Where the Indus is Young (19 page)

Today snow fell non-stop, though the sun was visible as a dim yellow disc when we went foraging at noon through the bazaars, seeking what we might devour. Our bag was four minute eggs (Rs.3) and a pound of onions. I made an onion omelette for Rachel and with concealed envy watched her eating it while I chewed my ration of dog-biscuits.

Then we had an unknown visitor, a tall boy of fourteen carefully carrying another minute egg. In excellent English he said that he had heard we were looking for eggs in the bazaar, but when I got out my purse he emphatically refused payment. A handsome lad, he told us his Punjabi father is married to a Gilgiti and has been here six years, working as a
dhobi
unofficially attached to the army. (The difficulties of a
dhobi
’s life during the Balti winter don’t bear thinking of.) I was much taken by Yakob, who speaks five languages – Punjabi, Urdu, Shina, Balti and English. Plainly he is intelligent above the average and there is a certain
something
about him which distinguishes him sharply from his local contemporaries. It is not that the Skardu folk are unfriendly, but at every level of society (not that there are many levels) one is aware of their being unused to outsiders and in general preferring to keep aloof from the unknown. Even when relaxed relations have been established, as with Sadiq and my many other regular visitors, one misses some quality that is found among even the poorest Tibetans, or the most isolated highland Ethiopians, and which for want of a better term could perhaps be called ‘natural good
manners’. Yet that won’t do, for it wrongly implies that the Baltis are ill-mannered. What I am trying to express is something more negative and elusive: perhaps simply a basic insensitivity to others, bred by the Baltis’ exceptionally arduous struggle to survive, which can leave little over for the development of any social relationships not biologically or economically essential.

There was a startling change in the weather today – an unmistakable hint of spring in the air. It was almost mild, with warm sun and soft, hazy cloudlets floating above diamond-brilliant summits. From now on the heat of the midday sun will be the predominant force, though a lot more snow is inevitable.

I have never seen anything more beautiful than the trees this morning, especially the very tall poplars. Every branch and twig was encased in frozen snow and to look up at that silver glitter against the cobalt sky was like a glimpse of Paradise – every detail delicate and fragile and
perfect
beyond anything humanity could achieve.

On a more mundane level, everyone was out clearing their flat mud roofs with wooden snow-pushers. We walked through the bazaars in imminent danger of encountering a mini-avalanche, while piles of shifted snow, eight or ten feet high, blocked many passageways. Today’s foraging was rewarded by a pound of hairy goat’s butter which greatly improves the dog-biscuits. A daily forage is well worthwhile because small quantities of food trickle into the bazaars at irregular intervals. The weather has made most approach tracks to Skardu impassable, so the price of firewood has gone up to Rs.60 a maund. The price of kerosene has followed suit, and also the price of a cup of tea in the
chia-khanas
, where all cooking is done on wood-stoves. While taking a short cut from the Old to the New Bazaar I saw a frozen corpse in a disused hovel; every winter there are a shocking number of deaths from exposure in Skardu town.

We heard today that trouble continues in Gilgit, where troops have had to open fire on rioting sectarian mobs. On the road to Hunza the Pakistani army halted 5,000 Nagar Shiahs who were marching to
support the Gilgit Shiahs, and on the road to Juglote they halted 3,000 Chilas Sunnis who were marching to support the Gilgit Sunnis. Nazir and Abbas Kazmi both found the situation humiliating and declared that all concerned were disgracing their faith and their country; the Chinese road-workers have had a grandstand view of the whole fracas and will now say, ‘What sort of religion is this, that makes men into barbarians?’ To ease their embarrassment I gave them an outline of recent Irish history.

Abbas Kazmi also reported that yesterday a jeep loaded with petrol went into the Indus twelve miles east of Thowar. There was of course no hope for the driver or his four passengers, whose perching on top of the load is said to have caused the accident by upsetting the vehicle’s equilibrium.

Last night I was baffled and not pleased to find a large wet patch on my sleeping bag. I peered apprehensively at the ceiling before remembering the week-old kid who had accompanied Sadiq’s children on their afternoon visit. This charming creature is very much a member of the family but not yet house-trained.

I must say I have never before lived in such unmitigated squalor. A well-maintained mud floor can be swept, but we have a half-inch carpet of fine dust identical to what one would find on the track outside in summertime. Therefore the floor is by now profusely littered with cigarette ends (most Baltis are heavy smokers), matches, broken apricot kernel shells, lengths of straw and lumps of
horse-dung
. Every move raises a cloud of dust and all our possessions are pale grey; to live permanently in such quarters must be very bad for the lungs.

