Himalaya (2004) Read online

  Minoo argues that it’s foolish to suppose there is no demand for alcohol in Pakistan and if he doesn’t supply it then someone else will. Either the bootleggers smuggle foreign whisky in on dhows from places like Dubai, or for those who can’t afford bootleg, there is moonshine liquor, often made from what he calls ‘denatured alcohol’.

  He looks over his glasses at me, rather severely.

  ‘“Denature” is an old English word for poison.’

  One of the outlets where non-Muslims can legally acquire Murree’s output is at Flashman’s Hotel in Rawalpindi. A run-down collection of white bungalows, looking a bit like a 1940s film studio, it stands just off the Grand Trunk Road and next to a handsome Victorian church with everything but the spire painted deep pink.

  Round the back of Flashman’s, if you know who to ask, you’ll find two well-scuffed shutters, bordered with a patina of black grease from thousands of hands. A sign, in Urdu, announces that opening time is three o’clock. A line, looking suspiciously Muslim, has already formed. About 3.15 the shutters are opened and I soon find myself peering through a barred window into a gloomy little room full of storage boxes and men drinking tea.

  Before I buy I have to fill in a permit, which requires me, among other things, to give my father’s name and my religion.

  ‘Agnostic?’ I suggest, trying to be completely honest.

  The man at the counter looks blankly back.

  ‘Agnostic with doubts,’ I write down, and hand back the form. This entitles me to six units of alcohol a month, a unit being one bottle of spirits or 20 bottles of beer. I buy a bottle of Vat No.1 Rawalpindi whisky at a cost of 350 rupees (about PS3.50), which the attendant wraps in brown paper and hands through the bars to me.

  ‘Drink only in room,’ he cautions. ‘Not in public.’

  I nod, grateful for the advice. He must have got the measure of me, for as I turn away he shouts hopefully.

  ‘I do gin!’

  Day Twenty Five : Rawalpindi to Lahore

  For a military state Pakistan has a remarkably free press. Or so it seems as I read an editorial this morning addressing what it calls the Military-Mullah alliance. The writer’s argument is that since General Zia’s time the military and the Islamists have sought each other’s support against secular democracy.

  The only difference between them, it argues, is that the clerics have beards and the army have moustaches.

  A front page headline warns of the heatwave that waits for us tonight in Lahore. ‘50 Die As Punjab Boils.’

  On our way to the station in Rawalpindi, there is reassuring evidence of the hopefully inextinguishable richness of Pakistani life. Run-down streets dotted with foreign language schools and computer shops, and looming above them hand-painted billboard ads for the latest movie adventures of Shaan Shahid, Pakistan’s screen heart-throb, glowering menacingly, as blood courses from a head wound, or grinning, equally menacingly, as he brandishes a Kalashnikov. He seems to be the star of every film they make.

  Stopping to buy provisions in the Rajah Bazaar, I’m approached by a heavily bearded man offering to sell me a CD of Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden praying together at a mosque in Idris. Never seen before, he says.

  Another seems pleased that we represent the BBC. ‘Everyone in Pakistan believe BBC, but not CNN,’ he assures me, readjusting his New York Yankees baseball cap.

  It’s heating up as promised - 44degC (111degF) by the time we reach Rawalpindi Station, a huge conflation of Scottish baronial turrets and cupolas with a bland modern extension tacked on. Porters cluster around us and a thin-faced ascetic old man with a Gandalf-like white beard grabs one of my cases, hoists the other onto his head and, a little disappointed that I choose to carry my own shoulder bag, marches off through the crowds.

  Our driver nods approvingly. This old man is a great character, he says. He was carrying bags for British officers before independence. That was 55 years ago.

  There are three classes on the train, two with air-con and one without. We’re in air-con, 2nd class and are made comfortable by an army of solicitous attendants marshalled by a man in a white suit, green peaked hat and a crimson arm band, grandly embroidered with the words Conductor Guard. A rich cast of characters, all with titles clearly inscribed on jackets or lapels, come through offering refreshment of various kinds. My favourite is the Iceman, a stocky, embattled figure in a frayed white jacket, whose bulbous eyes and droopy moustache remind me of a small-time crook in a French gangster movie. He hauls a huge bucket in which is a block of ice with bottles squeezed around it. There is a tired, emaciated Sweet Seller and various perkier, smartly turned-out young men described on their lapel badges as either Buttlers (sic) or Waiters. Waiter No. 14 brings chai, sweet milky tea, and Buttler No. 7 collects the money.

