One evening over dinner in Islamabad with friends we decided to visit Peshawar. It's not something one decides at dinner that often, and I wasn't happy about it at first, but didn't feel like letting Steele and Oshan go while I stayed. So the next day we got the bus, taking care to be attired in an appropriate manner, and after a couple of hours we were up the grand trunk road in a different city, a different land, barely a few dozen kilometres from Afghanistan. The Northwest Frontier Province, the land of the Pathans.
Pathans are an ancient tribe of people who may be, and believe themselves to be the decendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. And I came to believe it after spending a few days in Peshawar. They are a proud and beautiful people, but fierce and warlike, as the British, Russians and Americans have discovered over the decades of conflict in pre-partition India and in Afghanistan, to their considerable cost. And the faces I saw seemed so similar to those of jewish people, which really surprised me. The citizens of Pakistan and Israel are not permitted to visit one anothers' countries, but they are most likely related, which is a little ironic I think.
We left Islamabad without our passports and it proved to be a constant headache, as bombs in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Peshawar had resulted in plenty of random checks on traffic at hundreds of roadblocks. The Indian High Commission had insisted on retaining our pasports, and we didn't imagine it would be a problem anywhere, but it turned out to be a fairly large one. Dressed in Shalwar Kameez and with Chitrali hats, Oshan and I cartoonishly resembled taliban insurgents from Swat on their way to a marketplace in Peshawar. In Lahore and Karimabad it was a regular joke that people made regarding our appearance. But soon we realised how important appearances are in the world. I knew that already, but our effort to be inconspicuous and to blend in in Pakistan backfired somewhat, and in buses and taxis we were stopped time after time by the police and questioned about our origin, destination and intentions, though we were invariably allowed to continue on our way. But in Peshawar it became a problem.
We headed for the Rose hotel, as Steele had stayed there four years previously, but it was full, even though Eid had finished. We tried over the road at another hotel and after agreeing a price for the room with the manager, under the watchful gaze of a swarthy, dark-bearded, chain-smoking armed guard, we presented our passport photocopies that we naively thought would suffice as a form of identity in a region torn by infiltration and wracked by violent suicide attacks. They simply would not do, the manager appeared quite fearful and it seemed as if we might need to get straight back on the bus to Islamabad. At his suggestion we walked up to the Tourist Inn Motel, and stooped to pass through the steel door. Inside was Mansoor, the hotel attendant, a small unkempt man with a repertoire of hilarious exclamations. There were no guests staying in the old pale green building. There was an open space before the rooms and a counter, upon which Mansoor directed us to present our identity documents for inspection.
'Um, here's a photocopy of my passport, I'm afraid I haven't one of my Pakistan visa.', I said tentatively.
'No problem!', Mansoor replied.
'Our real passports are in the Indian High Comission.'
'No problem. No tension!', it seemed as if we would get a room, but perhaps not for long, once the photocopies of the photocopies of our passports, lacking a photocopy of a photocopy of my Pakstan visa, would reach special branch for investigation. But Mansoor was chilled, and so were we. We installed ourselves and sat down for a minute before going out to see a little of this feared city. Mansoor got down to smoking some heroin straight away and continued until we headed out.
The old town in Peshawar is a buzzing mix of sounds and smells, and was far from the sternly forbidding frontier town that I had imagined. Everywhere people were smiling and happy to chat with us and to have their photos taken, which suited me. We ate in a lovely place and strolled through the bazaar as the sun set and azan sounded. Passing a material shop I stopped to talk to the friendly owner, a well-built man dressed in 'pants-shirt' (the subcontinental term for western dress). He asked us why we were there, and were we not afraid since it was so dangerous. And within five minutes the three of us were stiffly suppressing our rising unease. It was the early evening and a more likely time for a bomb. And now a local had, quite sincerely, informed us that it was indeed a dangerous place. We knew it, but it is different coming from a resident. So we went home.
