Full Tilt (15 page)

There are two roads through Khyber. The old one, which has been in use for the past 3,500 years, follows the river most of the way at the foot of the mountains, but the new one, built around the side of the mountains by the British, is considerably shorter. However, as it avoids the tribal villages the old one seemed more attractive so, having collected Roz, I followed it for much of the descent, enjoying many lengthy stops in teahouses, talking to the tribesmen, some of whom speak a little English. I’m invited to spend ‘as long as I like’ in one Afridi village on my way back in November – a date I hope to keep. One of the most impressive things about the pass is the railway – a stupendous piece of engineering which thrilled even me. I was lucky enough to see one of the very rare trains go up, with an engine in front pulling and another behind pushing, as the gradient is so steep. On almost every hilltop (and there are a good many hilltops) stands a fort,
commanding the stretch of road to the next bend. These are not now manned but of course the big HQ fort of the Khyber Rifles – Jamrud – is still very much in use.

Today the local British Council opened an exhibition of books on Afghanistan, so I spent most of the day browsing amongst these; they were very interesting though of course they didn’t form as rare a collection as that in the British Embassy library in Kabul. At midday I stopped browsing for long enough to lunch with the family of a Pakistani Army colonel. They were delightful people, who of course all spoke flawless English, though my hostess and her
eighteen-year-old
daughter both observe purdah. The daughter was educated by Irish nuns at Murree (Pakistan’s hill-station) and is anxious to study medicine but her father wishes her to marry now and be a good, traditional wife to the man of his choice. Her mother, who is only thirty-five, told me when we were alone before lunch that she fully supports her daughter’s bid for liberty. I hardly knew what to say; obviously she expected me to agree with her completely, but I’m not yet long enough in this environment to have evolved definite personal opinions on the subject. At first glance this is, by our standards, a monstrous situation. Yet the colonel, far from being an unreasonable tyrant, is a most kindly and humorous man, truly cultured, tolerant without being indecisive and, I feel,
wise
. So what’s the answer? Perhaps the mistake is to give daughters a glimpse of Western freedom by educating them at European-run schools, and then to expect them to revert unprotestingly to their own traditions. Of course one condemns without reservations that perversion of the Koran which leads to the subjection in which the majority of Afghan women are kept. But in this milieu things are very different, the women being treated with affection and respect and, on the deepest level, as equals, even though the father is so decidedly the ruler of the family when it comes to practical matters. Today I felt sympathy both towards the daughter who had acquired a taste for what we consider basic human rights, and towards the father who knows the
value of Islamic traditions and the danger of exchanging them for ours.

After lunch a friend of my host called and the women of the family retired to purdah quarters before the visitor was shown into the
sitting-room
. During the conversation that followed it became very clear that the Colonel’s apparently irrational conservatism was based on a sincere desire to protect his daughter from what he considered the worst evils of Western society – materialism, sexual promiscuity and general godlessness. I put the point that in our view youngsters have to be turned loose to take their chance in these matters and he quickly challenged me to deny that the results of such liberalism had proved disastrous, both for individual youngsters and for society as a whole. To this I could only reply that it’s entirely a matter of one’s inherited way of thinking. Clearly this stratum of Pakistani society is now the scene of a rather pathetic struggle to achieve an honourable compromise between old and new, and one hopes that the Muslims can preserve the most valuable elements in their traditions despite mounting pressure from the West. The Colonel argued that the worship of God and keeping the women by the hearth form a better basis for human happiness and stability than the worship of mammon and women in the professions. At this point I was tempted to ask how and where one drew the dividing line between God and mammon when human nature has a foot in both camps and our reactions in either direction can be so variously interpreted; but feeling that the Colonel might not relish this question I restrained myself. Perhaps it’s because I am so conscious personally of the results of godlessness that I failed to follow my first instinct and argue wholeheartedly for his daughter’s freedom.

Today I called again on the Irish priests and on the convent of Irish Presentation nuns. The Catholics run two schools here, one a very expensive college for the sons of rich Muslims and the other a free primary school for poor Christians. I’m intrigued by the subtlety of making Muslims pay for Christians to be educated! The teaching of Christian doctrine is, of course, absolutely taboo at the Muslim
college, which is packed to overflowing with all the local (and other) Big Men’s sons avid for good teaching. Seemingly the standard of teaching at Pakistani-run schools, where the staffs are incredibly underpaid, is appalling.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be a Christian missionary in a Muslim country where one daren’t ever attempt to convert anybody, except by the vague method of ‘example’. But then to me Christian missionaries in Muslim countries, however genuine their fervour, are at best unattractive manifestations of
self-righteousness
and at worst an impertinence. Yet that attitude is narrow too in its own way. If you are convinced of your duty to spread the gospel there is obviously a certain nobility in settling in a place like Peshawar, without hope of any material gain whatsoever, and in patiently leading a Christian life for the purpose of influencing those around you.