Today from 10.30 to 3.30 the sun felt as hot as on a good May day at home, though it was again freezing hard by 5.30. We went for a long walk with Farida – a fluent English speaker – and her
eight-year
-old brother. I have never been asked to meet her mother, who possibly disapproves of mysteriously wandering females, but her father is an entertaining and erudite character. Farida often asks us in for tea and enjoys riding Hallam; she is a most self-possessed
young lady, with a keen interest in the Wide World, and she seems likely to discard numerous taboos as she matures.

On our way home we found a young man sitting doubled up with pain on a boulder beside a stream under a solitary
chenar
. Beside him sat a friend, with ginger hair and bright blue eyes, who jumped up on seeing us and begged for pills. The patient was sweating weakly and on his companion’s instructions he pulled up his
kamez
to show a truly horrific bulge above the abdomen. I urged him to go to the hospital but his companion scornfully dismissed this suggestion and continued to beg for pills. I agreed then to provide a few painkillers, but emphasised that they would do nothing whatever to cure the disease. At once the patient struggled to his feet and set off towards our house, leaning on his friend’s arm. I tried to dissuade him from making this effort but he persisted – and then suddenly began to vomit blood on to the glittering snow. As he collapsed, and lay with his eyes closed, his friend made a gesture of despairing resignation and signed to me to leave them. (I had already directed the children to go ahead.) There seemed nothing else to do but – illogically – I have never in my life felt so callous. When I looked back at the prone dark figure on the snow, with that sinister stain beside it, I saw that Ginger was walking away too, in the opposite direction – presumably to fetch help. Near our house I met a group of Punjabi government clerks and asked if a jeep could be provided to take an emergency case to hospital; but even as I spoke I realised that my request was just plain silly. The young men shrugged and said that on Saturdays the hospital is closed and anyway government jeeps are not for the use of villagers.

A medical survey team has concluded that at least 30 per cent of Baltis need prolonged hospital treatment which cannot be provided owing to the lack of staff, medicines and equipment. Hallam is luckier. He has been responding well to his injections (or the passage of time) and we plan to leave for Khapalu on the 5th, doing the
sixty-five
miles in easy stages.

Today every path was like an ice-rink because after yesterday’s hot
sun it froze hard last night. Nor was there much thawing: when the sky clouded over at noon a cold wind sprang up.

This morning I called at Sadiq’s house to photograph his children and found his young wife sitting in the sun in their small compound knitting a sock. Her seat was a Balti stool – a piece of wood some eighteen inches by twelve, on two six-inch legs – and on her lap sat the miserable little daughter of the house. This child’s whole person is ingrained with filth, her fair hair is hopelessly matted and her chin is covered with small, inflamed sores. I know that people inside glasshouses, and etc., but surely children’s faces and hands could be washed once a day, and their hair combed. Mamma is equally filthy and bedraggled. She is also very pregnant and has a ghastly yellow pallor and dreadfully bloodshot eyes; at twenty-one she could pass for forty. What a setting for another baby to be born into! And if she survives she will very likely have ten or twelve children, though she makes it plain the third is unwanted.

Rachel had a riotous time with the livestock – especially her friend the incontinent kid, and his mamma. Goats make worthwhile friends; compared to sheep they seem full of intelligence and personality. On the whole the Baltis are kind to their animals in a rough and ready way. When the usual dirty apricots were produced they had to be guarded against the kid, his mother, two other goats, a calf the size of an Irish sheep,
his
mother, four quarrelsome hens and a cock who was by far the most aggressive raider. All these ravening creatures were given an apricot apiece and then rebuffed good-naturedly, not cruelly.

As I photographed the three children Mrs Sadiq turned her back to the camera; though Sadiq had urged her to face it she was very determined to do no such shameless thing.

After all my waffling about spring in the air – tra-la-la! – this has been our first downright disagreeable day in Baltistan. It was heavily overcast and penetratingly cold, with a savage rawness in the air. We gave Hallam a four-mile walk and then retreated into our cell. When I went for water at sunset I noticed that all day there had been not the slightest thaw.

