Where the Indus is Young (30 page)

The young Tahsildar is taller than the average Balti and much given to emphasising the importance of his job. His English is poor yet he insists on talking non-stop, very fast, and the results are not unlike those dotty conversations that come about with ancient deaf people.

Self
: Do fishermen here use nets, or traps, or dynamite?

Tahsildar
: Yes, Government plans a big dam to give electricity everywhere in Baltistan. To make it the engineers must use
much
dynamite.

Self
: When was the village up that nullah (pointing) destroyed? When did the people leave?

Tahsildar
: No, our people do not leave this valley. It is rich – all Shigar is rich. No one is destroyed.

I acquired from our fellow-guest (one of the High School’s twelve
teachers) the information that significant quantities of gold are found in the Shigar every summer. It is melted in the villages and sold (at night!) to smugglers who take it to Afghanistan via Chitral. I cannot help feeling that our informant was exaggerating the significance of the quantities, but it is a good story.

To entertain us during a prolonged pre-lunch hiatus, our host suggested visiting the nearby Girls’ Primary School, founded in 1909 by the then Political Agent for Baltistan. I have never seen a more feeble educational establishment. The Tahsildar could come no further than the low door in the surrounding wall – Shigar takes purdah very seriously – and we entered unescorted to find two shy young women trying to teach thirty little girls the Urdu alphabet and simple arithmetic. The pupils sat outside a disintegrating
school-building
– the floors of which were inches deep in melted snow – and wrote on their dyed mulberry-wood boards with sharpened reeds dipped in a mixture of chalk and water. This chalky powder can be picked up by the handful on many mountain-sides and when the water evaporates it leaves a clear deposit – so why squander money on ink? I tried to exchange words with the teachers, but they were too overcome by this visitation from Outside even to attempt to utter. And what was the point of it all, I wondered, as we left those meek little scraps struggling with their Urdu. As Shigar’s future wives and mothers, what they most urgently need is advice on child-care and hygiene.

Back at the house lunch was still not ready and as we waited numerous men called to discuss business with our host. Each time the door opened I could see three menservants with anxious expressions squatting around the kitchen fire. At intervals one would go out to fetch more wood, which then had to be chopped with a too-small axe; as the fire tended to go out during chopping sessions a lot of blowing was required to set the large
dechi
of rice boiling again. All this effort at last produced excellent thick chapattis, soggy rice, watery gravy and the toughest – beyond doubt the toughest – meat I have ever eaten. There was no question of chewing it: one simply gulped the hunks whole and hoped for the best. Yet after three months in Baltistan this meal seemed a banquet.

On our way home we called on the Police Superintendent, who is married to the Raja of Khapalu’s sister. No womenfolk appeared: Indian tea, and cream crackers imported from Pindi in ages past, were served by a ragged, bare-footed youth who also had to attend frequently to his master’s magnificent jewelled hookah. Now and then the door was pushed open by a silken-haired young goat with glowing amber eyes who made the day for Rachel. He was a ‘character’ and plainly enjoyed provoking the Superintendent’s wrath while at the same time being thrown apricots by the bevy of children who had gathered to study us at close quarters. Two boys were ordered to accompany us to the Rest House, one carrying on his back a big bale of hay and the other balancing on his head a big basin of barley. Our host had evidently heard of my unsuccessful efforts to buy grain for Hallam in the bazaar. I am relieved that the gallant creature has had a good feed before we set out tomorrow for Dasso, and possibly Askole. As with Hushe, there is some local uncertainty about whether or not the path is at present
ghora
-worthy. We shall soon see. Dasso is
thirty-four
miles from here so we reckon to spend two days getting that far.

It is a long time since I have written my diary in such acute physical and mental discomfort. But I must try to organise my mind and begin at the beginning; and I am not complaining, for it has been a glorious day.

