ON THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER... No-one complains when a man takes his shotgun to church

Press, 26 December 1984, Page 15

ON THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER... No-one complains when a man takes his shotgun to church

LEN McGRANE,

of Greymouth, written from the Swat Valley,

160 kilometres north of Peshawar, in North-West Pakistan, where he is on business. He has a B.A. from the University of Canterbury, and a diploma in journalism.

A loaded shotgun was lying on the floor.

Nothing wrong with that in most circumstances, of course. A man might have a gun with him for one of any number of perfectly good reasons. He might be off to do some duck shooting, for instance. Or he might need to have one nearby to stop the enemies of his family shooting him like a duck. Here, in northern Pakistan, noone raises an eyebrow at a man with a loaded gun. Except when the gun is in the mosque. Yet this particular loaded shotgun was lying on the rush floor of the village mosque within easy reach of its owner. But he was a stranger so the villagers did not ask him to leave his weapon at the door. Every man has his own reasons for being careful, after all.

The man had arrived late for the Friday afternoon community prayers. He sat on the floor at the end of a long row of men and his gun was half a yard in front of him, just behind the bare feet of the next row of men.

When he bowed to the ground during the prayers his nose was only a few inches away from the well-handled gun stock. Halfway through the service a man in the row in front turned around and edged the barrel back a few inches; it had been getting in his way a little.

Few people said anything outside after the prayers, out of politeness, but those who did were chuckling at the audacity of the armed man who probably was not duck shooting. A gun had been brought into the same mosque about three months before. On that Friday a convoy of four or five Jeeps had burst into the village in the morning. They were loaded up with 20 or 25 Afghan freedom fighters. Big, tall men with heavy moustaches, turbans, and all carrying pistols, sten guns, or illegal Russian automatic rifles.

At the centre was a man who was, perhaps, in his thirties, of medium height with a handsome, well-kept beard, and dressed immaculately. A striking man. When the locals talked about him the next day they described him as “beautiful.” He was the commander of a small army of freedom fighters based in Peshawar, about 100 miles south of this little village. People say this group is one of the more effective of all the groups of anti-Russian Afghans. He had come here at the invitation of one of the leading men of the village and the group drove to the track that leads from the

bazaar to that man’s suite of guests rooms. After lunch the commander was to speak in the mosque. His men stood at the entrance to the building with their guns, carefully looking at everyone who went inside. The commander arrived about an hour before the time for B. People were already j in at that time and he began his speech. A couple of bodyguards stood near the microphone, watching the crowd and fingering their guns. The commander did not appear to have a gun himself.

He spoke about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, just 40 miles west of this village, over a range of mountains. The Russians had committed all sorts of atrocities there, he said, and it was the duty of Muslims to go into Afghanistan and fight until the invaders had been pushed out. He did not make a direct appeal for volunteers from the village but he did say that local people should be on the lookout for Russian agents. He, said many had slipped into Pakistan pretending to be refugees. Then he and his men joined in the prayers with everyone else, and later that day they went back down the valley in their little convoy. A week later a bomb went off in the Peshawar office of this group. The commander blamed Russian agents. A little later the Pakistan Government asked him and the commanders of the other groups of freedom fighters in Peshawar to move their headquarters out of the city. That had nothing to do with the visit to this little village, of course.

It’s just another pretty little farming settlement built above an icefed, blue-green river, surrounded by mountains higher than Mount Cook. Streams of Pakistani tourists come through here during the hot months of summer for the view and a break. The Afghan freedom fighters had probably, come up for a pleasant day off as much as they came to oil up their connections with some of the village leaders and to speak out against the Russians.

It is a conservative village. Respectable housewives, therefore, keep themselves hidden from any men who are not members of their immediate family. This leads to some things that seem pretty strange to the average New Zealander.

