Passages from my brother's journal ... having just finished a contract of work in Kuwait, he decided to take some time out and travel around before returning home to Ireland - to prepare for his next job as a TEFL teacher. Where would that be? That's a whole new story ...
For now, we accompany him at the start of his travels.
Beginning with Pakistan Journal
KUWAIT CITY June 7th, 1982
A full moon in Fahaheel, and my last day in Kuwait raced at such a pace as to leave me almost incapable of thought: post office, bank, washing, rubbish chucking, bite to eat and many 7-Ups too. Finally, closing my apartment door on the ghosts of the past year, Redmond sees me off to the taxi rank and a Syrian box car to the airport. Goodbye. Speeding through the night, absolutely drained, playbacks of the day’s frenzy running like film ...
Amongst them most vivid a small pretty Sri Lankan at Al-Muzaini’s money changers. She stood in the queue, face patiently intent, while I tired my hand turning over a wad of $100 travellers’ cheques to sign. She stood with 27½ Kuwaiti Dinars in her hand, and as she reached the counter smiled privately, glowed, even. A maid, with her monthly remittance. Maybe she was counting the days?
I reach the airport shortly after nine to spend three hours standing in the queue for the luggage check-in. The crowd is entirely Pakistani. The flight is two hours late. At 12:15 am, I board a Jumbo.
KARACHI June 8th, 7am
Not as hot as Kuwait but humid, a New Orleans type heat. I spend 20 minutes in an immigration check and 11/2 hours retrieving my baggage, a bizarre game of musical baggage churning round and round hellishly. At the tourist information office in empty Terminal 2, a very helpful guide gave me a quick rundown on hotels, trains, sights and sundry. By now, both my head and legs have had enough, and a hotel is number 1 priority. It’s not the tourist season; the last signature in the visitor’s book is three weeks old.
I get on a No. 14 bus to Saddar give the conductor a 5 Rupee note, and when he gives me no change I tell him I know it’s a 1 Rupee fare. He reluctantly forks out and i scramble my stuff into the back seat near the door. Conductors on Karachi buses are something of the salesman, jumping off at stops and heavily thumping the side of the bus and repeatedly chanting their destinations. This one is “Saddar! Saddar! Saddar!” Drifting in and out of sleep as we jerk through the morning streets.
Grateful for the green, trees and shrubs, after the empty look of Kuwait. An old man shows me the place for a bus to Cant. Station and “must hurry to work”. A completely white garbed policeman with a deerstalker hat directs traffic and roars down his megaphone at my crowd waiting for buses big and small swinging round the street corner, with roaring conductors at the rate of ten a minute. I hear “Cant. Station!”, or something similar, and swing my stuff into two or three seats of a minibus, drawing stares in the process (just let me get this stuff off my back!). I offer 1 Rupee. The man beside me says in confidence “No! Must two and half more.” I dive frantically for a five and hand it to the boy, who’s been chanting “Agha Khan! Jeewa, Jeewa! Najaru!” Boy says no, tutting in annoyance. Man from front seat explains it’s 1Rupee 25 Paisa fare, but has no change. It’s OK. I pass.
Cant. Station. A bustle in the streets, donkeys and carts, horses and carts, and the earthy smell of beasts steaming, and shit welling up from overfull sewers under pavements. I approach a guy with an I-speak-English face (not many do, dammit). “Hotel Nishat?” he takes me in tow, and off we go asking shopkeepers. He’s secretary to a recording company manager, makes cassettes of traditional music, my guitar the bridge our conversation crosses. The Hotel Nishat was pretty, all brown stained wood, low ceilings and flowers, but full. I’m told the one next door will cost me $40 a night (wouldyagwey?!). I mumble that I’d better look around like. But he’s assumed responsibility for me by now and plants me and my baggage in a motor rickshaw (like a Honda 50 with 3 wheels, a back seat, and a roof). Mahmoud directs the driver where to drop me, and, leaving him to more important matters, we go swerving through back streets, back to sadder and the Hotel de Paris. I pay the driver 5 Rupees, receive 1 in change (the meter read Rp.3:60 – that helped), and I bundle into a lobby the size of a small Dublin chipper and find yes, there’s vacancies. I’m almost asleep at the desk.
