That Savage Water (3 page)

Finished – the barber blots me with a corner of newsprint – Beautiful as a boy.


Shukria
– I say. Thank you.

You are leaving Lahore? – he inquires – Today? So soon?

This evening's train. Lahore to Islamabad and then Gilgit to Karakoram.

Gilgit? – he worries his eyebrows –
Inshallah
, you will be safe. They are proud to be bandits there. Lacking shame! Some birds eat fruit and other birds eat flesh. I pray you encounter only those with beaks made for berries.


Inshallah
– I hand him a five-rupee note, take my skis and pass between the stares of the shalwar men back into the flutter of the station.

The interior hall is a carnival of travellers, the Pakistani railways churning at full throttle. Turbaned porters ferry sacks of onions and firewood, ticket vendors holler their destinations from speakers wired near the ceiling fans. Like a belt, this station is Pakistan's buckle to the subcontinent, a suture to the severed shore of the Indian wound.

After an overnight train from Delhi I arrived in Lahore before dawn. Crossing the border in the dark, my carriage was a party of celebrating Sikh pilgrims. I couldn't sleep for the heat and noise so I lay on the mid-tier bunk, rocking, staring out the window at the passing countryside. Moonlit palm trees laid indigo shadows onto the fields. The unfamiliar constellations of this hemisphere rotated in the black sky beyond them. I watched as a man on horseback galloped beside the train, the moonlight carving between the animal's hooves as it ran. I could have sworn the rider caught my eye and grinned as he rode, his teeth gleaming in the milky light. Hunched forward, he galloped faster. I felt drenched in the adrenaline of far, of utter distance, as though I had reached the foggiest corner of the planet that still held some perfect secret, where it was all sights and sounds altered from what I knew or could imagine. Here, the unparallel life-fringed border to the ribbon of travel – roadsides, tracksides, hillsides, waysides. The world, I assure myself, is full of birds that eat berries.

Adrian and I had arranged for our guide to the glacier, a local man named Akram, to meet my train, and although there'd been an email from him the previous day confirming my arrival, he hadn't been at the station like he promised. Without a way to get in contact, I resigned to wait out the day alone. I found a cart selling naan and dhal and then paid for a shave with the roadside barber. Now against the wall of the central platform as the sun transforms the city from indigo to orange, I find a clean-swept corner to lay my backpack and skis and wait for him. I'll watch for him here and if he never shows, I'll take the train to Islamabad myself. After ten years, face to face with Adrian tonight, I have imagined shaking his hand a thousand times. Adrian, who had frozen some object inside me that had broken off and begun travelling my coasts like an iceberg.

DHUHR – 11:52 AM

Shane, buddy! – Adrian's webcam image stammered in low-res with the poor connection. Behind him the streets of Islamabad ignited my laptop's screen – Are you really coming?

Got the skis waxed already.

Man, you've never seen anything like this place. It's something real, that's for sure.

I think I just saw a herd of goats pass behind you. Yeah, I'm coming. Of course I am. You sure those hills are worth the trip?

Hills? My God, Shane, these aren't hills. They're goddamn monsters. But we're skiing glaciers this time. Biafo, right? She's got K2 in the background and the largest run of pristine snow outside the poles. You up for it? I know you remember some of the tricks I taught you in practice. Monsters, buddy. Nasty goddamn ghouls.

The Biafo Glacier, a powder-topped tongue of frozen till edged by mile-deep crevasses. Tucked in a forsaken notch of Pakistan, the glacier creeps between the Karakoram, the icy foothills of the Himalayas, inch by inch toward the ocean.

You sure you can make it here alone? I've told the guys all about you and our crazy times on ski team. Did you know no one else keeps in touch with their mates from high school? Is that weird or what?

I'll be coming a few weeks early to see the sights in Delhi so I'll meet you in Gilgit.

Man, this place is the real deal, I'm telling you. Those runs we did for team were a driveway compared to these.

The image of Adrian turned in a sweep of pixels as a group of women clad in burkas entered the café behind him, their curtains of fabric disguising them like bandits caught on security camera.

