PAKISTAN - Men and Boys, Women and Children

MEN & BOYS, WOMEN & CHILDREN, PAKISTAN 1979

by CLARE BRETT SMITH

Photographer/Writer, Clare Brett Smith, on the trail to Baltit Fort with a volunteer guide. Hunza 1979

Men & Boys, Women & Children, Pakistan 1979 A Portfolio and Travel Memoir

by Clare Brett Smith

MEN & BOYS, WOMEN & CHILDREN in PAKISTAN I have always liked the idea of being as invisible as Cartier-Bresson, of being able to photograph as he did without intruding or changing anything. In northern Pakistan I was certainly visible but not really noticed. Muslim women stay at home, protected by their men, and if I were native-born, a begum sahib, I would have been at home too. But because I was a foreign woman, a mem-sahib, and permitted by the men in my family to roam the world, I was considered unimportant or unchaste — or both.

To be so inconsequential is not good for one's pride, but it's a real asset for taking pictures. Men posed easily for my camera, and boys were so eager I had to chase them out of my line of sight. The markets were full of men, buyers and sellers. Men were the secretaries and even the house servants were men. I saw almost no women out in public in the NorthWest Frontier Province or the Northern Areas, and the few I saw were shrouded in bourkhas.

Most of the women I photographed were in their homes and were women to whom I had been properly introduced.

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As a middle-aged foreign lady, I could go almost anywhere. I could sit in the front room with my husband and our hosts and visit the women's quarters too, something my husband could not do. I could have tea beside the road, talk with the border guards, even walk through the fields alone.

Classified somewhere between gypsies and 19th Century English ladies, I was exempt from the dress code. I could never have managed my cameras under a bourkha.

Walking by myself along the river in Swat, I quickly realized that my freedom was not really a privilege. A woman alone is unprotected and outside society. No one smiled at me, not even the children, and women, bent over tending their lentils, chillies and opium poppies, scarcely looked up. Old men glared and young men jostled me. I was glad I could not understand what they said. I understood the tone all too well. It was a different world when, the next afternoon, my husband and I strolled together along the same riverside path. People came out from their doorways and stood up from their gardens to wave. They offered chai and we heard their softly murmured, Salaam Aleikums, their traditional peaceful and respectful Muslim greetings.

Clare Brett Smith, February 2010 3

MEN & BOYS

Peshawar bus

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Rawalpindi Bazaar

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Metal Shop in the Hunza Bazaar 6

Charpoy Vendors in Rawalpindi

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Gilgit

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Hunza 9

Guard at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border 10

Checkpoint on the Karakoram Highway 11

Tailor's stall in the Gilgit Bazaar 12

Shoe salesman in Rawalpindi

Serving tea in the bazaar

Serving goats' heads by the roadside

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FASHION In Gilgit, Hunza and throughout the Yasin Valley, men wear a traditional coat of handwoven wool tweed called "Patti", often embroidered with flowers, as if to decorate the exceptionally handsome men of the region. Sleeves are far longer than needed, so they are thrown over the shoulder Sinatra-style.

The characteristic rolled brim hats became famous on American TV when CBS anchor, Dan Rather, wore one after his visit to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion. Other hat styles, in the Gilgit and Hunza markets, identify traders from nearby Afghanistan, China and Tajikstan. The similarity between the round hats and the round stone of the walls and buildings is striking.

Henna Dye 14

Yasin's own Omar Sharif

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A handsome lad, one of many 16

Fine Feathers in Gilgit 17

"Patti "weaver at his pit loom in Hunza

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Tailor & hat maker in Gilgit

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In the Gilit Bazaar

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Playing a small tin pipe in Gilgit

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Boys in Gilgit 22

School for Boys, Yasin There were no schools here for girls in the late 70s.

Now there are, through the work of the Aga Khan's development foundation and Greg Mortenson's construction of schools, described in his book, THREE CUPS OF TEA.

WOMEN

Pakistan Day Parade, Islamabad

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Bus station, Peshawar 25

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Shopping at the Rawalpindi Bazaar

In the fields, Taxila 27

The Protective Miller.