A smiling 55 year-old lugs my army bag and guitar upstairs, while I follow with the rest, fumbling for a Rupee note to give him. Into the room at last, I thank him and extend the note. Horror! He smiles. I smile, play dumb, say: “No good? One Rupee?” Smile broadens, becomes a laugh. He beats his chest, holds out the crummy little 1 Rupee note to me and makes a gesture as if to say “are you off yer head or something?” defeated, I smile and mumble something about “very tired, first day (gesticulating an emphatic ONE with my finger), don’t know money”, reach in my pocket and pull out a 10 Rupee note. In response, derision condescends to appreciation, as evidenced by a precipitate transformation of facial expression in the direction of tranquillity, as if to say “now you’re talkin Rupees!” A further refinement on my rough valuation of the Pakistani Rupee, and my first reluctant baksheesh. I’m shown how to ring reception for lunch, tea or breakfast, and in case of want or whim there are two attendants on my floor. No more attention today, thank you. I’m bashful, disorientated, hot, and sleepy. I ring reception, who put me on to Mahmoud. I thank him and he says he’s always there. I feel good about that, shower and sleep for eight hours.
Nine in the evening I wake and head down to suss the street life. I’m feeling just a shade paranoid, and, in a protective shell. Stroll out into a faintly fresh breeze. The night’s alive and teeming. Everything is old, smells old. Crowds swarm across narrow streets, men dressed in the pyjama-like shalwar and shemees, a few in western clothes, the odd woman is sexy baggy trousers and pigtail. Roadside vendors cook meat cubes on spits over glowing coals that throw off sparks into the night. Figures and buildings are murky outlines. Little street light save that from the jam-packed little shops, mostly chemists. Advertising assails you from street signs: a Chinese dentist displays a giant set of dentures above his door; another – Tibet Snow Toothpaste – a cold fingertip amongst an orgy of hot bodies. Dim interiors throw out silhouettes onto the streets. Old men sleep on the shop front paths, one incredibly balanced head on hand, on a four foot bench. Youngsters raise hands for alms outside a brightly lit mosque. An old woman lying on the footpath screams “Baksheesh!” at me, her voice rising as I pass by hard faced. Noddy cars zoom by without lights. Street stalls display melons, mangoes, papayas, cold drinks from ice-filled metal boxes: High Spot, Bubble Up. The stalls are lit with mantle lamps, pinpointing islands of colour in the dark streets. I walk on, avoiding eyes, trying to soak in the surroundings, to assimilate some at least of this intoxicating variety, to look for landmarks: KMC market at the top of the street, its gateway large and imposing, its pointed town-hall-like roof on Saddar Street this (remember); a Catholic Cathedral, a warming sight that familiar church shape; the silhouettes of Gothic spires at the bottom of Sh’ara Iraq (the name of the street off which the Hotel de Paris sits “Something? Telpur Road”) After several sweet teas with milk (chai) in crowded streetside chai-houses, I find the Hotel de Paris again and climb back to my little sweat-box and the company of my fan. No cold drink. Water tastes very dodgy indeed. Get a good sleep. Finish the job you started this morning, and tomorrow, insh’Allah, a bright new day.
KARACHI June 8th
Completely recovered, I’m up at eight o’clock and ring for the bell-boy (what a set-up!). For breakfast I go for an omelette, toast, butter, jelly and tea, in my box-room – no way to eat. He lingers; I don’t tip him. Camera loaded, and off we go down to the street. I hear a busboy’s song that includes something like “Cant Station”. Get in. Seven or eight brilliant colours streak the body work of these buses; on top of this, flower and bird designs, and a big bright A5 or D3 or E6 to indicate destination. They seem to have been painted at least twenty times, and all have that obsolete look, like wrecks from a scrapyard magicked to life with magic paint.
But there’s nothing wrong with the engines, revving impatiently to nudge each other round the corner. Bang! Bang! Cant Station! Bang! Customer outside. No door. No windows. Speed is our only air conditioning. The conductor wields what looks like a leather cash register with display for money and tickets. A cage-like partition separates the front quarter of the bus from the rest; inside, women sit on side-facing seats, a pretty sight, a doorway providing access for the conductor. The women enter and exit by the women’s doorway at the front.
A man in his thirties boards a bus and stands at the head of it, staring straight, and seems to be praying. He can’t be begging; he’s not holding out his hand... then I see: his right hand holds the bar; his left... well, he hasn’t got one. Islamic justice? A passenger in front of me puts a few paisas in his now free hand, and he disappears.
I walk myself into exhaustion, through a park, and out. Decide to give the museum a miss, and duck into yet another cafe. Cafe Victoria. The menu on my table underneath a glass covering urges me to: PLEASE KEEP CLEAN AND SILENCE.