Those the goats you were talking about? – Adrian turned back to the screen, all teeth in the webcam – I'm telling you, Shane, it's the dark side of the moon here. You'll love it. I'll send Akram to meet you wherever you want. Lahore's a fun town. Take the train from Delhi and meet him there. He's the son of two rich Pakis but British as they come. You'll see, Shane, he's hysterical.

It'll be great to see you.

No kidding, buddy. Ten years go by in a flash.

Ten years since high school, since the ski team with Adrian when we rode to the top of the slope together, our feet dangling above the tree caps. From the chair behind us Mr. Mason called out –
Boys, I want to see you work the fall line directly as possible. Got it? Carve tight off the front trough while keeping your pace constant.
Adrian always gunned out the deepest moguls with reckless speed. His knees sprung to his chest like bullets, his boots held tight together and with the biggest, boyish grin washing over his face as he flew the jumps in twisters and spread eagles. He could land solidly, purposefully, with all the confidence of an athlete who knew how to make winning look easy. Propped on his poles at the bottom of the run, he stared up at me, his braces glinting through his smile.
Come on, Shane!
– he called –
Hit it dead centre and you'll fly when you hit the lip!
I envied him then, I remember, envied those braces even, linking his teeth like miniature scaffolds. How he knew he had the talent so couldn't give a fuck about anything else.

Somewhere down the platform, shouts emerge from an administration office. The static of radios crackles the heat as a squadron of officers pushes from the far end through groups of lingering travellers. The brass details on their military insignia flash as they cut through slats of sunlight angled from the ventilation shafts. As they vanish into the room, drafts of pigeons suddenly loose from the rafters and flap across the stone canopy, arching as one body into a frantic grey landing – a chorus of warbles pecking crumbs from the ochre tile. Squatting at the wall, a toothless woman fans a pot of curry she balances on a charcoal tin. She nods at me, opens her cruddy gums and heaves a laugh in my direction, bringing her hands to her sides in the shape of two gnarled wings. She flaps and laughs again.

More shouts as the crowd outside the office grows, each man craning to see inside. Curious, I stand, walk down the platform and join the peering men. On the administrator's desk inside the room sits a small television, its wire antennae kinked and taped to the plaster wall. The screen flickers a newscast of a street scene deep in Pakistan – the grime-caked city of Peshawar. The crowd jostles its heat around me, a human herd damp with beards and turbans, ciphers of Urdu, Pashto and Punjabi. I glance back at my skis left propped against the wall. Strange to see them meet this foreignness, so far from their mountains, so far from where they'd lain for ten years in my garage next to garden hoses, bags of birdseed, rakes and bicycles.

A voice calls out behind me – You are going to Peshawar? You must alter your plans if you are.

When I turn I meet the face of a young man, brown and boyish-skinned. Black hair sweeps across his forehead; he is dressed in an olive-green shalwar with eyes the clear tourmaline of glaciers. His black lashes draw out a hint of moustache.

I would not go to Peshawar if I were you – he continues – Not today.

Islamabad, but not until this evening. What happened there?

He pushes in front of a row of grey-bearded men and stands next to me – The Taliban made an assault. A prison has been attacked and they have freed nearly four hundred convicts. I am afraid now Pakistan is very dangerous for you. They will cancel the train to Peshawar until more notice.

And for Islamabad?

Wait, wait. I will ask – he presses through to the window. After a jabber of Urdu, the office attendant nods his head, waving him away disinterestedly.

The boy pushes back to me – There is still a train to Islamabad. This evening, yes.

Good – I extend him my hand – That's good. I'm Shane.

Sahir. And from Islamabad, where will you go?

Gilgit and the Karakoram.

I knew it. The mountains – Sahir's face frees into a smile. Like the son of some Kashmiri diplomat with high Zoroastrian cheekbones, his teeth are starched, untarnished, shockingly aligned. A descendent of handsome, high-nosed Greeks left in his bloodline from Alexander the Great, he stands like a vintage postcard against the backdrop of the station – They are beautiful, that is what I hear.

It's why I came.