Mansoor was still smoking heroin and quite high. We sneaked out for a shoarma, and a visit to the surreal supermarket on the corner that had mannekins sitting in the wrought iron girders of the ceiling, seeming to chat together. A dozen shoppers drifted through the supermarket, and we marvelled at the refrigerator that contained cheddar cheese. Things seemed too normal, the calm was unnerving, the worried looks of people started to worry me. We were outside for a half hour and then back into our little compound, a peeling limey safety zone. Mansoor was still smoking heroin. He had almost finished his wrap. I wondered if it was dangerous inside too. But it wasn't. There was a TV, but it felt like a prison. Mansoor had woken up a bit and we struck up a sort of conversation.
'Me, no family. Father...sleeping. Mother...sleeping. Sister...sleeping. Wife...sleeping. No family. Only heroin', he gestured to the blackened length of aluminium foil.
'No good', he concluded.
It didn't seem all that good, but Mansoor was happy in a way, in this small oasis, as the bombs went off outside now and then, as Pakistan lurched from crisis to crisis. He watched the telly and chased the dragon and hung out with the very few westerners who were visiting this frontier region. I guess for some it's a kick, to visit somewhere feared. I will do it, if it is necessary, if I must, to follow my path. But to me it seemed like it wasn't worth it. How wrong I was. I discovered what is to me the heart of Pakistan, the link to the past and future and the corridor through which all the invaders and colonisers passed over the millenia.
The next day we sat with a chap from Special Branch. He fingered our pathetic scraps of paper and tutted. But he was cool and finally the deal was that we had to leave the next day for Islamabad. We had to chello, and soon. So we hit the old town again, with half the fear that we had felt the previous day, had breakfast and got down to chatting and strolling among the intriguing folks. We were forcibly stopped and made to enjoy delicious green tea by some Pathan animal hide sellers. The boss spoke farsi, and Oshan exchanged elegant sentences for a while while I shot a couple of photos of the old man who was liming up fresh goat skins. These guys were thrilled, since it was a boring occupation it seemed to me, and it must be fun to meet foreigners to see what the world thinks of the place you would dearly love to escape from, and everywhere the atmosphere was friendly, to the point of joyfulness.
Nothing is all roses and soon we met Prince. Steele had warned us that we would sooner or later meet this strange character. Prince was from a wealthy family and spent his time rubbing shoulders with tourists, showing them his bound album of kind testimonials to his kind service and photos of various people he had escorted to the smugglers' bazaar and Khyber pass. It was not a coincidence that Prince was in the very tea shop that we entered, centuries old, it was a famous place for tourists to visit. But we had been befriended by a charming pathan in black. And he tipped off Prince by mobile phone, so that he happened to be in the tea shop when we arrived.
Steele told us earlier that Prince had taken his girlfriend Amber to Swat, four years previously. He wanted to go to Afghanistan and Amber had not, so the friendly Prince was more than happy to take her to visit his ancestral home, to see the beauty of the famous Swat valley. Swat was then safe, as was pretty much the whole area. Steele headed off and upon his return learned that Prince had tried to drug Amber with opium slipped surreptitiously in her tea and then to molest her. He wasn't happy to meet him again this time, but after a while we left and shook them all off.
The large market street was top-and-tailed by barbed wire and police. Down some side alleys we came to the site of one large bomb that had killed and wounded scores, wiping out a couple of buildings in the constricted space. It was a building site now and shoppers went about their daily business, but it served as a quiet reminder that any moment we might be lamely standing next to a deadly blast.
We continued, but strangely the fear was almost gone. Fear is strange after all. It is up there, but only there, in the mind. Right then, I could see with my own eyes that there was nothing to fear in the moment, and somehow I accepted that this moment was where I belonged and where I was happy. I did not need to imagine the explosion, the smell of C5 and smoke, the fragments of people and things and the blurry sideways view from the place where I would lie paralysed for the last minute of my life. It wasn't relevant to reality, and soon it was gone, and I was free to laugh and chat with those around us. The shop-keepers and kids and men. Women giggled as they passed, veiled mostly from our sight. But the market and old town was charming, cosy and warm-feeling, thick with invitations to talk, drink tea and stand enjoying every moment.
