I'm not going to post a story until later tonight or tomorrow. For now just some preliminary remarks -- since the thread is up & running and I don't want Angelfive to populate it exclusively before I get to put in any comments.
The object of my summer 1999 travels was to join my fiancée, who was recently assigned to work in Moscow and whom I hadn't seen since March. But instead of getting on the plane and heading straight for Russia, I decided to take somewhat of a roundabout route. Thus my trip, which can be divided into three parts:
7. RickNelson - 10/4/1999 9:44:42 PM
PE,
Are the short, thin arrows over Kamchatka, helicopter flights? Or just site seeing planes? The sheer vastness of your travels are interesting in and of themselves. The wilderness you must have seen. The peoples. Sorry, to upper midwestern locals, gushing is obligatory.
9. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 10:40:15 PM
So where are you starting Pseuder? If we're voting I vote for Pakistan. Or else, the scholarly analysis of Stalin's nationalities possible.
Or else something exciting, absurd and funny. On second thoughts, I vote for that first of all.
10. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 10:40:25 PM
Iran
Few people realise how huge Iran is. It's half the size of India, four times the area of France, and nearly triple Texas's. Because of this, and especially since most people receive only 2 week visas, few foreigners ever get to do anything but scratch Iran's surface in a single visit. There's just too much to see, too many different regions to consider.
A propos which, I point to another little known fact about Iran: it is a successful multinational state. Iran doesn't have India's diversity, but it is probably more diverse than any other country in West Asia. For under the artificial label "Iranian" fall such totally different peoples as Armenians, Azeris, Baluchis, Turkmens, Arabs, Kurds, Luristanis, Pathans, Jews, Zoroastrians, as well as countless nomadic peoples some of whom haven't even been studied yet by anthropologists. Depending on who you ask, only between 60% to 65% of Iranians are ethnic Persians. The Azeris, Iran's second largest ethno-linguistic group, comprise probably a fifth of the population, making Iran home to more than twice the number of Azeri speakers found in the now independent former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
But the desingation "ethnic Persian" is not the same thing as "native speaker of Farsi" (the official language of the Islamic Republic of Iran). On the contrary, the latter group make up barely half the population.
11. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 10:43:27 PM
Iran (continued)
The much broader designation called ethnic Persian or Paarsii is analogous to the Han Chinese. That is, the Persians are the dominant group in Iran, the descendants of Aryan and "proto-Dravidian" peoples who built and populated the pre-Islamic Ancient Persia of Persepolis and Pasagardae. Yet just as the Han are not a linguistic unit but a congeries of linguistic groups dominated by Mandarin speakers, so Farsi is the primary but not the exclusive language of ethnic Persians. Speakers of Luri, Mandaranzani, and other related languages (totalling some 10 millions) are also "ethnically Persian" and look upon the non-Persian peoples of Iran as distinct and apart from them.
Here is an ethnolinguistic map of Iran. (Note: it's very large.) 
12. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 10:44:36 PM
Also, a map of Iran with all its provinces demarcated. (Please ignore the mutilated label belonging to the website I stole the map from.) 
Some of the provinces are named after its primary ethnic group (Azarbayan, Sistan-va-Baluchestan, Kordestan), but unsurprisingly, most of the minority groups are scattered across several provinces, or their namesake provinces have been partitioned into several different ones in order to divide the peoples. Fars Province is the ancient heartland of the Persian people, the seat of every great Persian empire from the Achaemenians to the Sassanids to the Mongol Timurids. (It's often said implausibly that the other great Persian empire, the Parthians, gave rise to the Hazara or the Harazagi, speakers of Persian in Afghanistan.)
13. joezan - 10/4/1999 10:46:07 PM
pseudo:
Did you happen upon any Wesleyan missionaries in your Russian travels? You passed through cities where our Church's two largest Russian missions are - Nizhniy Novgorod and Novosibirsk. Our third largest is in Vladimir.
Ah, well...we'll get you next time you pass through.
14. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 10:47:54 PM
OK, now to my own travels in Iran.
I arrived in Tehran from Munich with my best friend from university. He's half-German, half-Iranian. Although that makes him less mongrelised than me, I've always found he implicitly understood more than most what it's like to have been raised in several different cultures at once. (In the stories, I'll refer to his German name, Jens, which he never uses.)
Born in Tehran to a German mother and an Iranian father, Jens grew up in the loud, bustling, free-wheeling, glittering, sin-committing decadence of the Shah's Tehran of the 1970s. When the Iranian Revolution broke out in 1979 and the mullahs closed all the international schools in 1980, Jens's parents shipped son & daughter off to Munich to attend school there. Though affluent, the family had never been particularly political and altogether lacked connections to the Ancien Régime, so they stayed on in Iran as though nothing but the dress code & drinking habits had changed.
