Fwd: Just another journey
Moyez Kamani
From: Ali Janmohamed <ali...@gosonic.ca>
Date: Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 5:39 PM
Subject: Just another journey
To: Ali Janmohamed <ali...@gosonic.ca>
Just another journey
To Chapursan and back, twice in twenty years...
By Salman Rashid
As journeys go, this one was hardly a great one. Kamran Alavi (with
his throat orchestra of which more later) and I reached Gilgit hoping
to go walking up north of Misgar in the Gojal region in the extreme
upper edge of Hunza. That would have been after I had done a short
dash to the end of the Chapursan Valley to check out the tomb of Baba
Ghundi.
Since I had been in Chapursan back in 1990 (when I had more hair and
less fat), I had never returned and there were some people I sorely
wanted to see again. One was Sarfraz Khan alias Chairman of the
village of Zuda Khun who had a gold tooth and a rifle. All his life he
had been a keen hunter and when he agreed to lead me across the 5200
metre-high Chillinji Pass, he brought his trusted old rifle along.
With a wide grin he had said he would be coming back with an ibex or
two. I asked how he could carry back two dead animals and he said that
the pass being glaciated, he could always bury one in the deep freeze
and return for it later.
But he was going to get them. Of that he was very confident. Not if I
can help it, I the conservationist said to myself as we set out. Our
team comprised of Havildar Niyat Khan, the inveterate dandy, Gulsher
and Shamsher of the levies with Sarfraz Khan leading. It was a great
dander up the ice slopes and on the glacier at a height of about 4900
metres we slept out in the open because my two-man tent could not take
us all. It was late August and the night had been utterly, utterly
cloudless with the stars shining down on us with a vengeance. I woke
several times during the night, not from cold, but simply to watch the
progress of Orion hunting across the velveteen, spangled blackness.
At the top of the pass, which was made in about two hours from our
camp, an argument broke about Chillinji being a little to the south
and that the one we were crossing was an unnamed pass. We therefore
named it Panz Khalq Uwin -- Wakhi for Pass of the Five Men. We built a
small cairn, and having emptied a packet of biscuits, turned around
its cardboard to write this name on its unpainted inside surface to be
left inside. If I remember correctly, I had left my name and address
and since no one ever wrote to tell me that they had crossed the same
pass, I presume no one has.
On the far side, spilled a sheer talus slope for about 1200 metres and
we went racing down to a large, birch-covered rocky shelf where we
rested and had some tea. While the tea was being prepared, Sarfraz
Khan scoured the hillsides with his binoculars. Then hissing for us to
be silent, he crept behind a rock, propped the rifle on it and aimed.
I could not see the animal, but I squinted at the sun, generated a
sneeze and let it out mightily. On the slope where Sarfraz Khan had
been aiming, we saw a small avalanche of rocks and I knew the ibex had
fled.
Sarfraz spun around in a fury and I found myself staring into the cold
black hole of the muzzle. I looked up from the muzzle into Sarfraz's
eyes and the coldness matched. Of a moment I thought I was in for it.
Who would ever come looking for my corpse here in this remote corner
of Ishkoman valley at the foot of the Chillinji? With a great show of
bravado, my last great act, or so I thought, I shrugged my shoulders
and said, "Couldn't hold it."
"You fool," said Sarfraz Khan from clenched teeth, "now we won't have
any meat tonight."
"Never mind. We've got plenty of food and I'm a vegetarian anyway," I
said breezily. And that was the end of it.
Having delivered us at the first proper camp ground, Sarfraz and the
two levies came back the same way while Niyat Khan and I went on to
the bottom of the valley. In all these years, I never returned to
Chapursan, but I never quite forgot anyone of that great lot. So this
time around, I went asking for Sarfraz Khan to see how these past
eighteen years had treated him. Someone had said he was there all
right. But at Zuda Khun I learned that he wasn't after all.
Sarfraz Khan, I discovered, had some years earlier joined some NGO and
now worked in Afghanistan and Kashmir. He drew a hefty salary, so the
old informant said -- not without a hint of envy -- and drove around
in huge cars. Good for him, I said. Sarfraz Khan's flamboyance, style
and verve were too great to be squandered exterminating ibex.
Kamran and I returned to Raminj where we had stopped earlier in the
morning to introduce ourselves. Young Rehana who I had met at the
Punjab University a couple of months earlier had been surprised that
not only did I know of Chapursan but also of her village. Her village
is a national landmark for it is the home of Nazir Sabir, mountaineer
par excellence who, being the only Pakistani to summit Everest, has
made his place in the mountaineering pantheon.
Rehana had suggested that in Raminj, we should stay in her uncle's
home. And so we foisted ourselves upon the good Sher Baz Khan. I told
him having done our work in Chapursan we were heading for Misgar to
try reaching the crests of the passes Mintaka and Killik. In 1979, he
traded across the Mintaka with villages in the Taghdumbash Pamir of
China. This was a one-off thing for his usual beat was to the end of
the Chapursan valley and then up the Irshad Uwin into Wakhan.
