Gilgit
Karakoram Highway, FANA Pakistan
11:30 pm – Monday, February 20, 2006 ::
It is pitch black now. Before the sun set, I had pressed my forehead to the glass like a child watching fireworks from the back seat of his father’s car. I tried a dozen times to take pictures, but had to give that up. I was missing too much. I decided just to sit back and soak in as much as I could. Mountains over 20,000 feet are so numerous here that they are not given names. Many of them have never been explored. I saw the sun set over nameless towers of stone that rise five and six thousand feet higher than any peak in North America. Now, nothing but whatever dirt and stone the headlights touch. We are bouncing along through some of the most beautiful country on earth. I should be resting. But I can’t sleep. The bus we have been riding for the past twelve hours slows and stops at a military checkpoint. Two or three soldiers board the bus and I hear a man questioning the driver. He points me out, and motions for me to come forward. I am asked for my passport. I’ve been warned repeatedly not to hand it over in a situation like this – just to show it. Of course, they don’t tell you that refusing to hand it over is bound to raise a few red flags. Folks don’t expect a white boy up in these parts at this time of night. What they do expect, though, is that when they’re holding a gun and ask you for something – you give it to them. We’re cool, man. We’re cool. That’s what you think at a time like this. I may have even said it aloud. I don’t know.
“America?” “Yes,” I say, “U.S.” No smile. No nothing. There is nothing more to explain. I am ushered off the bus, searched, and asked to sign the log book and meet the captain. “What you are here?” “I’m visiting friends in Gilgit.” I want to explain that I can barely stand up straight, that my legs are both asleep and I need to stretch. But in this particular situation on the side of a mountain in the middle of the night when you don’t speak the language and two men holding guns are wondering why you won’t let them hold your passport, you just stand still. Real still. My backside feels like I’ve got pineapples in my hip pockets. These buses aren’t big enough for anyone over six feet tall. Not even close. “You go back for bus.” Gladly, fellas. My pleasure.
The gentleman seated in front of me is drooling on the cracked glass and rusted frame of the window we share. This guy’s snoring is loud enough to have awakened several passengers who are now sitting up – wondering why I was taken off. (and I thought I’d fit in so well) A Jeep with a flashing light and a machine-gun mounted in its roll bars waits in front of us for vehicles to come from behind and join the convoy they are creating. Armed escort in front. Armed escort in back. It is common knowledge here that nobody travels alone through these areas at night. Not that they would. This means a bus. A car-load of locals. Nobody. In this part of the world, an ambush is just as common as a crash. Random acts of aggression against “outsiders” are as common as flat tires. Safety is not something anybody here is familiar with. It has been like this in Northern Pakistan for thousands of years. The only thing different about this road tonight is that there are vehicles running through these tribal territories on compressed natural gas instead of good grass hay and pasture with a watering hole.
We start off again around midnight. Safety in numbers. We are a convoy of six: two commercial buses; three Bedford trucks loaded with who knows what, and my favorite, a dusty old Toyota hatch-back that leaves the impression of having just fallen from the sky, miraculously still able to travel on through the dark over the rocks and dust. We must be close. We could be on one of Jupiter’s moons. I would believe it. I can see lights ahead in the distance, scattered on a hillside I can’t make out. Everyone is asleep again. Not me. Wide awake.
The escorts pull off just inside the gate to the city, which is a checkpoint surrounded by bunkers, sandbag structures with machine gun turrets and men asleep in tents beside. I am checked again – at gunpoint. I am searched like I will be searched in a week in Detroit: a dirty bearded man with a Pakistani visa – coming into the country with a bag full of things that absolutely must be dumped all over the Customs screening room floor and picked through with rubber gloves and a thousand questions. The Department of Homeland Security. Well, homeland security, suffice it to say, is something the troops in the Northern Areas of Pakistan are adept at providing. It’s just that they have a more hands-on approach to the job, literally. A search in the dark on a mountain road feels a bit more thorough than the same search in a line at the airport back home under cover of quick fluorescent lighting and video monitors. There is a difference. Need I be more specific?