He and his family produce flour with a small set of grindstones set into a stream that runs into the Gilgit River.

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Daughters are cherished too.

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Gypsies are a race apart and are not troubled with headgear

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The wife of Yasin's rajah, in the typical head wrap of the region.

In the Northern Areas women are not completely hidden but wear shawls, or chadors, often draped over high stiff brocade hats.

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en route to Yasin

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Muna Khan, properly covered, arriving in Barkulti. Ahead, her father is welcomed.

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In the Women's Quarters,Yasin It's cold in the Yasin Valley, even in summer, and houses were often built into the hillside. Light streams down through a square in the timbered roof onto the central cooking area, and low beds circle the hearth.

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Home, partly underground, in Yasin 35

Young wives and newborn baby,. The baby's face has been treated with a paste of ground ibex horn to keep his skin from drying out in the high thin air.

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Mother and son, Yasin 37

Old woman with goiter 38

Young woman spinning in Barkulti

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Burge, my husband, with a bee-keeper A bee-keeper's netted head made obvious sense but only intensified my aversion to the encumbering and stifling head covering required of women in many Muslim countries.

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AFZAL & SUNNY KHAN When we met the Khans in Connecticut, they were refugees. Warned of an assassination attempt by the Bhutto government, and black-listed in Pakistan, in1972 they fled their many houses, flourishing enterprises, friends and relatives.

Staying briefy in Kabul, Teheran, Spain and finally, through their association with Arbor Acres, they and their six children settled here. We had no idea of their former life, a life of servants and rose gardens. They had been socially prominent and renowned for military service and high government positions. We only knew them as recent arrivals from Pakistan and we admired how adaptable and optimistic they were.

Sunny & Afzal at the Rakaposhi Hotel in Hunza 41

The children were popular wherever they went — public schools, after-school jobs at places like Bonanza Steak House — and Sunny & Afzal's sociability, hospitality and entrepreneurial natures made them popular too. We liked them immediately. Running their poultry businesses in Pakistan from here, but unable to get money out of Pakistan, they shipped pottery and textiles to our small craft import business, cleverly turning crafts into a few dollars.

Eventually their fortunes turned and, when they returned to Pakistan, they encouraged us to visit. This is the story, part of it at any rate, of that visit.

Sunny & Afzal are both dead now, but they had read the journal I was keeping at the time and would not be surprised. I hope they would be pleased.

Thirty years ago the vast difference in the roles of men and women in Pakistan was what I noticed most, and the photographs in the first part of this book make that obvious. I was amazed that educated and sophisticated women, like Sunny Khan and her daughters, were able to live so easily in such contrasting worlds. Free as only an American woman can be, I wonder if I could have made that kind of transition with such grace.

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"Aunty", Surina and Puchi Khan in the living room, Islamabad

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Sunny Khan at home in Islamabad

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Muna Khan

Afzal & Clare, roadside tea shop

Puchi Khan & Abbottabad caretaker

In Islamabad, Lady Vicky Noon & Afzal A well-known philanthropist, she was the widow of the statesman, Sir Firaz Khan. Like the heroines of M.M.Kaye's FAR PAVILIONS, she had her share of adventure, during Partition (1947), when she escaped from her burning home and hid with Hindu friends.

In Swat, Prince Aurangzeb & his wife, Nassim, and their two daughters, Fakri and Ashat Aurangzeb is the son and heir of the then-reigning Wali of Swat, a title dating back to the days of the Raj. Only an advisory role. it's still a prestigous one.

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Chickens from Arbor Acres were known worldwide, and the breeding stock from Glastonbury, Connecticut was the basis of Afzal Khan's everexpanding chicken business in Pakistan. His farm had a distinctly military air about it, no "little red hen" atmosphere at all.

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House Servant 47

Grandson of the Wali of Swat, with pet goose 48

We were guests in the home of Prince Aurangzeb in Swat.

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Orphan girls in Swat: Their future depends on belonging to a male-headed family and the orphanage, a favorite charity of Nassim, daughter-in-law of the Wali, would help to arrange suitable marriages.