This evening I went to dine at the home of Mr Mohammad Ali, the Vice-Chancellor of Peshawar University, to whom I had an
introduction
. The new university is four miles outside the city, beautifully situated in the centre of a semicircle of mountains, with the snowy Central Asian range to the far north. A big, purring, chauffeur-driven Mercedes came to fetch me but the Vice-Chancellor’s family is unassuming and homely and Mr Ali himself kindly took me around all the new buildings – the majority are very handsome indeed – in which he takes a fatherly pride. Like most men of outstanding intellectual abilities he is simple and easy to get on with and I felt very much at home in this family. They have invited me to stop with them on my return journey and if possible to come for their second son’s wedding festivities in October. This son, who is a senior lecturer in English (BA Cantab.) at the university, earns £20 a month, and other salaries are in proportion, although prices of commodities here are
not
correspondingly low, as one would expect. 

This sounds as though I’ve somehow got to Iraq overnight and forgotten my spelling en route, but in fact it’s a delightful frontier village forty-five miles north of Peshawar where I’m staying with the chief in a vast but primitive house. My spirits are completely restored now that I’ve escaped from Peshawar and its European luxuries. Suinabhayat Khan, my host, is a brother of Colonel Zeb, whom I met in Teheran, and is a son of the official who helped rescue Miss Molly Ellis from the Afridis. As I can still remember the day some twenty years ago, when I first read an account of this adventure, you can imagine the thrill I got out of being shown the handwritten report submitted by my hero on his return.

I’ve had a most enjoyable evening – back to eating with fingers off plates on the floor, surrounded by Pathans. My Colonel host from Peshawar also came up, by car, today, and looks much more handsome in his Pathan garb than in a European suit. (He is another brother: why they all have different surnames is one of the local mysteries I haven’t got around to solving yet.) In the middle of supper we heard gunfire from the direction of the bazaar and the chief dashed off to investigate. He came back in fifteen minutes and reported that a policeman had been shot dead, while sitting in a tea-house, by a tribesman whom the police couldn’t capture as the crowd were ‘with him’. I’m sure you’ll agree that though regrettable, this is the sort of thing that
should
happen during supper in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province), as everyone here still insists on calling the region.

A few days ago at a nearby court the magistrate awarded a case to A
against B. B promptly stood up and shot A dead in front of the magistrate, who equally promptly and very wisely dived under a table. Perhaps, after all, Pakistan is not
quite
the same as England.

I learned a lot this evening about the habits of Pathans. These sons of Moghul Baz Khan don’t wear guns when motoring with their wives and children because if they did so and were held up – as is quite likely around here – they would have no alternative, according to the code, but to shoot at the bandits, who would then shoot back, possibly injuring the wives and children. And however long any of these men may have been in English schools or universities or military colleges they still adhere most rigidly to the Pathan code. The inheritance laws are the same here as in Afghanistan – Islamic. When a man dies, his wife or wives get one-eighth of his property and sons get a portion each of the rest and daughters a half of what the sons get: Muslims disapprove violently of primogeniture. But as they often produce ten to twenty sons apiece this doesn’t seem to make much sense. More than one wife is now illegal here, but I doubt if that will make any impression on anyone in the immediate future. My host told me that his twelve-year-old daughter, now at the Murree convent school, has insisted on putting herself into purdah although he has assured her that she needn’t if she preferred to go unveiled. He also told me that when he took his wife to Europe last year he could not persuade her to take off her
burkah
in Paris, London or anywhere else. This contrast in the attitude of two brothers reveals the extent to which Islamic traditions are currently in the melting pot.

I left Peshawar at 7.30 a.m. today and the traffic on this road was the heaviest I’ve met since Italy. It’s grim to see so many buffaloes and horses and dogs half-starved. The people en route were very friendly and I was frequently pursued by loud cheers. After the desolation of Afghanistan the density of population seems extraordinary. I cycled twenty-two miles looking for a ‘quiet corner’ and finally was driven to emulating the natives and not bothering about spectators – one gets adjusted, I suppose! The stinks are even worse than Afghanistan – obviously, since so many more are contributing to them per square mile. At one tea-house the stench was so overpowering that I simply
couldn’t sit there and drink tea; no wonder there’s so much typhoid in the area. I collected more mail from Nowshera and here I must pause to record for posterity a word that definitely deserves its place in the
OED
. It is the property of one of my correspondents who in his last letter begged me not to become too ‘Afghanatical’. The fact that I had become rabidly and irreparably ‘Afghanatical’ before the plea arrived is irrelevant.

