Where the Indus is Young (14 page)

His ruler’s identity might seem of little consequence to the ordinary Balti, but in fact the cruel avarice of the Dogras made itself felt even in these impoverished valleys. Moreover, the Dogras were Hindus and altogether out of sympathy with their Muslim subjects. They are still hated and their barbarities and injustices are repeated from father to son. During this period the Baltis were strictly forbidden to kill cattle and though not many of them could ever afford to do so they bitterly resented this imposition of Hindu taboos. The British influence helped only a little to curb Dogra tyranny. Baltistan and Ladak were both administered by a high Kashmiri functionary, the Wazir-i-Wazarat. (And usually ’e waz, too.) Under him were two Tahsildars, one stationed at Kargil and the other at Skardu. The British government was represented in the two districts by an English
official stationed at Leh and subordinate to the Resident of Kashmir. But in such a region one Englishman could do little to defend the Baltis from numerous petty Dogra officials who knew that their superiors cared nothing for the rights of inarticulate peasants. When the Dogra Maharajah of Kashmir acceded to the Indian Union in 1947 the entire Muslim population of these Northern Areas revolted spontaneously and insisted on being considered part of Pakistan. They won their point and by international convention Baltistan is now regarded as Pakistani territory.

Today we went to the Post Office with three instalments of diary for registration but on entering the building my nerve failed me and I took them home again. I have dealt with some bizarre POs in my time, but Skardu’s has an air of not believing in itself which is demoralising because so logical. The last mail came in ten days ago and the next may go out in two or three or five weeks’ time, so naturally there is an aura of unreality about the place. One moronic young clerk – perhaps merely stupefied by boredom – squatted in a corner wrapped in a red-brown blanket and morosely cracking walnuts. He looked just like a squirrel. I couldn’t send off my
postcards
, which I would have entrusted to the System as a test case, because there were no stamps available, pending the arrival of the next plane at some remote future date. This institution was established by the British and seems physically unchanged, in every particular, since its opening a century ago. But now the reliable Mail Runners have been largely superseded by capricious aeroplanes so it has given up the struggle to be efficient.

From the Post Office we continued west into the New Bazaar; it struggles for half a mile with the only stretch of tarred road in Baltistan. We stood transfixed with astonishment on coming to it. ‘This is like London!’ exclaimed Rachel, a trifle hyperbolically. Most of the new stalls that line the road (a dual-carriageway) are either closed for the winter or as yet unoccupied, and a few have already collapsed under the weight of recent snow. Halfway up the street is a stone column surmounted by a bronze eagle looking down on his
prey; it commemorates the many Baltis who died fighting for the right to join Pakistan.

To new arrivals from Thowar, Skardu seems truly metropolitan, yet its range of merchandise is limited. There are some totally unexpected items – Imperial Leather soap, Parker pens, Rothmans cigarettes – but these have either been sold off by expeditions or imported from Landicotal. In the Old Bazaar, where most of the trading is done, the many small stalls carry virtually identical stocks – bales of cheap cotton, a sack of rice, a few sacks of pulse, a sack of sugar, tinned milk from various countries, tinned ghee from Denmark, tea, possibly a few onions, cigarettes, matches, trinkets, bars of soap, tin kitchen utensils, ‘Tibet’ cold cream, mouldy biscuits at Rs.5 for six ounces, rock salt, plastic footwear, exercise books and ink so inferior as to be unusable (I speak this evening from experience). Almost everything is of the worst possible quality but nothing is cheap. I sought in vain for meat and eggs, and even the ubiquitous tea-houses are rare here because a cash economy is new to Baltistan. Moreover, the few we did locate are closed at present: no Balti Shiah would do anything so frivolous as drinking tea in public during these Muharram days of deep mourning. Food-wise Hallam came off best with a seer of pulses, which he greatly relishes, and a bale of good sweet hay. It seems odd to be feeding high-quality red lentils to a
ghora
but no grain is to be had at any price. His treat is a lump of beautifully glittering pink rock-salt, which he crunches with a look of ecstasy.