Three miles from Shigar the track began to climb, but so gradually that we scarcely noticed until, looking back, we saw the town’s orchards as a reddish-brown haze far below, at the foot of bluish mountains. This valley is the least severe of all that we have seen. Its average width is five or six miles, with hamlets on both sides of the Shigar, which today was mostly invisible. The hamlets lie in hollows between the final slopes of high mountains and one switchbacks from hollow to hollow over desolate expanses of moraine. There is little cultivable land on this left bank, once the Shigar oasis has been left behind, but we could see hundreds of terraced fields across the river, where the snow remains thick. On our right, every few miles, a narrow side-valley allowed us a dazzling view of sharp snow peaks.
Beyond the river an unbroken white mountain wall rose abruptly from the valley floor and was almost unbearably beautiful against the vivid blue sky. And at the head of the valley we could see other white giants meeting, where the Braldu and Basna Rivers unite to create the Shigar.

We stopped twice for meagre picnics and sandcastle building, and sunbathing and nature-worship. Outside of the hamlets we rarely met anybody, but during our first stop a startling figure overtook us. This young man was wearing a cheap sky-blue lounge suit, a bright pink shirt and shiny plastic shoes, which outfit made him hideously conspicuous where everybody else wears garments that match the mountains. Obviously he had come off the plane we saw descending towards Skardu yesterday and was walking home, carrying goodies for the family in a bulging PIA bag. Equally obviously, he was not disposed to fraternise with foreigners. He ignored our greetings and I found his expression singularly
off-putting
– a hard, sullen face and shifty eyes.

Having seen no jeep since leaving Skardu, our astonishment was considerable when we heard a distant engine at about four o’clock. (This rarely used jeep-track continues to the head of the valley.) Staring at the ridge behind us we saw a blue WHO vehicle bumping into view and it contained two of our best Skardu friends – army doctors on an inspection tour of the area. They expressed great concern at our being twenty-one miles from Shigar and were aghast to hear that we had no idea where we were going to sleep. Then they volunteered to arrange accommodation for us at the next hamlet, but I suspect we would have done better just bumbling along on our own. The disagreeable atmosphere here is probably partly owing to our being associated with ‘interfering Punjabis’. (The Baltis seem to regard all Pakistanis as Punjabis.)

From the top of the next hump we saw Yuno at the foot of a steep, arid mountain with snow still lying on terraced fields below the dwellings. Then we met the returning jeep, being escorted by a score of men and youths. These the doctors not inaccurately described as ‘stone-age types’ and they handed us over to the least neolithic character. As the jeep disappeared he passed us on, for some
inexplicable reason, to this really rather nasty family, who had made it quite plain that they would prefer to have nothing to do with us.

At times the language barrier gives an unreal tinge to events. While we stood under an enormous
chenar
, in the sudden grey coolness that comes when the sun has slipped behind the
mountains
, our ‘guardian’ conducted a vigorous and lengthy argument with several shrill-voiced women who glared at us from the edge of their roof as though we had the plague. Everybody spoke so quickly and vehemently that I could gather nothing of what was being said, but obviously we were extremely unwelcome. I was about to suggest to Rachel that we should push on to the next hamlet, visible three miles away, when our ‘guardian’ suddenly shook both his fists at the women and shouted some infuriated threat which abruptly ended the argument. He then beckoned us up the steep path to their house, which has a new room built on to the original structure and seems to be the poshest in the hamlet. While I was unloading and unsaddling – none of the dozen men standing around offered to help – Rachel found that the new wing is entered through a window. The men whispered and sniggered while they watched me carrying the load and tack to the room, which is about ten feet by thirty and has a big over-fed woodstove. Soon Rachel and I were sweltering, so accustomed have we become to living in cold rooms and depending on our clothes for warmth. While writing this – on the floor, by the light of my own candle, in a corner as far as possible from the stove – I am dripping sweat; and poor Rachel, though exhausted, is unable to sleep because of the heat plus noise. Everyone in the family seems to have a wracking cough – inevitably, when they exchange this temperature for the Balti cold while clad only in rags.

To revert to our arrival. The first person I saw in the room was Blue Suit, sitting scowling on the edge of the charpoy beside the stove. Our reluctant host and hostess are his grandparents and his return to Yuno is provoking extraordinarily intense emotion;
everyone
who comes to greet him bursts into tears – men and women alike – as they press him to their bosoms and kiss him fondly.