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Aurangzeb's lively daughter, shown here at home in Swat, would soon leave for an English University 51

Habib Ur Rahman, bearer for the Khans, an all-purpose job, a sort of major-domo 52

Nazish Ata-Ullah in Lahore, family friend of the Khans.

A member of the famous mountaineering family, she guided us on a different sort of expedition, buying a carpet for our Connecticut living room.

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FOR ALL THE SERENITY IN THE COUNTRYSIDE, THERE WERE DISTURBING SIGNS OF UNREST IN THE CITIES AND TOWNS ALONG THE ROAD 1979 was a tense time in Pakistan — as now. General Zia was President and, former Prime Minister Bhutto, father of the late Benazir Bhutto, was imprisoned, some thought unjustly, and was hanged during our stay. We noticed a surveillance car that followed Afzal everywhere. We noticed black ribbons flying on the trucks, said to be in mourning for Bhutto. At the Afghanistan border we saw Russian soldiers, eight months before the actual Russian invasion, and we were offered guns, drugs, dollars and counterfeit dollars (only slightly cheaper) in the Lodi Kotal bazaar. We saw the stone bunkrooms and kitchen gardens built by Chinese workers, when they built the Karakoram Highway that opened the road to China.

We heard mortar fire in the valley west of us, but were told it was only dynamite in the ruby mines. We met a political activist (Afghan but New York based) who, disappointed that we were not with the New York Times, invited us anyway to an uprising in support of the mujahadeen against the communist-led Afghan government (the same mujahadeen who later became the Taliban). Rumors sped via servants and drivers, but reliable news only came from the twice-daily BBC broadcasts. It was — and still is — hard to know the truth of anything.

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City Street, Movie Posters, in Mardan

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Signs of unrest - Afghans fleeing to Pakistan and a Russian guard at the Khyber Pass

Tanks in the Pakistan Day Parade and trucks from the north flying black pennants 56

Guns and Guards, a common sight in Peshawar

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Said Ahmed Gailani, descended from an Afghani saint, revered and supported by worshippers at his ancestor's shrine, waited in Peshawar for trustworthy news from the BBC

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Political Activist Zia Khan Nassry & Gailani: Nassry had suggested we visit the scheduled March 28th uprising..

He had also been arranging shipments of grain into Afghanistan.Then, as now, the need was great. Only the soldiers are different.

IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD TIME TO BE OUT OF TOWN. We were among the first tourists to travel the new Karakoram Highway in April 1979 and, at one point, our car could not get over the rockslide. We climbed over and rented a van on the other side.

We were always able to find places to stay as the British system of guesthouses still existed, usually about 12 miles apart, a day's ride by horseback.

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Robert Ross and Muna Khan in the substitute van

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Heavy trucks are hard on the unstable roadbed of the new KKH

The Indus River snakes through the forbidding rock slopes of the Karakorams and the highway runs alongside it, stretching 800 miles from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, to the Chinese border, through great mountain ranges, the Karakorams and the Hindu Kush.

Hundreds of workers, Pakistani and Chinese, died during the construction of the KKH, most of them killed by crashing boulders. The rock is unstable, and engineers expected landslides for thirty more years.

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Refugees from Afghanistan beside the highway? Or were they tribal people for whom the Karakoram Highway was their first outside contact, and a chance for medical help out in the world? With no common language, we could not tell.

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TRAVELING BACK IN TIME We saw a lot of the country, a beautiful land, ancient and pastoral, with camels, water wheels, soldiers and shepherds. History surrounded us as I was reading THE MEMOIRS OF THE EMPEROR BABUR, the Mughal conqueror (1425-1530), and UP THE COUNTRY, the letters of Lady Emily Eden (1797-1869), sister of Lord Auckland, the Governor General of India — an unusual pair of guidebooks!

We saw the gentle farmlands near Taxila, where archaeologists have found hundreds of sites and relics from the great Buddhist kingdom of Gandhara. We stayed in Swat with the family of the Wali of Swat, then a serene and lovely place. It has been sad to hear it described now as a Taliban battlefield. But most of our time was concentrated among the northern mountains and valleys of the upper Indus River.