  The name Punjab is an elision of Paan, five, and Aab, waters, and refers to the five rivers on which the prosperity of the province depends. Connected up, under the British occupation, by a network of branch canals and distribution channels, the flows of the Indus, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej and Jhelum support 70 million people, almost half the population of Pakistan. Seventy miles south of Pindi a mile-long railway bridge crosses the river into the town of Jhelum. Walking out on the station there I fall into conversation with a tall, irrepressibly cheery young man with wide, expressive eyes. His name is Asim and he’s on his way to Lahore with his brother, Azam, an accountant who is having a weekend-long engagement party. They buy me pakoras, savoury fritters, from a stall on the platforms and we munch away in mutual enthusiasm. I will love Lahore, he promises.

  ‘They are not fundamentalists there. Lahore is a city of very loving people, very wide-hearted, very loving.’

  He puts away another pakora.

  ‘Lahori people are very fond of eating,’ confirms Asim.

  ‘And is there a lot of night life?’

  He nods animatedly.

  ‘Oh yes, two, three, four o’clock in the morning, people are eating different dishes at different places.’

  South of Jhelum the scenery changes from scrubby bush plateau to the freshly shorn fields of the Punjab plain.

  Back on the train the Iceman is coming. I talk with a pale German girl who converted to Islam a year ago and two young, articulate computer programmers in shirts and trousers travelling with their father. He is shy, speaks no English, wears an embroidered skull cap and shalwar-kameez and looks steadily forward.

  The light is softening and the day is cooling and people are out beside the railway; leading dusty-flanked water buffaloes to be fed, carrying goods home on the back of bicycles and playing cricket with breeze blocks for stumps.

  It’s dark when we reach Lahore. Outside the station, a colossal brick and stone fortified folly, I pick up an auto-rickshaw to the hotel. We grind off onto wide roads and through careless traffic, adding our own little cloud of pollution to a thick, hot, suffocating fug, tight as a strait-jacket.

  Day Twenty Six : Lahore

  Up at 5.45 to beat the heat. We make our way to the low hill that dominates the heart of this flat city and on which stand two of the most beautiful buildings in the subcontinent, Lahore Fort and the Badshahi Mosque. Both were built by the Mughal (the word derives from Mongol) emperors who came out of south central Asia and through Afghanistan around the time that Henry VIII was planning the Reformation. Using rifles, mortars and gunpowder, previously unheard of in India, they seized Lahore in 1524 and subdued Delhi two years later.

  These two cities became the twin jewels of an empire that lasted almost 200 years and was characterized by blood, death, romantic tragedy and some of the most exquisite buildings, gardens, books and paintings in the world.

  The Mughals were not the first to fortify Lahore. Some 13 or 14 strongholds have succeeded each other on this hill, but today’s fort, completed by the Emperor Akbar, has stood solidly behind its mighty brick walls for 450 years.

  It is a huge complex, but we find ourselves caught for some time in a small office, with a beamed ro
of and lots of tasteful antique furnishings, making the acquaintance of the curator, who has a bad cold.

  I have the feeling the last thing he wants to do is to go outside. Two days ago Lahore had its highest temperature for 75 years, he tells us, reaching for a tissue. ‘Forty-Nine Centigrade!’

  Fortunately, it will be cooler today he prophesies. Perhaps 47 at most.

  The appeal of the Lahore fort is a successful combination of intimacy and grandeur. Power with a human face. There is the massive Elephant Path, a wide flight of steps with long, shallow stairs designed to enable rich courtiers to bring their elephants into the heart of the fort without having to dismount. There are courtyards of immense size, criss-crossed with cooling water channels (sadly dry today), and audience chambers supported by forests of sandstone columns, and in among them, exquisite architectural miniatures.