For instance, if Mrs Mohammad Ali needs some potatoes, green vegetables, and a kilo of meat for the evening meal, she does not pop down to the corner store after Mr Mohammad Ali has gone to work. Mr Mohammad Ali has to go and buy them. Mrs Mohammad Ali might not be too put out by that, but how does she feel when it’s not food she wants from the bazaar but a new suit of clothes? Again, her husband has to buy the cloth. He will go to a shop, either give the shopkeeper a rough idea of what his wife wants, or be told by the shopkeeper what will be suitable for his wife, and take four or five rolls of cloth home with him on apro. Mrs Mohammad Ali has to make do with what he brings home. But her problems do not end there. Now the cloth has to be

made into a suit by a man tailor who will never see her. Either Mr Mohammad Ali will take all the measurements or an old suit to the tailor, or he will simply go to the tailor’s shop with the cloth and say his wife is “about my size,” or “small,” or whatever. Nevertheless, some women do have sewing machines and there are a few women tailors in the village. But the main point still stands: a housewife does not go shopping in this bazaar. Even in the big cities a hundred miles south of here are families which live like this. But in Peshawar, for instance, the city where the New Zealand cricket team played its first one-day match of its tour of Pakistan, the streets are full of women shopping or visiting in much the same way as women do in Christchurch. They are covered up with veils, but at least they are not sitting inside their own cramped homes for weeks on end without stepping outside their front door.

Another thing that is affected by this women-behind-locked-doors practice is the marriage ceremony. A wedding took place in this village in mid-November. One thousand five hundred invitations went out, but the real test of the family’s lavishness and popularity came on the second day of the three-day marriage. The day of the customary public feast. All the invited guests would be expected to come and eat, but all sorts of other people would also turn up for the food. Some of them would be poorer people from the mountains around the village. Some would be from the village, friends of people with invitations who would accompany the guests. Some would be neighbours who did not need invitations. Rumours were out that three thousands people might turn up. As it happened, it snowed on the mountains and rained in the village the night before the day of the feast. On the morning itself it was cold, bleak, and wet, and the road to the family home was muddy and puddled. People came in droves but it might have been a bigger affair had it had been a sunny, warm day. Still, no-one was unimpressed with the crowd. The father of the groom (and he was the key man since he had chosen the bride for the groom and arranged the wedding) is the “mayor” of the village and has a guest house built next to his own where he does his entertaining. No men outside the immediate family ever go into his actual home.

On the wet Second Day the men of the village came to the guest house, splashing through thhe puddle at the entrance to the courtyard, wrapped in blankets and some with umbrellas. The three rooms were full of men sitting cross-legged on the floor eating rice and meat; four men to one big

plate of food. Thhe long, L-shaped verandah was also full of men eating in two long rows; calling for extra side bowls of curry or loudly demanding more rice. Next to the guest house is a big home owned by the groom’s uncle. Two large rooms in there were also full of men eating off thick carpets; asking for water which the group of four would share from one cup. All this was done in relays. A group would form, find a space, eat and talk for 15 to 20 minutes, and then get up and find sandals so another group could sit down. At 2 o’clock it was still freezing cold although the rain had stopped. It was time for the groom’s father to go with his eldest, married, son and bring the bride from her home to the home of her new husband. The groom would wait behind. A police band played bag-pipes, one squawky oboe, and thumped drums in front of the guest house. The “mayor” had hired two buses, two trucks (to carry the dowry), four or five mini-buses, Suzuki runabouts, and Datsun pick-up trucks for the trip to the bride’s home, because anyone who wanted to go along was welcome to do so. Everyone did want to go, but at the same time most of those who remained of the crowd which had eaten the feast did not want to appear too keen. It was beneath their dignity to join in the free-for-all inside the buses and have to scramble for a seat. So people were muttering to their friends that really they did not want to go in the convoy.

Those who had their contacts in the mini-buses would try secretly to catch the eye of a driver who would then make a big show of waving them inside and making space for them. Others hoped they would be noticed by someone with a private car. But, by the time all other vehicles were full and moving out from the guest house, even the most dignified of those who were left behind managed to find a way to be satisfied and dignified in a space on one of the two open trucks. There were 30 vehicles in the procession and there could have been 300 men and boys jammed into them.

They drove about 15 miles up the river gorge to the girl’s family home. The dowry was brought out and loaded into the trucks. There were beds and chairs that had been made at considerable cost by the master carpenters of the Punjab, more than a 100 miles south of here; bedding, ornate storage boxes, and piles of things for the kitchen.