We in Pakistan are very proud of our country. More so, we are proud of the foreigners who dare to come here. But you are alone and there are serious dangers for people of your flesh tone. Your skin is more valuable to some than a tiger's.

Everyone prefers to dress themselves in the hides of other animals. My friend Akram, he's late. He's taking me to Islamabad this evening.

Then you have time for a tour of Lahore station – Sahir brightens – I'm sure you must be curious about many things in our history. As my father tells me, it is peace for the soul to revisit the cages of our past as different men.

ASR – 2:40 PM

It was nearing the end of first term when the smell of winter hit the air. Something metallic, zinc or nickel, signalled the snow was about to fall. While everyone else dreaded the approaching cold, Adrian and I plotted the length of the coming ski season, how many weekends still ahead, how many runs. We sketched out the tricks we wanted to master in elaborate coloured diagrams. It felt good to embrace what others wouldn't, to love something others rejected.

The bright fluorescents of the hallway stoked the red lockers as Adrian came up to me, pulling me into the empty computer lab.

Check this out – he grinned in the darkness – Guess who.

His phone's screen had a series of messages from a number I didn't recognize.


Looking forward to the season?


Sure. I'm keen to try the 360.


360's for big boys. Got an extra pair of those boxers you wear?


Dozens. Why? They're Costco. U want some?


I meant for the 360. But you offering?


Got some old pairs. Yours if you want them.


My kind of guy. Send a pic in them first if you're up for it.

The force of my heart swallowed my eardrums; something sour, thick and unquenchable sucked the moisture off my tongue.

Mr. Mason?

Yep.

Holy shit…

Got a bunch more like these. Creepy, huh?

Yeah, for sure. Creepy.

I felt kinked in the thorax, that place where on an insect its thinness is so frightening you fear its body will snap in two. The light from Adrian's phone caught his braces like a diamond mine. I wanted braces more than ever after that, I remember. I caressed the invisible cores of metal I longed to be cemented to my teeth. Calcium, frostbit aluminum, the galvanized steel poles of a schoolyard fence I'd once pressed my tongue to on a dare. The yank of pink flesh, the frostbitten drool of panic, a pale, glacier-hued odour of snow.

But who cares anyway. He's a perv, so what's the harm, right? – Adrian bit the phone, exposing his teeth – He's pushing me hard this season and I need him to get me ready for Junior's. Turin is in five years. What do you think, can you believe it? Mason is friends with the coach of the Canadian team. You know what it would mean to make the Olympics? I've got a shot at it, you know that, right?

Don't say anything – I prayed my breath hadn't quickened – Not to anyone.

Sahir leads me from the departure platform to the main hall teeming with passengers, his hand outstretched behind him – Come, come. I will show you something you cannot see in palaces. This way, Shane.

My skis are hoisted on my shoulder; my duffel bag packed with snow gear hangs from me like a harness. Rivulets of heat breach the back of my shirt. We cross through a series of anterooms stocked with bundles and parcels in knotted fabric, torn-taped, walling in clans of seated women in shalwars of purple, tangerine and emerald, obliterating themselves with jewelled dupatta scarves.

We still have many problems since partition – Sahir says – When we Muslims left India we gave our hearts to Lahore. Even then, as symbolic as this city is, it too has seen its share of violence – he points at the floor for emphasis – There have been bombs, explosions, here in this station.

When the Muslims left India?

Bodies clogged the aisles, under the seats, even filling the lavatories. When the Bombay Express arrived here, no person remained alive except one. One survivor of two thousand – the engineer, an Englishman. The Sikhs from Bhatinda massacred them. Do you know what it means to give your heart to something others want dead?

You have beautiful areas too – I say – The Himalayas, Biafo, the Karakoram. That's where I'm going to ski.

There are many mountains here, but not many who are fortunate enough to be skiers. Leave your things in this office. I will show you something special from this sweltering cage I am kept in.

Sahir turns down a corridor to a musty room where a turbaned man squats amid stacks of baggage reading a newspaper – He is my friend, don't worry. He will watch your things for no charge while we finish the tour, yes?