  The Shish Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors, is a series of cool, serene rooms open at one side and enclosed at the other by an exquisitely carved screen through which the breeze is drawn by a 17th-century carved marble air-con system. Narrow apertures on the outside widen out on the inside to draw the cool air in. And it does work. The walls are picked out with glass mosaics, paintings of gardens and countryside and complex mirrored panels.

  It was in one of these, so the story goes, that Emperor Akbar noticed his son Jahangir exchange flirtatious glances with the Emperor’s favourite courtesan, Anarkarli, aka Pomegranate Blossom. As a punishment Akbar ordered her to be walled-up, alive. When Jahangir became Emperor he built a grand tomb at the place where she died, on which were written the words:

  ‘Ah, could I behold the face of my beloved once again, I would give thanks until the day of resurrection.’

  The curator sniffs and sighs. Not because he’s moved by the story, but because he says it never happened. True or false, Anarkali has become a folk hero for many Lahoreans and the main market of the city is named after her.

  Another gem, the Naulaka Pavilion, has less gruesome romantic attachments. Its canopied roof, an exquisitely carved blanket of marble, said to be modelled on a Bengali hut, covers walls and pillars intricately decorated with tiny carved panels filled with stones of agate, lapis lazuli, gold, jade and cornelian. It was built by Emperor Shah Jahan for his wife Mumtaz, of whom he must have been pretty fond. When she died he built the Taj Mahal for her.

  The view from this cool pavilion out towards the Badshahi Mosque is a reminder of what makes Mughal architecture so fine. It’s all about balance and symmetry. Towers, domes, minarets, columns and cupolas, some in red stone, some in white marble, are all gracefully harmonized. The Mughal emperors set out to balance power and pleasure, and no-one ever achieved this more successfully.

  It’s midday and in the mosque the sandstone slabs are so hot that a thin strip of carpet has been laid out, which is continually being hosed down. This requires a lot of water, as the 500 feet (160 m) square courtyard is one of the largest of any mosque in the world, and can hold upwards of 60,000 worshippers.

  Today most of them are inside the shade of the tall Prayer Chamber, ten bays deep and topped by three white marble domes. The imam is giving his address but there seems to be little of the formality of worship in an English church. Some stand to listen, some kneel. People come and go, others talk to each other, some attend to their own devotions while young children run around at the back. Only when it comes to the holy prayer do they all come together to stand in line, barefoot, heads lowered. Then, moving as one, they bow to the waist, stand upright, kneel, press foreheads on the ground twice, then stand up and begin the process over again. There’s something simple and powerful about such a communal act of humility in such splendid surroundings.

  This evening we meet for a meal at the house of the well-connected Yusuf Salahuddin, who, hearing of our curiosity about Shaan Shahid, the actor on all the posters, is to take us to see him filming at the studios on the Multan Road, heart of Lahore’s film industry, or Lollywood as it’s known.

  Yusuf’s house is a warren of tastefully decorated rooms and courtyards in the Old Town. On antique tables stand photos of himself with Imran Khan, Jimmy Goldsmith and others. In the courtyard we eat the most delicious mangoes I’ve ever tasted and talk about what we’ve seen in Pakistan. His views on the trigger-happy North-West Frontier are far from reverential.

  ‘They’ll shoot you if they feel like it. Any excuse. If they don’t like the food, or the way you smile, or farting. Farting, that’s very bad. Farting is a crime on the North-West Frontier. And the older you are when you fart the worse it is.’

  He insists we come back here for the Basant festival in April. Everyone in Lahore flies their kites for a day.

  ‘It must be a beautiful sight.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ He shakes his head in mock horror. ‘It’s war!’

  Apparently it gets seriously competitive, with rooftop rivals attaching knives and glass to their string to cut each other’s kites adrift. (I’ve since heard that the mayor of Lahore has banned next year’s kite festival because of risk of injury.)

  It’s late by the time we head down to the studios but Yusuf assures us that there is no point in getting there earlier. Because of the heat, all the shooting is done at night.

  He explains that someone like Shaan will have several films on the go at once.

  ‘What sort of films?’

