthday, and who everyone knows as the Colonel. Hoping to attract tourists, they have built some handsome wood cabins around the perimeter of a luxurious greensward beside the fort, the sort of flat open ground where you can imagine tournaments taking place. Unfortunately, the builders have done a runner and all that’s working are the bathroom fittings. So we sleep outside in tents and clamber into the empty buildings for a shower. Very odd.