I thought it was a bit rough, considering. However, I have a chicken biryani (they had no mutton), iced soda water, and chai again. Karachi tea has been consistent even if not world-beating. I’m getting the hang of the Rupees: Rs50 for my hotel, Rs1 for a bus ride, Rs.75 for a cuppa, Rs2 for a coke, Rs5-8 for a cheap meal. I Rupee = approximately .06p Sterling. Continuing eastwards, I pass the Sind Province Anti-Corruption Directorate. At least they’re honest about it. Soldiers in evidence, not in force, patrolling, rifle in hand, tall and wiry looking. Traffic policemen stand at junctions, immaculately turned out all in white, with Errol Flynn moustaches. Sign on a major traffic thoroughfare:
THE ULTIMATE OPTION
ARS
INSECTICIDES
On towards the docks area where loin-clad boys are coming still wet from swimming. Jesus, I’d love a splash! I stiffen my neck, and amble down past where I see some camels and carts, docks carriers and resting drivers. The shafts of the carts are longer than a horse cart’s, and diagonally directed to accommodate the camel’s height. Salaaming heartily, I give the Muslim greeting, while I retreat and focus for a full frame of driver and cart. Not fast enough, as a crowd of at least twenty carters gather, as absorbed with me as I am with the camel... Quick. Click. “You give me one copy”, he says, as bystanders suggest “backsheesh”. I play dumb, and tell him, truthfully, I’m heading north tomorrow, “Yar” (friend) “Rawalpindi”. He’s disgruntled. I feel it wouldn’t be the thing to reach in the pocket, turn on my heel and bid a cheery goodbye.
The Quaid-E-Azam monument on the west side of town, built to commemorate the Father of the State, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, is not as breathtaking as I’d expected. It’s a massive North African style dome of marble blocks, and a marble tomb within, silver railings and a gold chandelier (for night viewing, I suppose). Barefoot visitors stand gazing on the tomb in awed reverence. More awful and absorbing for me were the eight armed guards stationed at the corners inside and out, rifles at the ready and a certain hunting look in the eye. Well, the railings are worth a few bob. On the hour, they changed position; with slow, symmetrical rigidity in deliberate clockwise motion they paced the perimeter, pace a second. Impressive, and chilling.
While I’m taking a picture of the impressive sweep of feather-palmed terraces leading up to the monument, some kids and adults pose for me. A teenager and his mate stand dramatically, his cricket bat in a striking pose. One man, beaming smiles, directed his entire family into a charming group photograph. Fat daddy, three sons, and four cute daughters stand before the family car. I’m sheepish, but charmed nonetheless. Cameras aren’t too common. I’m still the only foreigner I’ve seen.
By bus to the Old Bazaar on the East side of town. Here, a large double-minaretted mosque, its tiled courtyard crowded by hundreds of worshippers. They perform their ablutions before prayer, seated at long rows of taps. Shops and streets are squeezed in tight here. I make relays from cafe to cafe, swallowing Bubble-Ups and Cokes. The sun is wearying, and I’m walking too much. The crowd’s a buzz. Narrow lanes now, and the street life is simpler. Donkeys, horses and camels pull carts laden with people, sugar-cane, hay, sand and steel rods. A vendor crushes the sugar-cane in a metal wheel press to produce a delicious roadside drink. Huge cauldrons on hot coals bubble with a boiling soup-like liquid. Kebabs and sesame are roasted over charcoal. Children run ragged, and stare. Beggars chant and tend tin plates. I put a Rupee note in one held by a small boy with a triangular back. A little girl who pulls at my arm, whining, outdoes her mother. I give, not knowing what to feel, walking on out of emotion.
Back to Saddar. I find my hotel (Hotel de Paris, I ask ye!) and shower – aahh...I’m sunburnt, decide it’s too hot for comfort in Karachi and ring up Cant Station through the auspices of hotel reception. A voice:
Sorry, City Station.
Awami Express? I want to reserve a place on the Awami Express tomorrow; it leaves from Cant Station.
Yes. But you must reserve through City Station.
I ring City Station. A female voice answers in annoyed Urdu. After three vain attempts: “No Urdu. English?” She twangs: “Piddlede Nee!” in my ear, and hangs up. My phone phobia prevents me from trying again and I make an expedition to the place itself. It’s only ten minutes by bus. There’s the place for shading donkeys, the brightly coloured mosque, its more human dimensions than its Arabian neighbours; its purples and pinks add an oomph! To Islam.
Enquiries.
Does the Awami Express leave here tomorrow at ten?
Yes.
I’d like to reserve a place for tomorrow.