As I was unpacking the stove to make tea Blue Suit asked
brusquely, ‘Are you Muslim?’, and my reply generated a perceptible current of antagonism. Previously I have experienced this sort of bigotry only in Eastern Turkey; it is far less common than anti-Muslim writers would have us believe, though when it does occur it can make one feel wretchedly ill-at-ease. When I held out our kettle and politely requested
chu
everybody in the crowded room stared at me, without moving or speaking, for some moments. Then Blue Suit said, ‘Here there is no water. Why do you not go to the next village? They have water. And there you can find Rest House. It is one mile only.’ By this stage I was wishing that we had gone on, but having unpacked – and already paid an outrageous Rs.10 for very inferior fodder – I had no intention of being hustled away. Besides, I know the next hamlet does not have a Rest House and is at least three miles further up the valley.

Rachel’s reaction to ‘no
chu
’ was robust – ‘You can’t have a village without water!’ And picking up our
dechi
she climbed through the window and vanished. Fifteen minutes later she returned, looking puzzled, with the
dechi
packed full of off-white snow. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘There’s no stream, no irrigation channel, no well. I had to go down to the fields for snow. But I dug below the surface so it won’t be too dirty.’ Daughters have their uses.

All evening no hospitality has been offered us, though in a normal Balti home, however poor, apricots and kernels are at once placed before the guests. At the moment fifteen people are eating a starvation-level meal of chapattis washed down by thawed snow. One can only hope the edge was taken off their appetites by the apricots they have been chewing for hours past. (No wonder the old Chinese geographers called Baltistan ‘Tibet of the apricots’.) I am filled with despair because our host keeps on stoking the stove, presumably in honour of Blue Suit’s return. By Balti standards this is a rowdy family; so far the conversation has been mainly a series of arguments about money, with the harsh voices of the men and the shrill voices of the women frequently raised. It is now 10.15 – long past bedtime for all decent Baltis – but another hubble-bubble has just been prepared and outside I can hear the dread sound of more wood being chopped. From time to time our host directs
towards me a glance that is almost malevolent, or at least seems so, by the light of a flickering wick in a wall-niche just above his head. He is a tall, thin man with an oddly triangular pale face and a straggle of black beard. Like the rest of the family he suffers from grievously diseased eyes and his expression is the most unsmiling I have ever seen; under no circumstances can one imagine his face relaxing its grim lines.

And so to bed, but not – I fear – to sleep.

What a night that was! Rachel had collapsed into an uneasy sleep just before I squeezed down beside her on a mud floor carpeted only with thick dust. For the next three hours I lay in sweaty misery while the stove was kept red-hot and the hookah continued to bubble and the company continued to argue. Repeatedly I reached the edge of sleep only to be jerked back from it by heat and noise and fleas. At one stage the Kashmir problem was being passionately discussed and I gathered – because Blue Suit was giving all the latest Pindi news – that today there is to be a general
hartal
of Muslims in India, organised by Mr Bhutto.

It was 1.40 a.m. before everyone (except our host) had settled down on the floor. We were nineteen, not counting numerous babies who had contributed their share to the evening’s din and continued to give tongue at intervals throughout what remained of the night. I was enduring an agony of thirst, for which there was no remedy, and when I at last fell into a doze I was awakened by a powerful kick on the nose from Rachel. This caused such a spectacular haemorrhage that I had to remove my socks to mop up. It really was quite a night: definitely among my Top Ten for sheer discomfort.

At 5.40 our host rose from his charpoy, dipped his spouted pot into a great cauldron of melted snow beside the stove and went out to perform his ritual ablutions before prayers. He came in just as the sun was rising, turned towards Mecca (more or less) and began to intone aloud. The other males did likewise while I boiled our tea-water, having helped myself from the cauldron despite Blue Suit’s muttered disapproval. We were so dehydrated after our sweaty night that we
quickly emptied two kettles of black, unsweetened, filthy-tasting tea. For breakfast we had apricots and
satu
while the family had scraps of
roti
and herb-tea.