One cannot fairly judge the collective personality of the Skardu citizenry during Muharram. This annual season of mourning may be likened to a medieval Lent taken very, very seriously. The majority of Baltis are Shiah Muslims, who venerate the descendants of the Prophet by his daughter Fatima and regard Sunni Muslims as phoney. (Most Pakistanis are Sunni.) Muharram is celebrated by Shiahs all over the Islamic world to mourn the deaths of their revered martyr Hussain, of his small son and his relative Hassan. Hussain was the second son of Ali the son-in-law of Mohammed, who was killed at Kerbela on 10 October 680 while fighting the army of the Sunni Caliph Iasid.

During the ten days preceding the Muharram procession no
merriment – or even relaxation – is considered proper. No smoking, no gambling, no sex, no listening to a transistor (should you happen to have one), no eating big meals even if such could be conjured up in Skardu in January, no frivolous chatting in tea-houses, no
foot-polo
for the children, no laughter for anybody. As a result the whole silent town has at present a brooding, tense, rather sullen atmosphere. The comparatively few citizens to be seen in the bazaars look grim and often unfriendly. They are always male; Skardu women rarely leave their domestic territory, which explains why I get some hostile sideways looks from those who have correctly diagnosed my sex. To them a bare-faced woman wandering through their town during the season of austerity and abstinence must seem devil-sent.

The population of Baltistan (about 200,000) is very mixed.
Fearsome
as these valleys are, they have for millennia been important channels of communication – for lack of anything better – between different empires and cultures. Their present cut-offness is new, brought about by the exigencies of modern politics and the
development
of air transport, and walking through the bazaars today we saw faces that could have been Irish, Tibetan, Arab, Russian, Afghan, German, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Italian: there is no type one instantly picks on as ‘typically Balti’. Yet most Baltis obviously belong to that far-flung anthropological category known as the ‘Eurapoid group’, which includes most West Asians and a number of North African peoples. In 1880 Roero di Cortanze was the first to note that the Baltis are on the whole ‘of the Caucasian or white race, in contradiction to the Ladakhis, who are Mongols and copper-coloured’. But naturally there is a pronounced Mongoloid strain and as far as our observations went today the Tibetan-type Baltis are the poorest of all. A persisting tradition in the Skardu and Ronda areas says that the aboriginal Baltis were Aryan Dards who gradually became fused with various groups of Mongol invaders. But what astonishes me is the number of distinct
unfused
types to be seen here, despite the fact that there has been little recent migration into these valleys.

Today I have again been assured, for about the sixth time, that all Baltis are not as poor as they seem. While living in hovels and wearing rags some may have a fortune buried under the floor, and the old
British Rs.400 note quite often turns up in Skardu, though it has not been legal tender for years past. But I still find it hard to believe that there are many rich Baltis.

This morning we set off with Hallam to explore the far side of the Rock, going first through the Chasma and New Bazaars and then out along the Gilgit track for half a mile. To skirt the western end of this extraordinary mountain we followed a broad sandy path across a snowfield with the grey slope of the ‘liner’s’ bows towering above us. We met many little groups of bent men wearing tattered
homespun
gowns and carrying eighty-pound loads of firewood (mainly mulberry) tied to their shoulders with yak-hide thongs. The majority had conspicuous goitres and several were dwarfs – scarcely bigger than their load – and/or cretins. Ahead was a jumble of rugged, lowish peaks (about 12 or 13,000 feet) and when we topped a slight rise we saw the Indus, broad and slow, between us and those mountains. On their lower slopes are a few hamlets from which the wood-carriers had been punted on
zhak
– rafts of inflated goat- or yak-skins, to which planks are tied.

Where our path descended, to curve around the Rock, Rachel
dismounted
and I led Hallam while we were investigating the equestrian possibilities of the route. Then we turned a shoulder of the mountain and before us lay the mile-wide confluence of the Shigar and the Indus – seemingly a turquoise lake, from which the snowy northern face of the Rock rises sheer. And beyond the rivers, to north and east, were giant peaks like great white scars on the intensely blue arc of the sky. We walked on until the path became unhorseworthy, and the silence, beauty and peace on that ‘forgotten’ side of the Rock reduced even Rachel to wordlessness for about three minutes.

Before turning back we rested on a boulder where we could look straight down a sparkling white slope into the Indus and watch it being augmented by snow melting off the foot of the mountain. I remember that was one of those ‘special’ moments which unfailingly bring out the animist in me. Sitting there beside one of the greatest rivers of the earth, at the foot of some of the greatest peaks, it seemed
entirely natural to worship the power and the glory of water and rock.