We are greeted after my “security screening” by my good friend, Fareed. Fareed’s father owns the Gilgit Toyota dealership/mechanic-shop/cafe/grocery store – all those things. All under the same roof. The first thing he does is introduce me to his friend Abdul Kareem. And, yes, I did immediately know that I could never forget his name. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was one of my favorites. I just have to remember to reverse the first two names. Good. Got it. Abdul Kareem is a policeman, stationed in Gilgit. He is from Chorit. Chorit is the village we are headed to at the base of Nanga Parbat. His father owns a store there. Everyone knows everyone here. I am way out of place. It should come as no surprise that as we are standing in the parking lot of the bus terminal discussing why I need Kareem as an escort on my first night in Gilgit, some sort of firefight breaks out in the center of town. We can hear several bursts of small-arms fire, machine guns, rifles and pistols in a skirmish that holds my attention more than it does theirs. Mohammad Sharif and Shameem, my traveling companions explain that this is not uncommon, that the city has been under martial law for quite some time due to terrorist threat and almost constant sectarian violence. Sectarian violence. Now there’s an interesting topic. The Sunni and Shia Muslims in Gilgit have been fighting for who knows how long. Hundreds have died here in the last few years over various controversies. Welcome to Gilgit.
We spent that night in a hotel two blocks from the mosque (below) where, as we were doing our best to sleep, two or three gunmen fired off occasional bursts from the tower. In the photo, you can make out the holes in the structure from the returned fire. I slept a little. Kareem slept beside me with an AK-47 across his chest. We all slept with our shoes on. After breakfast the next morning we got out to check on the situation in the bazaar. Business as usual. I got to meet Kareem’s lieutenant, who had a few questions about my business in Gilgit. Nice guy. He shared, over tea, how they had to wait until daylight to get a clean shot at the guy in the tower who was doing most of the shooting. Apparently he was difficult to “get.” I would hope so. I have never been more awake – more alert – than I felt while exploring those streets that day. Gilgit town is amazing. It is more beautiful than I’d imagined. Certainly more deceptively beautiful. There are bunkers, guards, towers and guns on most busy corners. Regular army troops, mountain patrol and Ranger platoons are scattered throughout the city. Their presence is intentionally obvious – and as far as I am concerned – appreciated. I asked Kareem’s lieutenant about the damage to the back of the mosque. “Someone threw a grenade into the tower?” I asked. The lieutenant laughed and told us that no grenades were used. “No. No. Fifty!” He’s pointing to a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in a turret across the street. Behind me, above the clouds, Rakaposhi towers above Gilgit Town at 25,550 feet. Lamb kabob is sputtering in spicy oil in a gargantuan silver tub at my feet. Children are waiting for me to walk away from the lieutenant, their hands out – their bellies empty. There is no place on earth I would rather be.
KFC
January 11, 2006 :: Kashmiri Fried Chicken
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The nights in Kashmir have not been bitter cold. Our tent is spacious and warm. I imagine my family, back home – after dinner – the light around the fireplace, the television, finishing up the dishes in the kitchen and kids asking for stories. And that isn’t far from the way this feels. We are comfortable. The men, telling stories in their beautiful blend of Hindko and Urdu, continue on with tales which I am slowly realizing have been developing for thousands of years. I began, a few nights ago, picking up phrases and inflections in their voices as they traded between making fun of our expensive boots with the clumsy feet stuffed inside – and their deep gratitude for the aluminum sheet roofing and lumber we have brought into the mountains. We’re welcome guests, but that doesn’t mean we’re above their jokes. I am watching a young man named Wajid. His eyes tell me everything I need to know. Wajid smiles when Mr. Rashid mimics the exaggerated movements of my arms when I fell earlier in the day – hobbling up an embankment from the river. I chime in, “Yes, sir. But I didn’t roll all the way down the hill.” We are becoming friends.
