Full Tilt (21 page)

This morning I kept thinking of Delius’ ‘Walk to the Paradise Gardens’ as we went through fields of golden barley being harvested by women and girls in scarlet gowns and silver and blue caps, then climbed up by very narrow paths beside sparkling streams through woods of walnut, apricot, plum, pear and peach trees to where we could look across at the pine woods on the summit of the opposite mountain and see, through binoculars, the ibex grazing – that was a big moment! Then we went higher still to where one of the streams
forms a pool on a level, wide ‘step’ on the mountainside. And there, in the soft, dry sand, I saw the pug-marks of a leopard who comes here nightly to drink – another
big
moment. It looked just like an enlarged version of my cat Roarin’s prints on my writing paper on a wet day! The Raja said leopards are harmless unless a man is caught out on the mountain ill or injured, when they may kill and eat him. We returned by different paths to the Residence, through groves of weeping willow and fiery blossomed pomegranate trees, past more fields of barley and green wheat, with every peasant we met stopping to kiss the Raja’s right hand and discuss their problems with their ‘father’. The Raja told me that three years ago he decided it would be best for the people if he abdicated and handed over the state to the Pakistan Government, but everyone rose in revolt at this idea and begged him not to – so he didn’t. I can’t help contrasting Punial with Swat. Of course Swat is far better off materially, but personally I prefer Punial, which is really an extension of Afghanistan. (I’ve come round in a semicircle so that here I’m quite near the Afghan frontier.) And though the Wali and his family are model rulers, there’s no comparison between the Swat
ruler-ruled
relationship and that of Punial. (Admittedly the comparison is not quite fair as the population of Swat is 594,000 and the same degree of intimacy just isn’t possible.) But the Walis’ household lives on a plane completely different from the people’s, whereas here the only real difference between the Raja’s and people’s standard of living is that he has meat (goat’s) once a day whereas they have it occasionally. The Raja is an amazing man, with a very highly-developed sense of responsibility and a very poorly-developed sense of his own
importance
; he’s the first person I’ve met since leaving Europe who is quite happy to do his own fetching and carrying despite a host of servants. He’s at the people’s disposal always, whether they come during his siesta or at meal-times they are never expected to wait. Every December he has to go to Pindi on business and this he hates above anything as he can’t get adjusted to the crowds and noise and traffic. He says he doesn’t like city people ‘because they are not honest’. I know exactly what he means – not that they are dishonest in their dealings, but in their attitudes to life generally. He doesn’t know much about his own
family origins but thinks his people came from near Kabul in the 1860s and took this place by force – Sher Quila means ‘Lion’s Fort’ and the area is so called because it’s very difficult to conquer. He certainly looks a typical Pathan and the family are Sunnis, though all the people are Ismailis. There are two tiny mosques in the village as, of course, the sects won’t worship in the same mosque unless it’s unavoidable (how Christian-like can Muslims get?) and this afternoon I visited both. The Ismaili one is lavishly decorated with gaudy pictures of the old and new Aga Khan and Prince Aly Khan. The present Aga Khan came here in 1961 and the mosque is full of coloured pictures of him in local dress. The Sunni mosque is a little wooden hut in the Raja’s compound – what we’d call a family chapel.

Last night while we were having dinner wonderful music (very Afghan-like) began to play near by and when I asked why, I was told that it was the traditional way of announcing that an important
polo-match
would be played on the following day. Afterwards we went to look at the band. One old, bearded man was playing on a sort of primitive flute and two drummers were beating with their bare hands on the tight-skin ends of earthenware pitchers, which seemed similar to Afghan instruments. Polo is the national game here and the children begin to practise as tots by running around hitting stones with polo sticks; the result is astonishingly like our national game of hurling. Of course the sticks are home-made – branches of trees cut so cleverly at intersections that they look exactly like the real thing – but the balls used in matches are orthodox, made of bamboo root and imported from East Pakistan.