The whole of today’s cycling was over level, rather dull countryside that looked heavily wooded in comparison with Afghanistan. The road seemed very good to me although the locals complain bitterly about it. I whizzed along happily at 16 m.p.h. and was just
congratulating
myself on the perfection of the weather for cycling when a blue Morris Minor overtook me, slowed up and drove ahead for a few minutes, then stopped and decanted a worried-looking European woman who held me up and began a lecture on heat stroke being the consequence of anyone cycling at that speed in that heat. While moving I’d felt perfectly comfortable but the instant I stopped the sweat began to run off me as I stood in the sun. I said meekly that I hadn’t felt hot and she said that that had nothing to do with it. Apparently heat stroke is a cumulative thing and you don’t notice it happening till you drop like a stone. Then she noticed the sweat that was streaming down my face and neck and arms,
nonstop
, and said, ‘Oh well, if you sweat like that I think you’re safe enough and probably that’s why you don’t feel it so much.’ Before proceeding on her way she kindly invited me to lunch at Mardan, and when I arrived there I found that she was the wife of the Danish Lutheran Bishop of NWFP. They are a very charming couple who have been forty years in this area and speak Pushto like Pathans. I was told this evening about their son’s murder thirty-five years ago. Their Pathan gardener wanted to have their Christian Indian ayah as his second wife but the Bishop vetoed the marriage, so in revenge the Pathan shot the ayah and their seven-year-old son and then fled back to his Shinwali tribe and was never heard of again. The Bishop’s wife very understandably wanted to go back to Denmark after that and leave the Pathans to stew in their own heretical juice, but the
Bishop said, ‘No, let’s turn the other cheek’, and they’ve been turning it ever since.

I went round the local cane-sugar factory – the biggest in Asia – after my siesta. The men are paid £5 per month for an eight-hour six-day week. It’s a very interesting process but would put you off sugar for life.

Last night, in honour of some village wedding, a band played throbbingly outside my window until 2 a.m.: the wild, martial airs were not sleep-inducing but I was happy to lie on my charpoy enjoying the concert. I was wakened again at 5.45 a.m. by quite different sounds – fierce arguing in the courtyard. Looking out I saw my host sitting in the shade of an awning of rushes surrounded by villagers, two of whom were arguing like demons – and an angry Pathan-Afghan has to be seen to be believed, as I know to my cost. Later Sai Rab told me that this is a daily routine; from 5.30 to 8.30 a.m. people come with disputes for him to settle and he has such a tremendous personality and such authority over the local branch of the Afridis that they usually accept his decisions, which are based on Tribal Laws. This is all part of President Ayub’s effort to re-introduce what is known here as ‘Basic Democracy’ and is in fact a reversion to things as they were before the British came. It works smoothly when men like Sai Rab Khan are available to take over; but men of his type are, unfortunately, rare in any country.

We only covered eight miles today because of three detours involving over twenty miles of walking and the climbing of three mountains to inspect some fascinating Buddhist ruins. It was a most enjoyable day although from 5 p.m. I was being saturated by another downpour of rain. An introduction to a Scots engineer at a sugar factory here led to my being invited to his home, where we’ve just been listening to a Communist broadcast in English accusing America of nuclear tests above the atmosphere which have completely upset the world’s weather.

What a deluge! I left Takht-i-Bai at 8 a.m. and it poured non-stop till I arrived here at 4 p.m. However, it’s good training for India, where I’ll have to endure something similar every day during the monsoon. I found the Malakand Pass baby-food after my efforts in the Hindu Kush: it wasn’t necessary to dismount once although we climbed 5,000 feet in seven miles – but of course the road is beautifully surfaced and well graded. Unfortunately, I missed all the views because of mist and saw only enough of the renowned valley of Swat to make me recognise it as the nearest thing to Irish scenery met with since leaving home.