Noor Mohammed, a village elder, told me he and his donkey met JFK in Karachi
It is 8:30 in the evening, about the time I’m ready to ask whether or not we will be eating anything anytime soon, when Mr. Rashid disappears into the stars outside the tent and brings back a large silver pot and a propane cooking stove. He sets these in the front of the tent – by the door – and begins pouring oil and other ingredients into the pot. Outside the tent, my ears single out the sounds of chickens being slaughtered. Ladies and gentleman, the captain has turned off the No Dinner sign – you are free to move about the tent and prepare for your meal. He was just playing with us, Mr. Rashid. He knew we were uncomfortably hungry. After all, he hiked us fifteen miles – up one side, and down the other of the range that separates his village from Balakot and the NWFP. I imagine him to have been biding his time, telling stories, and listening for some certain pitch in our groaning American stomachs. He’s all smiles as he begins separating chicken parts into various pots and pans. The tent is filling with smoke and the aroma of frying chicken. Men are coming from all over the village to sit in the tent. Chai and biscuits are passed around. This is going to be good.
If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have believed it. But Mr. Rashid fried the chicken without utensils. He used his fingers to put the chicken into the hot grease – and take it out again. I saw it with my own two eyes. Maybe noting for the record, at this point, that he is missing a finger would be appropriate. Check. When he finishes, he calls outside the tent and a young man comes and takes all the cooking bowls, plates, and pans outside to wash in the river. We look around at one another, as if to say, “Who will say grace?” There’s grace enough in our hearts.
We are offered first pick of the steaming hot fried chicken. No problem! There are piles of chipates and mounds of warm rice in the center of the tent. Everything is drizzled with ladels of a spicy curry sauce – and then it’s every man for himself. We pile chicken, rice and fresh yoghurt into our bowls and begin tearing the chipates apart to pick up the meal with our hands. That’s how it works. . Delicious. This morning, I eat the leftovers. This is our last morning in the mountains. Today, we will come down from the hills and return to Mansehra – then Islamabad – then home. As we rise and leave the tent to stretch in the sun, all is quiet. Peace. Today begins the Eid celebration. Everyone is inside, in their shelters, preparing their best clothes – washing their faces and hands. Fragrant sandalwood floats on the air. Today is special. I imagine the reverence of Christmas Eve back home. Only, in this memory, the focus has widened outward. We are not staring into a box lit by flourescent lights and flashing signs that funnel our attention onto goods and services, bags, papers and boxes. The blind rush of consumption has vanished; no malls, credit cards, traffic, designer outfits or out-of-town family arriving late to the dinner table with stories from the road. The people in these mountains don’t have to imagine all that – or push it back – into some dark, quiet abyss just to wind down the gears of automated existence. They only know the other, the peace that exists outside that world. And nothing matters now, to me, but a remembrance somewhat akin to that. A snowfall so brilliant – so heavy – I knew school would be closed by the time my teeth were brushed and Mom pulled the cool sheets tight around my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead and turned off the light. A train whistle vaporizing in the frozen night air hours later, while I stared between the curtains at the clean white road – and cars tucked beneath blankets of fresh powder. I will always remember this village the way I see it this particular morning. Fresh, and brand new. We are on the edge of something we cannot possibly have imagined. There is a silence here unlike any quiet I’ve heard. And I claim the sweet remembrance of it now, remembering that it did – at one time – exist in the early morning hours of my American childhood. I may not have known it since. I haven’t. But what is clear is that I didn’t possess the vision to notice that I had lost it – driven it away. I had forgotten it altogether. And that realization holds within it a quiet, lingering sadness that turns, somehow – inward – into joy.
