 Peshawar
After so much time at 4000 feet and above, Peshawar was
an airless swamp. Once again, I had that sinking feeling. Why were we here? What were
we thinking? We arrived at Dean's Hotel about 7 P.M. Dean's was another colonial
relic, a proto-motel like most of the others, rooms around a driveway and scruffy gardens.
Our welcome mat was a note from Najeeb. Amid
escorting tour groups between Islamabad and Peshawar, our guardian angel had been in a
panic over our whereabouts. He'd expected us to come into Islamabad on the Gilgit flight
and had a car waiting for us. When he found out about the situation in Gilgit, he had all
his friends looking for us, but we'd disappeared. "I was much worried about
you," he wrote. But he'd counted on our surfacing at Dean's and arranged the travel
agency rate for our room.
Our suite wasn't quite the "VIP" quarters
we'd had in Gilgit. In the sweltering heat, the air conditioner kept tripping the circuit
breaker and the bathroom hosted a menagerie of large and small ants. I curled up on the
bed staring at a gekko working his way across the wall. The next morning I was still
curled there and didn't see why we had to go out at all. We were going to be in this
stinking hell for the next 7 days, couldn't I just take a damn break from everything?
Jim didn't understand. He already had a list
of things to do, starting with finding the PIA office to change our Karachi connector
flight from Rawalpindi to Peshawar. I've never understood his mental stamina. Maybe he's
the type who makes a great prisoner of war (shaving every day and organizing games to keep
up everyone's morale). I'd be the one blubbering in the corner, retreating into my own
fantasy world, scribbling lunatic notes on the wall with a quarter-inch length of pencil
lead.
So I was sullen and he was irritated, but
together we headed out into the melting sun to once again find our way around a new city.
Peshawar is not a light-hearted place. It is the
main city on the border with Afghanistan, gateway to a war-torn land never conquered by a
foreign power yet always their target. The Soviets had finally been ousted, but struggles
among internal factions kept the battle mentality alive. Refugees came and went, depending
on whose side was in power.
We devoured the local English newspaper while we
were there, and never was there a hint at impatience or irritation with the heavy demands
the refugee camps put on Pakistani generosity. I assume it's because the primary ethnic
group in the province surrounding Peshawar and then into Afghanistan are the
Pashtuns, who
see themselves as an unconquered warrior tribe with no use for national borders. They
speak pashtoon which, we were told, is so rough-sounding that every conversation
sounds like an argument. "If you want to speak pashtoon, fill a box with
stones and shake it."
Their unforgiving code of justice is legendary.
"An eye for an eye" is for weenies. "A life for an eye" is more like
it. A wife or a child is swiftly killed at the first suspicion of faithlessness. Families
live in walled fortresses, but the walls are only made of clay so that they can easily
rebuild after one of the skirmishes in their lifelong feuds.
 As we dragged ourselves along in the
dank 100-degree air, the only women we saw were covered head to toe in black burqas,
with cagelike mesh over their eyes to allow them to see. Many of the men dyed their hair
with henna and lined their eyes with kohl to ward off the evil eye.
But before I get into deeper into the dark side
of the Northwest Frontier, I have to tell you about… the shopping. It's important as
a phenomenon in itself, but also because, at the end, it nearly cost us our freedom.
CONTINUED>>>
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