Although his (beautiful) sister continued to spend every summer in Tehran, Jens himself could not return to Iran until after the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) had ended, for he would have been draughted to fight in that awful butchery which claimed perhaps a million Iranian lives. When the war did finally end, he, along with thousands of other young male Iranian expatriates from Europe and the USA whose families lacked any ties with the Shah's regime, began visiting Iran once again. Although he now works as a banker in Frankfurt, Jens spends most of his annual six-week vacation in Iran.
15. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 10:48:58 PM
In 1994, I spent a month of my own vacation in Iran at his invitation. Inasmuch as Iran has a standard tourist trail at all, that's pretty much what I stuck to: the bustling megalopolis of Tehran; the glittering, sensual mosques of Esfahan; and the gardens and palaces of hedonistic Shiraz. Shiraz is also the standard staging ground for exploring the Ancient Persian ruins in the surrounding country, including the famed Perspolis, the city of Darius the Great. I also spent a week along the Caspian Sea coast, where I went sturgeon fishing with the locals.
Just to put my roving about in context, here is a map which traces the route I took through Iran: 
17. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 10:53:39 PM
RickNelson, #7
Yes, the two small arrows over Kamchatka represent helicopter flights. Which isn't as extravagant or costly as it sounds. But stayed tune to my reports on Kamchatka, which will come near the end of this thread.
JoeZan, #13
I've been to all those cities you mention, but that was on previous trips. The big red line from Moscow across Siberia until the Lake Baikal area represents a 4-day train journey on the Trans-Siberian. My fiancée and I didn't break the trip between Moscow and Ulan Ude. (Check out the first travel link for all the stops I made.)
And, no, I'm afraid the one subset of humanity I mysteriously failed to meet during this trip was the American missionary.
19. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 11:06:37 PM
Oh, correction. I'd never been to Novosibirsk on previous trips, and the only thing I saw in Novosibirsk this summer were the airport and the train station.
20. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 11:16:11 PM
It is probably de rigueur, yet by now approaching platitude, to begin a description of travel to Iran by noting how stereotypes about that country contrast with the reality. Well, I won't do that explicitly and just hope such debunkings will emerge naturally in my reports. At the outset I merely note that the country is extremely, achingly hospitable to foreign visitors; one is free to move about anywhere one wishes; the residual anti-Westernism is now only state ritual, a matter of form, perfunctory and neglected by the populace; and the only danger to Western tourists is being mobbed by a group of overeager Iranian students wishing to practise their English and/or French. I daresay Iran is one of the safest places in the world for Westerners to travel in.
Iran as a tourist destination is just not a big deal anymore for anybody except the Americans. Yet even Americans must be able to get visas to the country, for I saw a pair of American tourists while I was there.
Of course, Westerners had never stopped visiting Iran. Even in 1994, I saw a few tourists from Germany and France at Persepolis and Esfahan, the two most visited places in the country. They weren't numerous enough to produce crowds, but one saw them in trickles nearly everywhere one went. (Go to Persepolis before it gets mobbed like the ruins in Italy and Greece. Right now, it's still basically deserted, and one can greedily indulge in the whole beautiful shell of Darius's palace nearly alone.) And as evidence that Iran never went to seed as a tourist destination, the locals allege that there was never a year, even in 1979-80, when Japanese tour packages did not grace Iran.
21. marjoribanks - 10/4/1999 11:25:40 PM
Pseuder,
What passport were you travelling on? And, mundane question I know, were you toting a backpack or suitcases?
22. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/1999 11:34:38 PM
I'll hold off on answering your question on the passport, because a big story later on involves a passport mishap.
As for baggage, I had a backpack which allegedly doubled as a suitcase, but I never used it in the secondary capacity. I pretty much threw out the backpack and most of the contents in China, for reasons to become clearer later.
I had sent a summer's worth of clothing ahead to Moscow to my fiancée's. That barely cost anything, because I sent it by dip pouch.
23. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 1:11:27 AM
I was going to post a semi-exciting story involving a run-in with Iran's basij, but I'm too tired to write the story now. I will simply give a report on an Iranian movie I saw.