Sher Baz Khan said, they would take their merchandise consisting of
cloth, salt, paraffin oil, sugar and grains, dump it at the lonely
outpost of Baba Ghundi Ziarat, walk to the top of Irshad Pass to
inform the Kirghiz of Wakhan how much of the various items of
merchandise they had. Accordingly, the Kirghiz came down with
corresponding value in yaks, ghee, butter and lambs.
That evening our driver had dark news to tell us: the brakes on the
jeep had failed and he had nursed it to Raminj with only the hand
brake. We resolved to first of all get the brakes fixed in Sost before
going up to Misgar to begin our trek. But I had serious misgiving
because if we needed replacements, we were bound not to find them in
remote old Sost.
That is exactly what happened. The young smiling Hunza mechanic was
quick to find the fault but after an hour of diligent work, he said
that he had improvised. I said to Kamran, I wouldn't want to be driven
around mountain roads on improvised brakes. And anyway, who knew what
the road to Misgar and on to Qalandar Chi (incorrectly Kalam Darchi)
was like.
But there had been a couple of classic goof-ups as well which dampened
my enthusiasm for this much looked-forward-to trek. Back in 1990 when
I trekked up Chillinji, the army was everywhere. The Afghan war was
just petering out and the army was keeping an eye on the passes into
Wakhan and the Taghdumbash. I had presumed the army would still be
there and thought we would get an introduction from army friends to
stay at army or militia posts en route to the passes. And so I had not
brought my tent. Secondly, I had forgotten to pack my stove.
This was hardly the way to go mountain walking, but friends at the
military headquarter in Gilgit had kindly lent us a two-man tent and
their 'smallest' stove. The tent weighed about ten kilograms and the
stove was large enough to not fit in our backpacks. Even a much
younger trekker would have balked at the tent, I was absolutely
horrified. What with our meagre food supply, the tent and stove would
have us carrying nearly twenty kilos each. And then there was the
storm that came roiling out of the west to pour rain on us while we
waited for the brakes to be repaired. That was excuse enough to abort.
Kamran made some noises about giving it a try, but I said I was
terrified of mountain roads and would never risk it with dicey brakes.
All along my friend had kept his nose and throat extremely busy with
assorted and endless grunts, snorts, sniffles and ahems which he said
was because of some allergy. Now he let go with a flurry of sneezes.
But unlike my thunderous sneeze that had eighteen years earlier sent
the ibex scuttling for cover, Kamran's were restricted to a sharp
intake of breath and a tiny 'Pip!' Alternatively, he would go 'Achha!'
But ever so softly as if in polite conversation.
Back in Gilgit, Rehana invited us over to tea and we got to meet her
father Mohammad Ayub Khan. A right delightful gentleman who was upset
that we had not stayed in Gilgit at his home. But he was doubly upset
when he heard we had aborted our Mintaka Pass trek. He instructed us
to turn around right then and head back for Misgar immediately. Why,
his wife's brother was the numbardar at Misgar and there would be no
problem organising porters or pack animals. We could also, he said,
stay with the family.
This was too good to be true and I told him we would be back next year
in mid-May to go up with the herdsmen on their way to the summer
pastures. That then was resolved and we tucked into the roast chicken
and other goodies laid out with the tea. As we bade him farewell, he
said for us to keep the May rendezvous in mind. To forget would be the
limit of thanklessness.
Postscript: Twenty years ago I wrote that Hunza must be the only place
in the world where if you seek permission to sample the fruit from
someone's tree, you are not only permitted, you are led to their best
tree. As we drove back just south of Karimabad and were passing an
apricot orchard, I requested the driver to stop. Getting off, I asked
the two young men sitting by the roadside if I could sample some
fruit. One of them made an expansive sweep of his arms to invite me
in. Then as I was picking some fruit, he called out to say which tree
was the best. In twenty years, the goodness of heart and the largesse
of the spirit of the good people of Hunza have not faded. If there is
heaven, it is here, it is here, it is here.
In all my previous visits, I had never thought Hunza women
particularly good-looking and I am in no particular hurry to change my
view. My previous dander through Chapursan must have been in a daze
because I do not remember seeing any women. But this time the beauties
of Chapursan dazzled me. The women there are incredibly beautiful.
Rosy complexions and fair hair are one thing, but beauty has a lot to
do with sharpness of features. And that is what Chapursan women have:
well-defined, clean-cut features.
It is only in Gojal and Hunza that one will chance upon a solitary
young woman, shovel on her shoulder merrily marching along on her way
to water a potato or wheat field. That she can go off into the
wilderness unaccompanied has a lot to say of a society that does not
threaten its womenfolk, a society at peace with itself.
This comes from education and not from sham belief in religion: remote
Chapursan has one hundred percent literacy. Little children that we
accosted on the way spoke perfect English and Urdu and possessed
impeccable manners. Most of the rest of us could take a leaf from this
book. And this has all come to be because of the good work of the Aga
Khan Foundation. I say, exterminate these politicians and let the Aga
Khan be King of Pakistan. He will turn us, including the Mehsuds and
sundry other creatures inhabiting that region, human.
--
Have an excellent day.
Moyez
Home (416) 510-8104
Mobile (647) 836-8767