At 4.30 this afternoon the band began to play again. Then, at 5, I threw in the ball and, as Michael O’Hehir would say, the game was on! What a game to watch! Never anywhere have I seen such a thrilling spectacle. Of course it was totally unlike polo as we know it; there are
no
rules in this version and every sort of attack and defence is allowed. Blood was soon streaming from over half the twelve players’ heads and hands and backs but they carried on regardless. The pace was tremendously fast and the horses streaked up and down the pitch foaming with sweat. Polo sticks were broken and replaced by the
minute and the ball flew all over the place like a meteor – as often in the air as on the ground. The band played non-stop in time to the thudding hoofs and wild, whirling, clashing sticks and the faster the game the faster the music, till the three musicians were in almost as much of a lather as the horses.

One thing I noticed was the complete absence of fouls as distinct from accidents. Though this was a tremendously important
championship
game no tempers were lost and no one deliberately went for an opponent – the injuries were as often as not received from a member of the same team during what I can only describe as one of the scrums, when the ball got stuck beside a stone wall and all twelve horses ‘packed down’ with every man leaning from his saddle and poking towards it through the frantic jumble of horses’ legs – anything less scientific it would be difficult to imagine. The only law concerned time; after thirty minutes there was a ten-minute interval (but no change of horses – they were simply walked about by little boys while their riders mopped up each other’s blood) and then the teams changed sides and I threw in the ball again and off they went. At this stage it was Sher Quila: 1 – Gulapur: 5, and the crowds sitting all around on the stone walls were silent and depressed. Then Sher Quila got going and scored four goals in rapid succession, which feat caused frenzied cheering. However, Gulapur soon came back with two, leaving it 7–5 and eight minutes to go – by now I was hoarse from yelling for Sher Quila! For those minutes the pace was incredible – the horses flashed up and down the field wheeling at each end like ballet dancers and the air was full of the noise of cracked sticks, new ones being flung out for the riders to catch in mid-air as they galloped by. With half a minute to go Sher Quila equalised, and the villagers nearly fell off the walls in their delight. At full time it was decided to play an extra ten minutes, and Sher Quila scored again, to win. I was quite exhausted by excitement and suspense as I scrambled off the wall: it took a full bottle of Punial Water to revive me! The visiting team spend the night here after these games as both men and horses are too tired to go home and I’m now being entertained by the band still playing vigorously for their benefit, on the other side of the compound.

The Raja has what I can only describe as a few toys, in which he takes a boyish delight, and one of them is a Japanese transistor radio presented to him by our mutual friend Colonel Shah. On this he listens to the 8 p.m. Pindi news every evening and the weather reports from down-country are the single depressing feature of life here; today the temperature on the plains has been 115° in the shade.

This morning, after a 5.30 a.m. breakfast on the verandah
overlooking
the river, my host disappeared for a moment and then came trotting back carrying a sheaf of letters. With a shy, sheepish smile he looked rather timidly down at me and said, ‘I think you are a nice woman so you won’t laugh at me because I cannot read or write. But sometimes I get letters in English, so now will you read them out for me very slowly please and I will ask you to write my answer for me because I see you can do much writing every day.’ So we settled down to his correspondence for the next three hours – I’ve rarely been so pleased by any compliment!

But it’s astonishing, when you come to think of it – he and most of the villagers speak their own local language (which I won’t even attempt to spell but which is a distinct language, not a dialect, though it has no alphabet) as well as Urdu and Pushto, and he also speaks Pharsi and English, yet they’re all illiterate. (Pushto is known here as so many caravans have always come over the Shandur Pass from Afghanistan.) The young village schoolmaster, whose pen I have just borrowed, acts as scribe, reading and writing letters in Urdu, but he knows only a few words of English. I’m afraid his qualifications as teacher are rather limited, at least in history and geography; he thought that Ireland was one of the United States of America and he swears that the Gilgit River is the Indus, whereas in fact it’s a tributary, meeting the young Indus at Bunji, about sixty miles from here.

This morning I went for a long ride on a grey stallion, around the mountain which rises right behind this valley to the north. He wasn’t as restful a steed as Rob and I had no confidence in my ability to control him, but fortunately we met no interesting mares en route.