This afternoon Rachel unconsciously embarked on literary criticism. From Farida she had borrowed a palaeolithic copy of the
Reader’s Digest
and having read a true, very badly written story about two young men who were drowned in Canada she looked up, puzzled, and asked, ‘Why don’t I feel sad about these two young men the way I do about poor Prince Andrei? I know they were real and he was only a pretend person, but I don’t really
feel
anything about them.’ It is interesting that even Rachel can see the difference between one of the greatest of writers and other kinds of printed matter.

Another overcast day, but quite mild and hence slushy. Hallam is now in great form and we are all set to leave tomorrow. I baked twenty rounds of
roti
this morning, to eat on the way, and today’s discovery in the bazaar was a little box of apples. I bought the lot (fifteen) for Rs.5 and Rachel says they are the best she has ever eaten: this valley is famous for its apples. Shopping takes a long time because the stalls are so tiny and dark and higgledy-piggledy. Some are scarcely bigger than hen-coops – wooden cubes on four short legs – and it was in one such that we discerned today’s treasure-trove.

This morning I had a rare (for me) complaint – severe
heartburn
, undoubtedly caused by too much pungent goats’ butter on my thrice-daily dog-biscuits. However, some of Hallam’s tonic soon set me right. It is a marvellous mixture of aniseed, ground black pepper, bicarbonate of soda, cardamom, ground ginger and sundry other unidentifiable seeds, powders and spices. It cost Rs.70 for half a seer but Hallam spurned it: so my economical soul is eased by the discovery that it also makes excellent human medicine.

The few people about when we left Skardu all stopped to stare at the dotty
ferenghis
; and one young policeman, who speaks some English, informed us that we are unlikely to reach Khapalu alive because of icy or disintegrating paths, rockfalls, blizzards, avalanches and landslides. Had I not known that the hazards of this route are considerably less than those of the M1 I might have been rattled. Like many simple peoples, the Baltis delight in exaggerating local dangers. For a people so little affected by tragedies when these do occur, they are extravagantly gloomy about potential disasters.  

It was such a mild morning that I needed no gloves and left my parka unzipped. The first seven miles were tiring on an icy track: then, where the land rises, it became sandy underfoot and remained so until we left the Skardu Valley. Just past the turn-off for Shigar Rachel suggested an early lunch, and while Hallam ate his barley ration we sat on black rocks amidst the snow, sniffing the scent of wild thyme and eating one dog-biscuit each. I at least could have devoured half-a-dozen, but in Baltistan one soon gets into the way of eating to keep alive rather than to achieve repletion.

From this point the Indus was invisible, hidden in its gravelly bed, but when we continued towards the narrower eastern end of the valley it reappeared directly below us. In the bright noon sun it was a most glorious shade of green – a clear sparkling emerald between glistening snowy shores. Here we looked back to say
au revoir
to the Skardu Valley before the track swung around the base of a chunky grey mountain to take us into another sort of world.

Over the next ten miles we were separated from the Indus by a snow-covered expanse of rocky scrubland. There was no trace of humanity on our side, but on the right bank two tiny hamlets marked narrow clefts between high dark mountains. All the surrounding mountains were too sheer for snow to lie on their grey-brown flanks and when the sky suddenly became overcast, at about one o’clock, the landscape acquired an aura of menacing desolation. A razor-keen wind rose, blowing against us, and I tightened my scarf, zipped my parka and put on my gloves. We were the only travellers on a track covered with the sort of frozen slush which jeeps hate. Nor did Hallam like it much. He soon began to flag – and when he flags he flags. We had covered the first twelve miles in three and a half hours but the last nine took five hours; yet Rachel walked about six miles, both to spare her mount and to restore her circulation. Apart from our kit, Hallam is now carrying over forty pounds of food: flour, sugar, milk, rice and dahl. However, we are spending two nights here so he can have a day off tomorrow and devote himself to eating the abundant (though inferior) hay supplied by the chowkidar at Rs.10 for a man’s load.

Gol is almost at river level and one first sees it from a height, before the track drops abruptly. Where the mountains recede from the left bank of the Indus, to leave an oval of hilly but cultivable land, groups of houses and orchards of fruit-trees are scattered over an area some three miles by two. It was 5.30 when we arrived but not yet very cold. The wind had dropped at sunset – luckily, because we had a forty-five minute wait, standing outside the Rest House, before the chowkidar could be unearthed. ‘I suppose he’s hibernating,’ said Rachel resignedly as dusk faded to dark and our fascinated entourage expanded rapidly. She has become completely adjusted to the oriental way of life and no longer expects anything to happen
promptly. The crowd around us was a friendly one, but so
unaccustomed
to foreigners that our every move provoked excited comment and much laughter. I was just beginning to doubt the chowkidar’s existence when a tall, broad-shouldered, elderly man loomed out of the darkness behind a lantern and asked for my chit. When it had been laboriously read to him by a younger man he again vanished, in quest of the key, and did not reappear for twenty minutes – by which time it was freezing hard and we were shivering miserably, though our devoted admirers evidently felt no discomfort. Apart from mislaying the key, this pleasant chowkidar seems quite efficient. But then we are no great test, being independent where food, fuel, bedding and illumination are concerned. All we need is a roof over our heads and a bucket of water.