There are lots of cinema houses in Tehran, but they screen justifiably deprecated Iranian action flicks. One picture I saw -- which I was told is not particularly representative of popular Iranian cinema -- was apparently one in a series about a blind beggar hero. He wanders the Iranian countryside during the corrupt 1970s and somehow keeps insinuating himself into the lives of innocent folks exploited by local landlords or merchants. (Naturally, they were henchmen of the Shah.) In one scene in a rural town, a bunch of toughs dispatched by the local grandee are threatening to snatch away the daughter of a good Allah-fearing Iranian everyman in the event he doesn't pay back his zillion rial debt. One of the thugs then suggests in a leering pornographic voice that the daughter should remove her chaador. (Literally meaning "tent", it refers to the all-body covering a woman of any nationality in Iran is required to wear in public.)
With dramatic drumbeat, the camera cuts away abruptly to an in-your-face close-up of the impassive beggar standing in the corner, who knows all and sees all, despite the blindness. Later, during the finale, when the thugs come to collect the daughter in lieu of the debts, the beggar appears out of nowhere and intervenes to finally reveal himself: he is an enforcer sent by the imams in Qom (the birthplace of Ayatollah Khomeini and a centre of religoius learning), wandering the country not just to spread the word of Allah but to protect the weak and save the honour of righteous Iranian womanfolk. He casts off his beggar's rags and underneath reveals the full regalia of a Shia cleric: turban, robes and Koran in the right hand. "Have you no fear of Allah? Take your hands off the girl!"
24. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 1:13:11 AM
No matter that the thugs frantically try to injure the imam with kicks and blows, he parries each and every attack by swaying the body in graceful parsimonious movements. The full battery of Iranian cinematic technique is then made to bear on the scene. The half-dozen thugs flail about in a slow motion apparently designed to convey ineptitude. But thanks to Allah the Imam's flowing robes disguise limbs capable of delivering lethal blows in ultra-rapid motion. The imam's lightening blows are so jerky that they end up looking like fisticuffs in a Charlie Chaplin movie.
As I said earlier, this film is not particularly representative of junk Iranian movies. A more typical feature, I was told, is likely a kind of Rambo-meets-James-Bond action pic in which the hero combats Iraqi espionage or storms an Iraqi POW camp to rescue Heroes of the Revolution. Sounds familiar, no?
The Iranians queuing up to see such movies have generally had the chance to glimpse the occasional bootleg action pic from Satan's Lair, and they are desperate for more American movies. One teenaged Iranian at a mall (yes, Tehran has Western-style but not so glittering malls) told me he was saving money to buy a VCR so that he could watch bootleg tapes of the latest Hollywood movies smuggled in from Dubai. (This is already the way many affluent Tehranis entertain themselves.) My first reaction to the movie scene in Iran: you could probably make a killing in Tehran importing cheap Bollywood action pics. On second thought: for all their prudery they probably won't pass Iranian censors.
25. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 1:15:35 AM
Two short notes on the subject of movies. I went to visit the Tehran studio of the internationally celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami, but he wasn't there and the visit was a total nul. The other is about the little controversy that was brewing in the press about the upcoming 150-episode series on Iranian Television about the history of Iran. It's supposed to have an undue concentration on the last Shah's rule, and there has apparently been a fierce debate between the "realists" and the "moralists" about how to portray Farah Diba, the empress and wife of the late overthrown Shah. Must she wear a chaador for the role, as Iranian law requires all women on Iranian TV and films to do? But that would be totally unrealistic, for Farah Diba (along with most Iranian women before the revolution) didn't wear the chaador. So the compromise that was being worked out was that the actress set to play the Empress would be given...luxuriant hair, an oversized wig.....
26. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 1:19:46 AM
One thing I forgot to mention in the prefatory remarks is that Iran is much richer than its neighbours to the east, like Pakistan and India. Its per capita income is three times either's, and it shows. There are no beggars in Tehran or in any of the cities I have visited. The Islamic welfare state apparently takes care of the poor rather well. Also, the streets are clean, public transportation is in most circumstances spotless, even public bathrooms don't stink. The locals insist you can drink from the tap, but I wasn't going to be that trusting.
28. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 7:27:09 AM
Iran: Tehran: The Basiij
OK. Here is the semi-exciting story about the run-in with the Basiij.
The evening of the day after Jens and I arrived in Tehran, his cousin with the cutsie sobriquet of Shu-shu showed up to demand that she be taken to Tehran's one and only sushi restaurant. It had just opened to cater to the small foreigner community in the city. A long-time resident of Paris and extravagantly spoilt brat who had been in Iran for the past year and thus denied the pleasures of sushi, she longed to devour the stuff. But I didn't really want to have sushi. After all, why the hell should I have sushi in Tehran of all places?