When we got back to the sandy track Rachel remounted: and that was the last I saw of my daughter for an hour and a half. Watching Hallam disappear over a rise at a reasonable trot I thought nothing of it, expecting them to wait for me nearby, but when I topped that rise they were already far away. I immediately assumed that Hallam had bolted. Then, focusing better across the undulating snow, I saw that far from his being out of control Rachel was using her switch on his rump like a jockey coming up to the finish. As they disappeared over another rise I yelled ridiculously, ‘Rachel! Stop! Rachel!’ And besides me the great grey wall of the Rock echoed – ‘Achel!’

I walked on at my normal speed, seething with rage and sick with anxiety. This sort of caper is all very well on a soft sandy track where there is no traffic, but how was Rachel going to cope if she met a military jeep being driven by some lunatic young conscript at sixty m.p.h.? Hallam is intelligent and responsible, but also quite
highly-strung
: and no Balti animal is at ease with motor-traffic. I noted from the depth and setting of his hoof-prints that he had galloped all the way. Approaching the jeep-track I looked desperately for the black riding-hat and scarlet snow-suit – and then came my worst moment, when I saw what appeared to be a
riderless
Hallam. Almost at once I realised that it was in fact a cow of the same colour, but the bad moment had lasted long enough to make me tremble. During the long walk into and through the New Bazaar I saw scarcely
anybody
and began to feel reassured; had she been thrown and injured someone would have been searching for me. Then at last I saw the pair of them in the distance, waiting near the Old Bazaar, surrounded by a puzzled crowd. Even from a distance I could tell that Rachel was feeling inordinately pleased with herself. ‘Hello, Mummy!’ she called over the heads of her bewildered entourage. ‘You took a long time to catch up – we’ve been waiting
ages
! I hope you weren’t worried?’ ‘Of course I was,’ I said sourly, repressing all the other things I wanted to say. ‘I was afraid you might be,’ said she, showing the belated beginnings of remorse. ‘But I’ve discovered galloping is much easier than trotting! And Hallam was very good when two jeeps passed, so you were silly to worry, weren’t you?’

‘No,’ I replied crisply. ‘He might not have been very good – or the jeep-drivers might not.
You
were silly, not me.’ But despite this snub she continued to expatiate on the delectable sensation of galloping as we proceeded homeward.

Last evening I opened our one remaining tin of Pindi Complan and found it very mouldy; but with my usual parsimony, reinforced by hunger, I attempted a mugful against Rachel’s advice. It tasted so repulsive that I was forced to give up, though not before drinking enough to cause havoc within. This morning, having fed Rachel and imbibed tea, I only wanted to crawl back into my bedding, I felt poisoned, and no doubt to some mild extent I was.

However, I had recovered sufficiently by eleven o’clock to
accompany
Rachel on Hallam six miles up the valley towards Khapalu. Here the landscape is wilder and more broken. At the base of the mountains, grey and black boulders stand gauntly in deep snow, interspersed with occasional large thyme-clumps or juniper bushes. Then come level white stretches – probably fields – often surrounded by Connemara walls and with orchards nearby; and there are
unexpected
200-feet deep cleavages in the soft earth, which necessitate long detours. Some of these cracks must be recent since the old track runs to the edges on both sides. For much of the way the Indus is again visible, far below. As it wanders mildly in its deep, wide, gravelly bed it seems quite unrelated to that rollicking torrent which forces its way through the Gorge. At river-level lines of poplars and willows look like toys and make one newly conscious of the scale of the landscape. Beyond the Indus stretch miles of pale brown sand-dunes, beautifully wind-moulded, and from these rise two more isolated, oblong rock mountains, not quite as high or long as
the
Rock but scarcely less dramatic.

We passed through two hamlets where an appalling number of the visible inhabitants had goitre; and many of the inhabitants were visible, sitting on their roofs enjoying the midday warmth while they pounded apricot kernels, or spun wool, or wove lengths of blanket. Both men and women greeted us cheerfully and seemed
either temperamentally more amiable than the folk of Skardu town or less oppressed by Muharram privations.