We are somewhere northeast of Muzaffarabad, in the mountains that run long above the Vale of Kashmir, it is mid-morning. The river is soft and far away, ambling between stones that have rolled down onto the valley floor over the millenia. We hear the occasional cadence of gentle feet on the path above us, the muted jangle of goats’ bells as they wanders between familiar huts. You feel a quiet like this. I feel it now, staring into the black and white world of this machine, these words on the screen and my own children squealing over their games in the next room. But I am taken back there, to the mountains, where we learned somehow to grow accustomed to the sounds of other children laughing in a language we are infinitely unaware of. The business of the tea-house, and the usual goings on there are gone. This is all I know. I have seen something of the beauty that confuses both worlds. And this morning it grabs me by the shoulders and lifts me off the ground, static rising up my spine, the spark. Today, we will pray in an open air mosque with our brothers.
When the azaan comes, the words of the muezzin hang in the air like the fragrance of a hidden garden. Men are gathering where the mosque once stood. The front row of this auditorium is a line of torn woolen blankets stretched out in the dust – the podium, a dead tree. Goats and sheep are spectators here, as reverent as young boys giggling – pointing from the periphery at sisters leaning around trees up the hill to get a better look. Men from four villages are pouring themselves into the gathering. A mosque once stood here. But not one stone was left upon another. All of them have been thrown down. The children are shushed – the sun grows louder. When the imam begins his song, my ears go useless. I cannot hear him. I see his lips moving, but hear only the sound of my own breathing, my heart in my throat and the flow of 200 men falling prostrate on the ground in submission to whatever it is in each one’s heart that he finds himself willing to submit to. Each of us finds, I suppose, the object of his sweetest adoration when his lips touch the earth – the prayer ringing around us like a bell.
I am not a humble man. I can say that I am a simple man, but for that, I often find pride where humility ought to be. Humility doesn’t come naturally. It arrives when we stumble toward it, knowing that we don’t know, begging for help. And it isn’t very fun. In fact, it can be painful. There is an honesty there, in humility, that one dare not convey for too long a time. It is such an uncomfortable state; so uncomfortable, it makes those around us uneasy as well. We never stay long at anyone’s feet. We aren’t made that way.
Islam is an Arabic word that means “submission.” And submission, when and if it comes, comes with a healthy portion of humility, a medicine that is tremendously hard to swallow. It is flavored with dust and concrete, pride and resentment, pain and death. It has choked me to death all my life, because I have refused to swallow a little every day. I wait, holding on to it. I wait until I am flat on my face on the side of a mountain, realizing that it is almost too late. Why do I hold on to what hurts me the most, and refuse to let it go? Why would I – why would anyone – deny that this is our true condition? So, as we lay flat on our faces on a site where a mosque once stood, the very spot where friends lost their lives, pieces of useless pride are chipped away. Clearly, in submission – when we bow our will to Allah’s – the miracle of grace happens. This is how God shows love. This is why we pray in the first place. It is an act of obedience.
The apostle Paul said, very clearly, that grace is what saves a man, (Ephesians 2:8) not his own actions. Not his belief in a set of rules or rituals. Not his willingness to say prayers or give money to the poor. It is by grace that we are saved through faith. And we are saved from ourselves – not some outside influence. We are saved from hate, fear, prejudice and pride. But the most interesting thing is that Salvation requires faith. And faith isn’t something one can choose – or even deny. Believers all over the world agree that, when belief and faith have come, they have come as a gift from Allah, from God. We do not possess the heart to choose faith. We do not even trust a stranger we meet on the street! And how much less the invisible force that spins the stars into being?
When we stand as the prayers are ended, each man wades into the sea of his brothers – each embracing the members of his community – to say two simple words: “Eid Mubarak!” (Blessed Celebration) I cannot expalin this here. Imagine colliding with burning planets, or beings spinning, wrapped in wings. This is fellowship. No words but what follows, as the declaration of my heart, are adequate:
ASH-HADU ANLA ILAHA ILLA-ALLAH
WA ASH-HADU ANNA MOHAMMADAN RASUL-ALLAH.