From then on I had no more fear and the next day was really enjoyable. We were supposed to leave and had gone out for breakfast, but when we arrived home Mansoor was out, the gate was padlocked and he stayed out for the hour that I waited with the guys. Then I headed off to look around our area. We were staying a rickshaw ride from the old town and near our hotel was a large shopping area with mobile phone shops and flower stalls and a business complex full of travel agents and banks and things like that. I walked in to ask where I might find an internet shop to let my mum know that I was alive, and a kind young man invited me to his office where I sent an email. Then I was forced to drink delicious tea once again and sat for a couple of hours talking with the man and his friends. The security guard dropped in for a chat and then we ambled into one of the shopping mall-like corridors to talk to the guy manning a photocopy machine. He spoke good english and we discussed the situation in Peshawar. He expressed nothing but contemptuous disgust for those carrying out the bombings.
'These are not muslims, they are animals'. It was a statement that I was used to hearing. The army were finding Uzbeks in South Waziristan and it was clear that foreigners were involved. I felt such sympathy for the people who have to deal with the situation, during my whole time in Pakistan, but most especially in Peshawar, where the bombs have sometimes been a daily event and where people are famously hospitable. In the tribal areas the same pathans will lay down their life for a guest. They will also commit honour killings, and blood-feuds run for years, but it gives you an idea of their intensity. That night I spoke with two men by a kebab stall, who had had their dinner in the restaurant behind it. One was bearded and pale in complexion with green eyes, with a face that looked as though it might be capable of great fierceness and the other was a darker more subcontinental-looking man of rotund build and jovial character. They were obviously important, well-connected and well-educated and affluent. One was a retired colonel of the military, and both ran an operation mining copper and gold in Baluchistan. I asked how they dealt with the tribes down there, that are also pathan.
'It is obviously an undesirable thing, but the only way is to pay the head of the tribe. Then they deal with everyone else and order is maintained.'
I realised that this is how it must be working also in Afghanistan, and is how it has always worked, since the British had their noses bloodied once they reduced their tribute to the tribes that had kept them compliant. I wondered what democracy could ever have to do with such a society, and I saw how complicated the situation in Pakistan also must be, if the tribal areas had backers in the state. Intrigue, murderous and murky, has been the order of the day in this region for centuries. I could smell it in the night air, wafting around with the smoke from cooking meat. And then I engaged in a long discourse with the dignified looking pathan about Islam. After two months of practise I was able to answer the polite but constant questions about my beliefs, articulate well the various arguments surrounding religion, its definition in my view, and also in my search to educate myself in the world.
It was a satisfying conversation and after we turned to the subject of the tribe that probably came from Israel and settled in Afghanistan. Everyone knows from whom they are descended, which branch of the pathan tribe, although now city life and migration is obviously clouding peoples vision of their individual roots. It is fascinating and I was listened to with great interest and respect by the gentlemen. They seemed to be glad to speak about what they knew and were very intelligent and very kind indeed. I don't know what their mining operation is up to, but I liked them very much.
And so I turned back towards the hotel for the last time, walked down the wrong turning and into an army roadblock, which was exactly where I didn't want to be. After a firm handshake and 'salam aleikum' to a big khaki-clad major, I presented my photocopy and driving license, which being laminated by the DVLA in England, looked a little more official than the piece of paper. He thought it was my ID card. The streets were deserted and I was in a cantonment area, near a big military base, in which we were actually not allowed, as was stated on our Pakistani tourist visas. But the Tourist Inn Hotel was inside the cantonment, so it was a catch 22. I waited, and the soldiers stopped every vehicle to check them.
Then after a few minutes the major courteously organised a rickshaw for me, shook my hand again and off I went into the night without a hitch, with a super-friendly rickshaw driver, though I had hoped to save the 50 rupees for a rickshaw by walking. Soon I was back and the guys were sitting playing scrabble, while Mansoor got high. It was our last night and I felt as if apart from the hassle of not having valid documentation, Peshawar was safer than London and a damn sight more friendly. I would have loved to stay for a while, but we had our reward and were satisfied after all. A sound nights sleep and it was time to get back to the Indian High Commission. I was never so happy to be reunited with my little maroon book.