You’ll have to go to City Station.
Pause.
Do you think I could reserve a seat for tomorrow from there?
No
Which bus goes there?
You’ll have to go to Saddar.
Is there no direct bus?
Look, this is a railway station! Get a train!
Of course, stupid.
Only 30 Paisa. I go for a twopenny train ride, trial run, my first train journey in Pakistan. Second Class. Wooden slatted benches, not uncomfortable. Windows but no panes, breezy and cool. Stick your head out. The ultimate option. That way nobody can fuck things up by closing out the view. Three miles in an empty carriage past embankments cluttered with shanty huts and goats rummaging amongst the rubbish and we’re there. Window No. 27, Enquiries Second Class. Window No. 12, Second Class bookings for north bound trains. A severe young lady consults her books and can find no place on tomorrow’s train, then her partner finds a gap and she books me on the last seat. In my haste, I forgot about the stop-off at Lahore. Hope I can lie down for some of the journey. Never mind. ‘Pindi it is. 1400 kilometres, almost 1000 miles for 92 Rupees, that’s seven pounds. On the way across the tracks, a grinning youth greets me at the top of his voice: “Hello Mister Tomato!” Is my sunburn that bad?
I stop at Frere House, a fine red brick period building, a bequest to the State, housing a museum and library. It’s too late to see much inside, but outside in the park it’s quiet and soothing to the eye. I sit down under a bulbous feather palm, tall as a house, and I’m soon engaged in conversation by a French speaking Karachi youth who’s been to Paris, his mate from Lahore, and a former expatriate who has worked in Damascus and Baghdad. An effeminate, hawk-nosed Karachite drifts in beside me and grabs part of the action. He follows three out of every four of my statements with an “Exactly!” He works in Wisconsin and is home on holiday. He has headaches with the heat. The shops close too soon. There’s nothing to do. The party breaks up, and he accompanies me back through the night streets to Saddar, exacting my every thought exactly. I decline his invitation to a hotel for tea, stopping instead to ask him if he wants a Bubble Up? He doesn’t. By this time, he knows he’s on to a loser. And when I answer his claim to having picked up a Kuwaiti woman, no bother, by telling him he was lucky he didn’t get twenty years in jail, or stabbed... he withdraws. I drink a pure sugar-can juice, and walk back to my box-room.
On the way back it’s rush hour. Aren’t all hours of daylight rush hour in this city? Near the Holiday Inn, a motor bike passes carrying a man, his wife veiled and side-saddled, and three kids. On the other side of Mc Neill Road, there’s a small crowd spilling out of what looks like a church. I cross to read the sign board: St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
NORTHBOUND ON THE AWAMI EXPRESS June 9th
At the station I meet a policeman who works in Karachi, on the way to visit his mother in Lahore. We go out onto the platform, where the world and its belongings seem to be assembling, and find a shadow to sit in. He shows me a photo of his friend from Switzerland who’s coming to visit him. Porters in faded red cotton smocks lug incredible bundles around the platform: massive trunks, stuff tied in sheets, blankets, sacks. One porter carries a briefcase only, followed at three paces by a well-groomed type in western gear, walking fast.
I get to my carriage at 9:30 in plenty of time. As I’d feared, I’ve got a bum seat. There’s eating in each section for eight; of these, six have berths (the four overhead berths are swung down when it’s time to turn in). Numbers seven and eight have simply two wooden seats. I slide my luggage into racks and under seats and settle down to watch the bazaar on the platform. Entire families and in-laws have come to see off their relations. At 10.10 the train jolts and moves out of the station. We pass a sign on a roadside garage:
ASHRAFS – FOR ACCIDENTAL REPAIRS
Most of Sind province is desert or semi-desert. Recently a group of dacoits robbed a bank in Karachi and disappeared into the interior. A squad of policemen were sent out to pursue them. I pity them, both. Dunes, rocks, gullies, gulches, straw shelters for signalmen, camels and donkeys pulling carts, brick kilns and quarries, a few bushes, cacti. Further north, the occasional canal with a scattering of what look like banana trees. Every now and then a mosque flashes by, its bright colours and small minarets more homely and pleasing to the eye than the stately edifices of their rich Arab cousins.
Nobody in my compartment speaks English; I have no Urdu.