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Late Afternoon in Taxila

Tongas in Taxila 65

Taxila maize fields 66

Farmhouse in Abbottabad 67

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In Taxila

Irrigation system,Taxila 69

Riding out from the Tribal Lands 70

FURTHER INTO THE MOUNTAINS We had always wanted to see the great mountains, K2, Nanga Parbat and Rakaposhi, but not to climb them! They are far too difficult for us, or for anyone except experienced mountaineers, but to see their peaks and snowfields, so many thousands of feet above us and the orchards so far below, made the strenuous journey up the KKH exhilarating.

We stayed in Gilgit, the main town of Gilgit-Baldistan (formerly called the Northern Areas) and in Hunza, the model, so they say, for Shangri-La, a paradise imagined byJames Hilton in his popular 1933 novel, LOST HORIZON, and famous, too, for the longevity of its people.

Our destination was beyond Hunza, higher and westward, toward the pass of Baroghil, into the Yasin Valley. That was literally the high point for me, about 12,000 feet, where I was dazed by altitude and dazzled by the extraordinarygood looks of the people. The remote village of Barkulti was the ancestral village of Afzal's grandmother, Aysha, from which she had been abducted by his grandfather, Sirdar Samad Khan, many years before.

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The Hunza Valley at spring planting time

Below the Baltit Fort in Hunza 73

Guarding the Yasin Valley 74

The Yasin Valley

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In earlier times the chief of every village was a Rajah, but not often nowadays. This is the leader of the village of Yasin.

Opposite page — he greets Afzal Khan. Someone had been dispatched from our hotel in Hunza to alert the villages of Yasin and Barkulti that Afzal, his wife and a daughter would be making another formal vist. Afzal had last visited seventeen years earlier.

I was fortunate that there was enough room in the jeep for me too.

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Barkulti: Afzal Khan standing at the center with the men of his grandmother's tribe

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Waiting to be chosen, four young would-be brides. It had been rumored that Afzal and Sunny's visit to Barkulti would include selecting a bride for their eldest son. There was also hope that they would finance a new dam for the river.

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A SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITY Afzal, who, years earlier, had financed a boy from the village all the way through medical school, offered Shukur (center) a chance to come with us to Abbottabad and further his education and prospects. The teacher (center without hat) said he was the best student. We swept him up but, on the road home, Shukur became uncontrollably carsick. Afzal dropped him off beside the road immediately, but assured me that people would help the boy, and that he would make his way, in a week or so, to Abbottabad for the promised education. And so he did.

I wondered how this sudden upheaval would affect him, and, I heard later, that he had not adjusted well. He did not understand his place, either with the family, or with the servants, and had been sent home.

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Shukur at the Barkulti village meeting

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Friendly greetings in the Gilgit Bazaar 82

This chieftain stood under a colorful shamiana, a patchwork cloth used throughout Pakistan for any ceremony, from a wedding to the opening of a telephone relay center. This shamiana celebrated a polo match in Gilgit and the Shamiana below identifies a carpet weaving center in Lahore.

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Libraries were comfortingly familiar and this one was full of English books from the days of the Raj, as well as a set of Tarzan books. Ibex horns, on a housetop, mythical beasts to us, were ordinary trophies here.

In the Yasin Valley. beside the Gilgit River, where the water was low enough to see petroglyphs on the smooth boulders.

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I bought a basket from the maker in Hunza. I've always liked and collected useful baskets, although this one, of red osier, was too heavy and eventually I had to leave it behind.

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Here in the northern mountain valleys WE were the curiosities.

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A woman tending sheep in the clouds above Hunza, a real "Lost Horizon"

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The Karakorams

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All rights reserved Š Clare Brett Smith February 1, 2010

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1979: Burge, my companion in travel and life, walking along an irrigation channel in Hunza

Men & Boys, Women & Children, Pakistan 1979 Š Clare Brett Smith February 1, 2010