 Peshawar,
continued
Remember that we designed the
whole itinerary around reaching Kashgar's Sunday Market, the biggest weekly
bazaar in Asia. We fantasized about having first pickings of all kinds of ancient beads
and ethnic bric-a-brac "pouring out of" the neighboring ex-Soviet republics.
This plan shows that we didn't have a clue about the economics of what I'll call
"natural trade," the process of a whole people digging out their family
heirlooms (incl. national "heirlooms" liberated from graves and archeological
sites) for cash.
We'd seen it in Thailand, which was flooded with
ancient Burmese booty. We might have thought at the time that we'd find more or better or
cheaper stuff if we'd actually gone to Burma. We would have been mistaken. Now, I'd wager
we'd be too far up the chain of grave robbers and middle men to see any retail business
(unless you knew the right people and flashed around some cash).
Kashgar, if it played much of a role in the
natural trade at all, had no retail outlets.
But Peshawar! Peshawar was the mother lode.
Another chunk of global economic knowledge fell into place. If you have any hope at all
for a shopping spree in ethnic treasures, you have to find the city where the foreign
wholesalers go. That's where all the middle men in the regional trade routes converge.
That's where enough stuff is surfacing for the wholesalers to open shops for walk-in
customers like big smiling Yankees.
Well, okay, we weren't smiling yet. I was sullen
and he was irritated but we set off to find what Peshawar had to offer. The guidebook said
go to Andar Shah Bazaar for jewelry so we took our hike through the grimy streets
in that direction.
The bazaar was an area where the 3- and 4-story
buildings, with ancient carved lintels and balconies full of flowers, had gradually grown
together through a crazy quilt of canopies that turned the narrow streets and alleys into
dark mazes. We were disappointed. All we saw was shop after shop of newly made gemstone
and gold crap. Not that it was shipped in from some factory in Taiwan. The tiny blocks of
tiny shops gave way to tiny alleys. Along these alleys where a honeycomb of workshops no
bigger than walk-in closets, where men squatted at their anvils fabricating the perfectly
uniform gold chains.
We trudged along. An old man in a turban
beckoned to us. We ignored him. He beckoned again pointing toward a narrow passage off a
tiny alley. We were suspicious. What did he want from us? The whole bazaar was dark and
creepy enough, with the kohl-eyed men and women in shadowy floor-length burqas.
And yet there are those moments in life when you just have to stop worrying and follow a
beckoning stranger. We'd followed Igbal Alam and got a proper (if expensive) initiation
into our journey. We'd followed Najeeb and gained a guardian angel.
We slipped behind him into the passage. A sign
said Afghan Jewelry — it was a miniature shop stuffed with beaded necklaces
— lapis lazuli, carnelian, and ancient faience. Next to that shop was another, and
another, and another. We found ourselves in an ancient, small-scale, four-story shopping
mall built around a courtyard. Men and boys lounged on the shop floors on carpets and
pillows, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes and inviting us to look at their beej.
"Old," they would say. "Old."
 It didn't take
a genius to see that row upon row of identically carved and identically strung
lapis lazuli beads were not ancient. But there were some special beads — not that my
eye was as educated as it is now. I kept passing up ancient faience and excavated bronze
beads for cheaper glass baubles. Jim was better at zeroing in on the archeological
rather than pretty. He bought some necklaces that I immediately snatched into my
possession once I got home and began checking my reference books.
The bargaining was a workout. Some of the shops
had stacks of Persian miniatures that Jim was inclined to sort through. At the first
spark of interest, we would be offered green tea (or, if we were lucky, a cold orange
Fanta). If we wanted to know a price, they wrote it on a slip of paper. If we took the
next step of writing down a counteroffer, the die was cast. Without speaking more than a
handful of English words, they wouldn't let us leave without closing a deal, passing the
paper back and forth and engaging in any histrionics necessary to express dismay at the
unacceptability of the other's offer. Again Jim showed his stamina. He could drink the
hot tea, sweat buckets, and take all the time he needed to get just the items he wanted
(no more) at a satisfactory price. I was usually a wild woman by the time his deals
closed. It took us several trips to work our way through all the shops.
Then there were the carpet merchants.
Jim discovered their shops on his own during late afternoon walks around our hotel. They were
the most aggressive, the most desperate, often refugees themselves making trips back and
forth to the border crossing at Landi Kotal to pick up more inventory. The fact the
Jim bought a few small Turkmen items (both of us falling for the rich reds and
abstract designs) made him much loved and sought after.
The night before our flight to Karachi, an
Afghan émigré named Mohammed showed up at our hotel door about 7 P.M. He was fresh from
Landi Kotal, with a pile of rolled carpets on his shoulder. "Great boukharas!"
He pushed his way into the room and began dumping them on the bed. "I know your
taste!" He was headed back there the next day and needed cash. On his ebullience
alone, we bought two carpets.
Buying carpets from Afghan refugees was the
first factor leading to our subsequent arrest. |