Vendors lurch through at regular intervals, carrying toys, bangles, perfumes, magic ointments, samples offered and rubbed on foreheads, combs, newspapers, a bewildering variety of foods, cucumbers, bananas, dhal, sweets, curry and bread in terra-cotta bowls (when finished with these are thrown out the window, the evidence on the tracks of stations of thousands of such meals), chai (poured in small glasses by travelling teapotmen “bootli! Bootli!” bottles of Coke, Fanta, Bubble-Up and 7-Up distributed from buckets of iced water and paid for with the retrieval of the empties, iced lussi, the best for a thirst. Beggars, blind men, old women, poorly clad children, and a one-armed man with a teapot (who, in particular, won my admiration). All these, in their turn, passed through the compartment.
At the station, five minutes to stretch the legs or, if you prefer, join the rush for the water fountain. A three walled enclosure at the end of the platform is the toilet. You can sit back and watch the scene from your seat.. groups squat or sleep in the shade of walls, indifferent to the din of station vendors pushing their trolleys along the line of train windows. Cigarettes, chai and cakes, bootli, monkey nuts, melon slices. Each one clamouring for a few hurried sales before the train moves out. Each his own special chant competing against the others, no matter if the item be holy pictures or sweets; there’s a line for it, and an air to it. Persistence often works. The clank! of the bucket and the kfssss! Of the bottle opener and the frenzied passing of last minute paisa from hand to hand and the long whistle and the hiss of steam and the struggle for one cool gulp at the fountain... maybe... cmon... cMON!... the sudden shudder of wheels and the train is moving... the beggar at your window hand upstretched persisting mutely quickens his pace and the late ones leap for doors, push inside and settle into their places breathless and wriggling until the rhythm of the wheels takes over once more.
Station follows station, each an offer of relief and novelty from the bare, dusty landscape rolling by, a riotous interlude to the silent moving picture outside my window. At first, there are eight passengers in my section of the compartment. By the time we’ve reached Lahore, there are eighteen, my kitbag a floormat-matress, myself a filthy mess: face hair arms and hands alike smeared with congealed dust and sweat. My eyes are choked with the stuff, and my once white teeshirt now sadly streaked with brown. Someone speaks English now, and we exchange notes on the appearance of each other’s face with ironic wit: “like boots, just like boots, sir!”.
Not so funny is my arse, by now a doubly aching numbness from long confinement on the wooden seat, causing me to shift my position continuously. At one point I retreat in desperation to the only free space in the carriage, onto the back rest of my seat where I sleep for 45 minutes with my feet on the window ledge. Bodies upon bodies. Occasionally a violent struggle to relieve a cramped limb. At a red light halt between stations I force my way out into the darkness for a piss. Before I can finish the train lurches and begins moving. In the rush I almost lose a sandal.
June 10th
By first light we’re well into the Punjab sparkling with water and vegetation, and by late morning we’ve rattled across a couple of wide, muddy rivers. Irrigation canals interlace a flat plain now steaming under the sun’s heat. Gangs of water buffalo bask hippo-like in mudholes, their only refuge from the sun. Confining their activity to a rhythmic lateral jaw movement, the large faces radiate pleasure. Others lounge in the deep shadow of a tree. And nearby, the outrageous incongruity of a half dozen of these beasts (each one capable of stopping a car or crushing a man), their long necks straining like geese, being driven along a path by a small boy with a stick.
Squatting women, from early morning onwards, pat cow and buffalo dung into flat discs to be stuck like decals on the walls of houses, or placed in neat rows for drying in the sun, later to be stacked in triangular heaps as fuel for cooking fires.
Women squat by canals washing clothes or file from canal to house, water jar on head. Men herd goats and buffalo to dusty pasture. One man struggles with a pair of buffalo and a plough, in two feet of brown water. Most men lie in the shade under trees or infront of thatched mud houses, stretched out hand under ear on charpoys (cots of wooden frame and woven string.
Meanwhile, I have to marvel at the tough men and women who are my fellow passengers. The journey has been hard: to be confined for twenty eight hours, over thirty five stops, a distance of 1450 kilometres, men, women, and children in a space where one could hardly move a leg. Stifling heat and dust. Yet there are very few signs of frustration, irritation even, on the faces, preoccupations foreign to them and peculiar to my own race, perhaps?
At last the hills are in sight, and we’re climbing through rotted rocks, some of them clothed in stunted trees. We can see the head of the train now, winding over a bridge; the gorge beneath holds only a few puddles. The land is still arid and waiting for rain.
Rawalpindi, relief, and a taxi to an air-conditioned hotel. The man at reception, to his credit, never raised an eyebrow (I looked like – and felt like – I’d spent two days in solitary confinement immediately after having played a rugby match). Aahhh! Glorious! The tea... the shower... the sheets...
To be continued ...