This Rest House was built by the British about a century ago as one of a series on the old pony-trail from Leh to Skardu. It has its own set of stables at the back, enclosing a courtyard, but unfortunately these are now roofless, so Hallam is again in a kitchen – where once throngs of servants built enormous fires to heat the bath water and cook four-course dinners for their Sahibs. From the track the whole place looks such a ruin that at first I had refused to believe it was our destination. But in fact this room is very comfortable: small and windowless (a great advantage in mid-winter), with a real fireplace, unused for thirty years, instead of a tin stove. And the thunderbox in the bathroom is vastly preferable to the waterless modern lavatories of Thowar and Satpara.

When we were at last admitted to our room seven men followed us, oozing friendly curiosity and taking up so much space that I had no room to unpack. As Rachel was almost asleep on her feet I had to ask them to leave after ten minutes, though they were obviously longing to examine our belongings and see how and what we ate for supper. On this last score they were not missing anything. Rachel had already had her supper of dried apricots while we were waiting outside, and mine consisted of two dog-biscuits and a kettle of tea.

It is now (10 p.m.) much colder than in Skardu because we were gradually climbing today. There is only one charpoy here and I had
intended sleeping on the floor, but as our kerosene stove cannot be kept burning all night it might be wiser to doss down beside Rachel.

It was a cold brilliant morning when we left the Rest House at 8.30. Within moments we had attracted a drove of ragged children who squealed with delighted excitement at our every word and deed. Whenever I looked around they clutched each other nervously and a few of the more craven spirits actually ran away, but as soon as I withdrew my gaze curiosity impelled them back.

Our destination was the nullah above Gol. First we climbed a ‘stairway’ of narrow, snowy, neatly-terraced fields which led to a scattering of flat-roofed dwellings set amidst the inevitable
fruit-trees
– some ancient and gnarled, some saplings with tender trunks wrapped in rags. Here a new mosque, built on traditional Balti lines, was by far the biggest building. Two friendly adolescents, who had joined our following, opened the main door to allow me a glimpse of an interior decorated with wood-carvings of great beauty. (Before committing this indiscretion they glanced around furtively to make sure no bigoted mullah or orthodox elder was in sight.) The developers from Pakistan grumble incessantly about the impossibility of importing modern raw materials into Baltistan, not realising that this is one of the region’s greatest advantages. Of very few countries can it be said, in 1975, that their new buildings are as pleasing as their old.

Our boy attendants were on their way to school and one of the senior students, who spoke scraps of English, invited us to visit their ‘college’. We were conducted to an old two-storeyed house the ground floor of which was a stable, ankle-deep in dried dung. A shaky, almost perpendicular ladder led to a landing from where, on our approach, three women fled in a flurry of shawls over faces. This floor was littered with fresh poultry-droppings and having negotiated these we went through a low door in a thick stone wall and found ourselves in the open air. Threadbare goat-hair rugs had been laid on stony ground swept clear of snow, and here Gol’s scholars sit in rows imbibing what passes locally for education. Each
child brings his own wooden writing-board but no other equipment is used; no abacus, no books, not even a home-made blackboard. An undersized twenty-two-year-old with a lean, pallid face and shifty eyes came forward to greet us. ‘I am passed Matric. with Skardu College,’ he introduced himself. ‘Please you draw picture of me with your camera? What is your town in America? Please you take rest on this stone. What is your business here? I am Principal teacher in this school. I teaches this boys Urdu, English, pysix, matmatix and the good history of Pakistan.’

By speaking very slowly and repeating each question at least three times I elicited from this teacher of English the information that Gol school was founded in 1947 and now has 140 pupils and two teachers. Possibly it makes its pupils barely literate in Urdu, but even this seems doubtful.