I stopped on the way back to investigate a flour-mill which must be a perfect example of the very first mill ever invented by man. It was built of the usual stones over a rapid mountain torrent. A large
tree-trunk
had been hollowed out to form a sloping pipe through which the water was directed to increase its force, and flowing under the little hut it revolved what looked like an aeroplane propeller. Going into the hut through a four-foot high ‘door’ I found an amiable, ancient and very filthy old miller superintending the processes. A stone (such as I have seen lying around villages all the way through from east Turkey) about five foot in circumference (or perhaps diameter is what I mean?), with a six-inch hole in the middle, is attached to the revolving propeller in the stream below and slowly turns on another stationary stone, grinding the grains which fall, a few at a time, in a steady stream through the (yes!) sheep-skin hanging suspended from a beam across the five-foot-high ceiling. The flour dribbles out from beneath the stone into a dirty wooden trough and that’s that! Each little mill is a private concern producing just enough for one family. Usually the grandfather or great-grandfather, who is past his speed for work in the fields or on the mountains, acts as miller.

Punial is a relatively prosperous area for this part of the world and the people are never actually without food, but in most of the other villages around they spend the winter in a drunken stupor as they have plenty of wine but only enough food for one square meal a week. In August they begin to fatten a bull-calf and in December it’s killed and the meat is buried in snow and used very sparingly throughout the following months. This and their dried fruits keep them from actually dying of hunger. The winters here are as cold as you’d expect and the families exist crammed thirty or forty together in little stone huts, keeping each other warm to supplement the heat of tiny wood fires and drowning their misery in the abundant Punial Water, which apparently intoxicates them much more quickly than it does me.

I got back here at 11.30 a.m., which is lunchtime, and after lunch went off again on foot to find a cool corner for my siesta, as there are
so many flies in this house that it’s impossible to sleep here during the day. Also it’s much cooler up the mountainside among greenery and running water with a delicious little breeze blowing down from the snows. I found a delightful spot beside a whitely-foaming torrent and went asleep for an hour under a willow tree.

Some noise wakened me and I opened my eyes to see a ragged, bearded old man kneeling beside me and stretching out his hand towards my throat with a ferocious expression on his face. The thought flashed through my mind – ‘Well, you were bound to be murdered sometime …’ and then before I could move he drew back and beamed triumphantly and showed me, crushed between his fingers, the ant which he had kindly picked off my neck! Actually, I’ve discovered long ago that contrary to my preconceived ideas ants
don’t
usually bite. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve lain on a spot of ground swarming with them and they’ve simply continued to swarm all over me without doing any damage. However, this reminded me of the snakes, which I’d quite forgotten, so I bounded up, made my salaams to the old boy and continued up a glorious path around the lower slopes of the mountain. On the way down I came on another old boy sitting beside a stream trying to get a thorn out of his foot by prodding it with another, bigger thorn from one of the aromatic shrubs which flourish here. When he saw me he beckoned me over and signed that his eyesight was
karrab
(‘bad’ in Pharsi and Pushto and evidently in Urdu also) and would I please operate on the foot. A lifetime of going barefooted meant that the soles of his feet were like leather and I had to get out my knife and spend a quarter of an hour dislodging the thing. It was a brute of a thorn half an inch long but after the extraction my friend happily thrust his bleeding foot into the stream and firmly declined to come back here with me and have it dressed and disinfected – but perhaps our disinfectants would give these people blood-poisoning! I thought the whole thing enchanting: could you imagine any European peasant stopping a tourist and requesting her to attend to his revolting foot? But, of course, here one is merely another human being, if an exceedingly odd one, and it’s taken for granted that one will help if necessary just
as when one needs help it is unfailingly given without anyone stopping to consider inconvenience or cost.

Yesterday evening I staged a cigarette crisis: I had my last at teatime and they’re unobtainable here. The Raja is a non-smoker (and
nondrinker
) but he produced a box of choice cigars (
very
mild compared with the quite uninhaleable Pakistani cigarettes) which I’ve been on ever since – they make me feel like George Sand’s ghost!