  ‘All the same,’ he says. ‘All Punjabi films have the same ingredients. One boy, two girls, one boy, one girl, two girls, one boy. We are a very emotional people, we like to cry our heart and soul out.’

  Shaan arrives. A trim figure, early to mid-thirties, with black trousers and tunic and dyed blond hair. A good face, strong features, heavily muscled arms. Not unlike the young Brando.

  A big wedding scene, in which Shahid plays an angry lover, is about to go before the cameras. There’s the usual scrum of activity around the set. Turbanned figures on lighting gantries re-direct the lamps, extras wait nervously in a back room, a leading lady is applying the heavy and elaborate layers of make-up that seem to be obligatory for any heroine, while the director, Sangeeta, a big, fair-skinned, bespectacled woman, prowls around like the headmistress of a particularly troublesome comprehensive, cajoling, exhorting, upbraiding and generally trying to hurry the process along.

  The set is all fairy lights and soft furnishings and fussy white balconies.

  ‘This is what Punjabis want,’ says Shaan, in quiet, fluent English. ‘This is their fantasy of success.’

  As he waits for his moment to be shot by the bride’s father, he seems calm and quite happy to talk. He says he’s been in the business 14 years and I ask him how many films he’s made.

  ‘223, I think, or is it 4?’ He considers for a moment. ‘And two of those years I spent in New York, so, yes, that’s 224 in 12 years’.

  His father was a director, producer and writer, his mother the leading actress in Pakistan, so Shaan has no illusions about the business, or his success. He’s a family man. Loves to be woken by his daughter, he says.

  ‘I wake up by 12.30, I go to my gym, I have breakfast, then I come to work. I do about nine projects a day.’ He reckons he finishes a film every 28 days.

  ‘Are you allowed to kiss on screen?’

  ‘Not on the lips. On the hand or the forehead, or you know on the side cheek or something, but not on the lips. My wife’s not going to agree to that, so forget it.’

  ‘Does that seem unnatural to you?’

  ‘No, that’s very natural.’

  I wonder if he fears any backlash from resurgent, conservative, Islamist elements in the country, who’ve made no secret of their dislike for the cinema.

  ‘There’s a bunch of people that need to be taught that this is something that has nothing to do with religion; it’s a form of expression, it’s a form of art and that’s it.’

  There are shouts from the set. The bride’s father has been handed his gun and had his moustache reapplied, and pink spray is erupting from the fountain at t
he bottom of the stairs at the back. To my surprise Shaan calls me onto the set to have my photo taken with the actors.

  ‘They are all big fans.’

  I shake hands with the bridegroom, who beams with excitement.

  ‘This is very exciting for us. We love British comedy.’

  I shrug modestly.

  ‘Oh yes. Mr Bean, Benny Hill. We love it!’

  I think it’s time for me to go to bed.

  Day Twenty Seven : Lahore

  A short night. Spend the morning at what has been described as the ‘Versailles of the Punjab’, the Shalimar Gardens, created 360 years ago by that prodigious creator of fine monuments Emperor Shah Jahan, the tasteful tyrant who gave the world, among other things, the Taj Mahal.

  Long, metre-thick pink and cream sandstone walls protect the gardens from the commotion outside, and a great and soothing sense of space and tranquillity envelops you as you enter.

  In a city bulging at the seams it is both gratifying and surprising that these 40 acres of royal pleasure gardens survive at all, even though it’s clearly a struggle to maintain them to Shah Jahan’s specifications.

  The layout is formal, based on descriptions in the Koran, with three descending terraces and the ultimate in water features - streams, pools, cascades and waterfalls - all set in precise geometric harmony. In the days when the Emperor and Empress looked out at each other from their own personal pavilions, separated by shaded walkways and water channels, 400 fountains played in the gardens, kept at constant pressure by water from huge storage tanks continually topped up from a canal by a conveyor belt of wheels and buckets.

  But that was the 17th century and modern technology just hasn’t been able to keep up. The 20th-century pumps are far less effective and water springs from the calcified fountains in dribbles rather than jets. An old man is wading around in the water tank unclogging non-performing fountains by hammering a wooden peg into their sclerotic spouts.