A Tourist in the Khyber Pass
Pakistan
They smile back at my camera, friendly yet defiant, these Pathans, tribesmen of Afghanistan and the Northwest Province of Pakistan. They stand behind the taxi, arms folded, teeth bared, my traveling companions from the border of Afghanistan to the black market town of Landikotal in Pakistan.
My experiences, in the spring of 1979, were those of a Westerner, a ferangi, among the fiercely independent Pathans. Shortly after that trip, the Khyber Pass became the route of flight from the Soviet invasion for thousands of Afghan refugees. The Pathans I encountered were a proud people whose spirit transcended the cultural and linguistic barriers that separated us. Their homeland, a lunar landscape consisting of barren plains broken by craggy hills, is a testament to their spirit of independence.
I had left Peshawar in northwest Pakistan that Sunday morning in the company of three teachers from the American International School of Kabul. We had been attending a conference together and, as I had another day before my return flight to New Delhi, I decided on the spur of the moment to travel with them in their jeep as far as the Afghan border. They were returning to Kabul via the Grand Trunk Road, the major artery that winds its way across northern India and Pakistan into Afghanistan. As such, it is the principal conduit for trucks, buses, cars and motorcycles as well as bullock and camel-drawn carts, and even cyclists and pedestrians.
Forty-five minutes west of Peshawar we passed through the stone gateway marking the beginning of the Khyber Pass. A nearby sign carried the warning:
Foreigners are advised not to leave the main road.
Definitely good advice, as the area was occupied by tribesmen who had never been conquered by the British colonial armies and were reluctant to cede any control to the Pakistani police. (Friends in Islamabad, the capital, claimed that a few killings in the Khyber Pass area made the newspaper, but that most went unreported.)
The road ran between small, mud-walled villages with heavy, padlocked gates. In this area of scant vegetation the sun-baked village walls were pierced with rifle slots; their inhabitants were only rarely glimpsed. All this was in sharp contrast to the sprawling, teeming villages of the India of my travels. Abandoned stone forts stood menacingly above the narrow defiles through which we passed.
Landikotal, the last Pakistani town before the Afghan border was reminiscent of the setting for a low-budget western. Bearded, rifle-toting men lounged in the street; there were no women to be seen. I joked about. As I reached into my bag for my Minolta to take a few photos, my traveling companions warned that I might provoke a few shots in return. None of them was smiling.
As we left Landikotal for the border my next impression was that I had discovered the final resting place for 1955 Chevys and Dodges. There were a dozen or so of these classic sedans and vans operating as taxis over the tortuous eight-mile stretch of road between Landikotal and the border. However, a car lover would have cringed to see one of these classics weighted down with twenty passengers inside, in the trunk, and on the roof.
I left my companions at the border immigration office and headed back alone for Peshawar. Having hidden a few 50-rupee notes deep in my pocket for fear of pickpockets, I was amazed at the number of moneychangers, some just children, who approached me waving handfuls of high denomination rupees, afghanis, marks and dollars. When I stopped to take pictures of some brightly decorated, and heavily overloaded, trucks and their proud drivers near the border, one young assistant driver wrote his name and address in Urdu script so that I could sent him a print.
Hitchhiking did not seem appropriate, so I bargained for a seat in one of the private taxis going back to Landikotal. The only Chevy left at the border had refused to jump-start for the two men pushing it back and forth over the same thirty-foot stretch. Then a small black Russian car rolled up and the driver asked “Taxi?” I nodded and was ushered into the back seat where, for five rupees, I was allowed to carry my bag, instead of another passenger, on my lap. There were nine of us in a compact car, which, in most situations, would have comfortably accommodated four. The driver and other passengers seemed delighted to have me aboard. Almost too happy.
Then my imagination took over. I remembered stories of entire British regiments slaughtered by the ancestors of these Pathan tribesmen. What was I doing in an area where the cottage industries were drug-trafficking and arms manufacture? I had heard tales of innocent picnickers kidnapped and held for ransom. After a few minutes I was convinced that my fellow passengers were plotting to slit my throat and take my passport and money.
In desperation I forced a smile and struck up a conversation with the passenger on my left, a man my age in tattered clothes. (I felt so out of place in my rugby shirt and jeans.) He had seemed friendly enough, smiling occasionally as we bounced up the mountain road. Fortunately, he knew some English, as my Hindi was minimal and Pushtu, the local dialect, nonexistent. By dint of gestures and broken phrases we managed to exchange small talk about our families, and realized that we both had a wife, young son and daughter waiting for us at home. I managed to produce a picture of my family that he admired. In this moment of small talk I realized that I was not going to be robbed and murdered, my body left to rot in this desolate area. Instead, each of us would return to his family with the story of a friendly stranger we had met.
Twenty minutes later I crawled out of the car, took the memorable photo of my fellow passengers and the driver, and set off in search of the train station. I was hoping to catch the weekly train that reportedly ran between Landikotal and Peshawar. Local businessmen approached with offers: “Change money, sahib?…Sahib like hash?…Good gun, sahib?” Smiling, I declined all offers and meekly replied that hashish and guns were against my religion, in the hope that I would not offend any of my new friends.
When I inquired about a train to Peshawar I was treated like the village idiot and hustled aboard a dilapidated bus that was awaiting a full compliment of passengers before setting off. The elderly man with whom I shared a seat offered me some local grapes. I gladly accepted a few, not caring what they had been grown with. Then, a bearded tribesman, cradling a long rifle, boarded the bus. He took a seat several rows behind me and I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head. I felt conspicuous in my striped western shirt and slunk down in my seat to afford a smaller target.
During the two-hour, two-rupee bus ride back to Peshawar I stole glances at my fellow passengers. Two of them kept spitting on the floor after placing a wad of hashish between cheek and gum. The gun-toter refused to return my feeble smile. When several chawdri-clad women got on the bus I was careful to avert my eyes. I had heard that Pathan men were violently possessive of their women. Finally, the rifleman disembarked near the “Foreigners beware!” sign, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
I calculated that my chances of reaching Peshawar alive had just improved. Now, all I had to worry about was surviving a head-on collision as I watched our bus hurtle down the middle of the Grand Trunk Road, swerving at the last minute before smashing into another bus or truck.
Later that evening, a hundred miles east in Rawalpindi, a fellow bus rider spotted the bundle of copperware I had purchased in Peshawar. Pointing to the copper, he questioned in broken English, “Peshawar?…Pathans?” Then, to my affirmative nods, he asserted, “Pathans very bad!”
Thinking back to my friends who had posed proudly around the taxi in Landikotal, I had to smile.
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