My arrival here was one of the classic episodes of the expedition. On the outskirts of Saidu I asked for Aurang Zeb’s house [sic] and was directed to one end of the town. I went there and asked again. A policeman pointed down the street and I pedalled off in the indicated direction, noting en route a palatial-looking building complete with sentry-boxes. Not seeing any house that looked a ‘likely’ I returned to the crossroads and repeated my query. The policeman pointed again, rather impatiently, and I shook my head and repeated ‘Aurang Zeb’s house.’ The policeman nodded and said, ‘
That’s
his house.’ I said, ‘That’s not a house – it’s a ruddy great palace!’ The policeman nodded yet again and said, ‘Yes, Wali of Swat’s Palace.’ ‘Blast it, I don’t
want
Wali of Swat’s palace – I want Aurang Zeb’s house.’ The policeman continued nodding and said ‘Aurang Zeb is Wali’s prince and lives in father’s palace.’ I said nothing for a moment after that, then murmured ‘Thank you,’ rather faintly, and wrung some water out of my hair in a vague way, to make myself look slightly more respectable before approaching one of the two sentry-boxes. The sentries immediately came to attention and another soldier appeared from within the gates and said, ‘Are you the lady with the bicycle?’ I replied, ‘I’m afraid so,’ apologetically, as he obviously only credited the bicycle clause, and he continued in an ‘outraged Jeeves’ voice, ‘You are to be brought directly in.’ A few moments later I was sitting on the verandah, where a very self-possessed peke promptly took over my
lap, while the servant to whom I’d been delivered by the soldier went to announce my arrival. It seemed to me as I waited that Colonel Zeb, on giving me this introduction in Teheran, should have warned me that it involved walis, princes, palaces and sentries – all
contingencies
which I felt singularly ill-equipped to meet. But then Begum Naseem Aurang Zeb came walking down the verandah and I realised at a glance that the complications of the situation were more apparent than real. Naseem, President Ayub’s eldest daughter, is Prince Aurang Zeb’s wife and her physical beauty (striking even by Pathan standards) is equalled by true gentleness of nature, sincerity and simplicity of manner and warmth of heart. She told me not to stand up because of the peke and sat down and talked to me as though we were continuing an interrupted conversation rather than getting acquainted. Naseem accompanies her father on his State Visits abroad and Pakistan is fortunate indeed to have such a remarkable young woman to represent her in other countries. Characteristically, she told me first about her three oldest children’s mumps and her fear that the six-weeks-old baby might get them. As a
twenty-four-year-old
girl whose eldest daughter is aged seven many of her Western contemporaries might pity her, but when you have been conditioned to regard the rôle of wife and mother as the most honourable one there is for a woman, the – to us slightly premature – responsibility of a growing family at twenty-four is a source of deep satisfaction. I couldn’t help contrasting the basic contentment so evident in Naseem, and in most of the young Pakistani women I’ve met to date, with the uncertainty as to what is fulfilment shown by the young of the West. Yet these Pakistani girls, unlike the simple peasants of Afghanistan, live in luxurious Western-style homes, have been educated in
Irish-run
schools, speak English as fluently as Pushto and are in close cultural contact with the West. It will be interesting, and probably saddening, to observe the changes within the next quarter-century; it seems too much to hope that the present delicate balance between East and West – using the best of both worlds – can be maintained by future generations.

Naseem and I had been talking only a few minutes when Prince
Aurang Zeb and his younger brother arrived to welcome me. I don’t quite know what it is about the Pathans (perhaps some profound racial affinity with the Irish) but I find them extraordinarily easy to get on with; ever since meeting those three officers in Teheran every contact with this race has been an unqualified success. I’m not exactly uncritical of my fellow-beings, but I haven’t yet met one unlikable Pathan. Of course their educational ties with Ireland and consequent knowledge of my own little country – which most people have never heard of – undoubtedly has something to do with this, although there’s obviously a lot more to it. Anyway, whatever the cause, I become assimilated into Pathan families with delightful ease and am now as happy in my present surroundings of unparalleled splendour as though I were in a nomad camp, which just shows that it’s
people
who count and that the human qualities I found to admire in Afghanistan are still present here, despite the very different material environment.

The happy-go-lucky informality of this establishment effectively counteracts the outward glory and the awe-inspiring fact that all sorts of VIPs, including Mr Khrushchev and Queen Elizabeth II, have occupied one’s rooms in the past. Yesterday afternoon, when it became obvious that something must be done about clothing me while my shirt and pants dried, Aurang Zeb sent for a measuring tape and personally confirmed that his trousers would fit me, to the great amusement of the family, my fellow-guests and a semicircle of delightedly grinning servants, who have assuredly never before witnessed the arrival at the Waliahad of such an unlikely looking guest.