While this was going on the bride was probably saying a tearful farewell to her mother, although no-one went inside so you could not be sure. The time came for her to go. She was wrapped in a blanket because of the cold snap of the night before and squeezed on to a low stool. This was put inside a small cloth tent that the groom’s father had brought with him. That was strapped to a set of carrying poles and carried on men’s shoulders out to the open deck of a waiting Datsun.

Traditionally, this litter would have been taken on men’s shoulders all the way to the groom’s house. Today, the litter remains, but the men have been replaced by a small runabout. It’s a lot quicker, but has to be more dangerous for the bride perched on top of a careering Suzuki (or, in this case, a Datsun).

The bride was completely hidden from view, yet, while no-one could see her, no-one could miss the litter. It was bright green, studded with mirrors and draped with decorations. She rode in this at the head of the procession back down the cold, sodden gorge in clearing weather and weak sunshine.

Inside her new home she kept her face hidden for the rest of that afternoon and into Day three, when her new husband came to meet her. Women had .filled the house and cracked joke's at the groom. Eventually, after getting a hard time from his mother and the others, he had the veil lifted off the girl’s face and he got his first look at his wife.

He was about 33 years old. The bride was 15.

All this is taking place in a 160kilometre long valley that has got to be one of the most interesting in the whole of northern Pakistan, whatever way you look at it. It is an internationally important archeological site. The Aryans passed through here on their slow procession from Europe to India thousands of years ago. Their cemeteries and the ruins of some of their villages have-been excavated.

Alexander the Great apparently marched his army into India

through a pass at the bottom of this valley, three hundred years before Christ. Two thousand years ago the valley was a world centre for Buddhism. Chinese pilgrims who came up here have left journal accounts of the hundreds of monasteries and uncountable numbers of stone statues of the Buddha’s life.

Today, the pine forests and river beds are full of these statues. There is a fine collection of them in a well-kept museum in the administrative centre of the valley, the city of Saidu Sharif.

There are other “collections” as well. In this village is a shop selling wood and cloth handcrafts. Inside, where you cannot help but see it, 'is a Government notice warning those who might be tempted to buy Buddhist antiques on the black market that it is illegal and that anyone caught doing so would face a heavy fine. But if you ask the jovial shopkeeper he will take you into a dingy backroom crammed full of old wooden artifacts, move a few heavy boxes from one comer, bend down, grope into a dark shelf, and bring out a dozen stone statues of the Buddha and a number of busts. He would have bought them from local people who either stumbled across them in the forest or found them while they were ploughing • their fields. They are for sale.

■ If you are after something more exotic, though, local people will tell you about fabulous treasure troves of gold and precious stones buried by the Buddhists, or the Hindus who pushed them out of the valley about 1800 years ago, in longforgotten graves and secret caches

in the forest above the village. The locals believe and can show you “proof.” On boulders and rock outcrops they will point to strange carvings and curious man-made marks. They believe these are signs pointing to the places where treasures was buried ages ago. If they could decipher what these signs say they would be rich. They cannot, but they believe English people can. Again, they have ’‘proof.” They tell of Hippies who drifted up here in the late 1970 s for the view and the dope (small quantities of heroin and softer drugs are still on sale), found some ancient markings, creps into the forest at night, dug into the treasure sites, and scooted off with the loot. The valley has not been invaded by any army for more than 200 years. The British tried when they ruled India, but failed. Winston Churchill was involved in that campaign. At the bottom of the valley near the point where it plunges for thousands of feet, like the Otira Gorge, on to the plains, the little fort where he was stationed for a while is preserved and Churchill’s name is written in huge letters on a hillside. This independence, however, came to an end in 1968 because, while you might be able to keep foot soldiers out of the valley with rifles and bravery, you cannot stop jet fighters and bombers that way. So in 1968 the Pakistan Government “asked” for the valley and the king gracefully bowed out, having been suitably recompensed for his loss. What used to be his fabulous guest house, for state visitors, is now a hotel.