A group of small girls had gathered beyond a low stone wall to stare shyly at us, their tattered shawls covering the lower halves of their faces. When I provocatively asked the Principal, ‘Do you have no girl pupils?’ he gazed at me for a moment in astonishment, then glanced contemptuously towards the group and said, ‘Women cannot learn! We will not have them here!’ In reaction to his glance the little girls giggled, completely covered their faces and scuttled away. ‘I have one wife, two sons,’ continued the Principal, ‘but I will not want her if she read.’

Having gone as far up the nullah as snow and ice permitted, we returned to the track by another route and Rachel proposed trying to find a way down to river level. This was easier said than done, though from a distance Gol looks so close to the Indus, but eventually we made it to the untrodden snow by the edge of the swift green water.

Here the Indus is about eighty yards wide and on the far side a mountain wall, mottled grey and light brown, rises sheer from the river-bed. Upstream, colossal boulders stand in the water, causing it to foam furiously as it dashes past them, and not far downstream a wider, shallower stretch is all noisy and white. But where we were the water flows deep, smooth, silent and strong. While Rachel built a snow-dog and a snow-cat I sat in warm sun on a flecked granite boulder and wished politics had not so successfully taken over the
twentieth century. But for the politicians one could try to follow the Indus to its source in Tibet and what a journey that would be! Two wild ducks flew overhead, with black and white barred wings, and one giant kingfisher – blue, black and scarlet – flashed across the river to a hole in the opposite cliff. Apart from
chikor
, choughs and a few magpies, one sees very few birds in Baltistan.

On the long climb back to village level Rachel, who was ahead, suddenly yelled, ‘
Look!
Come quickly!’ She was bending over
something
at the sheltered base of a terrace wall and when I had joined her we crouched down together, looking with speechless reverence at a few inch-long spikes of fragile new grass. ‘It’s green and it’s growing!’ marvelled Rachel incredulously.

It is not easy to convey what this sight meant to us. I stood up and gazed around at the vast barrenness of our world – all dark, lifeless rock, and austere miles of snow, and bare, gaunt orchards. And I wondered how many other minute, hidden stirrings of spring were already responding to the sun’s new warmth. At home spring is something romantic and gay; here it seems solemn and sacramental. I watched Rachel very gently touching these tiny heralds of renewal: it seemed that in her inarticulate way she too felt awed by this miracle of green.

In Gol’s mini-bazaar I bought six eggs. These were half the price and twice the size of Skardu eggs so we both had omelette for lunch before setting off to cross the Indus by a handsome new suspension bridge not yet open to jeep traffic. The massive yet graceful towers are of well-cut local granite and the chowkidar tells me they were designed by a young army officer.

We walked four miles upstream towards Kiris, around a low, reddish-brown mountain of shale, scattered with sharp, fist-sized stones. Beyond the river the Khapalu track was like a straggle of thread at the foot of high, dark-grey mountains, their slopes deeply scored by the passages of rockfalls and landslips. Below our track, beside the Indus, lay many silver-grey sand-dunes, curved and fluted by the wind. But Rachel’s yearning to build sandcastles had to be frustrated: the afternoon, as yesterday, was cloudy, windy and much colder than the morning.

A blissful day, apart from two brief but nasty ‘incidents’. Hallam was in fine form, the track was neither icy nor snowy (though sometimes rather slushy) and the weather was ideal for walking. We covered eighteen miles and the traffic consisted of two army jeeps and one peasant carrying a sack of grain. For fifteen miles there is no trace of humanity on this south side of the valley, though we saw several settlements beyond the Shyok.

About five miles from Gol, at the junction of the Shyok and Kharmang Valleys, we had to leave the Indus. In pre-Partition days the main trade route followed the river between the Deosai Plains and the Ladak Range, but now this area is closed to foreigners for military reasons. Having accompanied the Indus up the Kharmang Valley for about a mile we came to a military road-block and had to cross the Hamayune suspension-bridge, built twenty-four years ago in two months by the Pakistani army, and double back to where the mighty Shyok River – which also rises in Tibet – meets the Indus.

As we were approaching the bridge, on a narrow stretch of track hewn out of the precipice, several stones the size of footballs came hurtling down just ahead of us. One of the largest barely missed Hallam’s nose, causing him to shy towards the edge of the track, which at this point directly overhangs the Indus. Seconds later another barely missed my own head, but Rachel’s escape had shaken me so badly that I scarcely noticed it. Fortunately she herself seemed unaware of the danger she had been in so I hastily camouflaged my state of shock. It was as well that I could not then foresee a much more unnerving incident also scheduled by Fate for today.