All the same, Jens, his sister Mina, Shu-shu and I went out in the car to the Japanese restaurant. The meal was good -- one unusual item we were served was sturgeon sushi, something I had never eaten before and definitely not Japanese. Now, the idiot Shushu was high on something, if not on drugs, then perhaps on an exitement as small as being at a sushi restaurant. All evening she would play with the food, or throw brazen flirtatious glances at me (no big deal but we were in public in Iran), or would talk at speeds no one could follow. Her cousins couldn't understand why, but suspected she must have had a bit to drink at home before coming out with us. (She didn't look drunk to me, more like she was on speed.) Whatever might have been the cause, she was acting in a way which suggested she was reckless and unbalanced. Who knows, maybe living in Iran for a year after a whole life in the West had unhinged her.
29. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 7:29:12 AM
The Basiij (continued)
Unfortunately, she was driving. She drove, shall we say, exuberantly on Tehran's dark empty streets, now past midnight. She would zigzag on the road without purpose and turn at corners at speeds producing intolerable g-force. Despite the tribulations, we managed to leave behind the ugly concrete jungle of downtown Tehran and found ourselves driving through the narrow leafy streets of the city's posh northern suburbs. But the erratic driving continued, and soon it caught the attention of an ancient Mercedes minibus (the kind with the smooth rounded corners) behind us. We had no idea who or what they were.
The minibus raced ahead, built up a distance of perhaps twenty metres in front, and suddenly swerved to stop. One side of the minibus now blocked our path completely.
Jens said, "Shit, I think it's the Komité." The Komité is Iran's notorious moral police, the enforcers of the Islamic law. Toting machine guns, they're visible everywhere in Iran at checkpoints, airports and train stations. In the cities, they stop women on the street for violations of the hejaab (the Islamic dress code); investigate suspected cases of elopement and other illicit romances; censor books, films and television shows; and otherwise set the moral tone for Iran. Well, at least that's the ideal. Most Tehranis will tell you that they only stop women to get their addresses and come on to them.
30. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 7:31:54 AM
The Basiij (continued)
But why should we be worried that we're being stopped by the Komité, I wondered aloud. After all, the two unmarried women among us were accompanied by a male relative (Jens), and I had my passport & visa with me, showing that I was the legal guest of Jens's father. "Don't be naive", Jens warned, "they'll assume we're just illegal lovers. I don't have any papers with me to prove I'm their relative!" Soon after uttering these words rather nervously, we learnt that the minibus did not harbour the agents of the Komité, but perhaps something a bit worse.
What stepped out of the minibus were two slight figures wearing headgear rather like those sported by the Palestinian Intifada rioters. They carried rifles, not machine guns. They were young, not more than 18 or 19. They were the Basiij.
The best analogy for what they are is Maoist youths of the Cultural Revolution. They are the "beloved of Iran", a semi-official volunteer revolutionary militia with no defined role in society. But they take it upon themselves to maintain the revolutionary tone and will under the right circumstances take the law into their own hands. These "beloved of Iran" mostly hail from the dregs of rural Iranian society who had been recruited to the madrassas (Koranic schools) in the cities but were not really good enough to see through their education. Thus they are generally uneducated, none too bright, seriously unsophisticated lumpenproletarians. If you recall the young child soldiers of the Iran-Iraq War, those very ones were Basij. For God and Iran, they cleared the landmines laid by Saddam Hussein by walking over them.
Of course I was only told all this later and wasn't aware that our car was being approached by a bunch of lunatic teens who would walk on landmines for God and country.
31. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 7:36:31 AM
The Basiij (continued)
One of the chin-wipers knocked on the driver's window and demanded that Shushu explain herself. "Are you an unmarried woman?" he asked. Shushu replied yes but also that she was accompanied by a male relative.
Punk: What about the other woman?
Shushu: My cousin's sister.
Punk: She doesn't look like your cousin. She looks like a foreigner. Papers.
Punk [Pointing to me]: Who the hell is this?
Jens: He is my guest in the country, a businessman.
Punk: Get out of the car. We all got out.
Punk [Pointing to Shushu]: Cousins do not count as relatives. You are in violation of the law.
32. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/1999 7:38:54 AM
The Basiij (continued)
At this point, Jens, not the most aggressive person in the world, stepped out of character completely and demanded in stern, unforgiving tones that this punk show him an ID. The punk produced a wilted, faint piece of paper. After examining it, Jens remarked boldly, "There isn't even a photo, and it's past its expiration date!" The punk grew enraged and replied: "Expired? Why don't you come to the station and I will show you expired!" (Or so Jens translated this rapidfire Farsi dialogue to me later.) Jens stood his ground: "You are going to arrest me on what charge? In the morning your superiors will release us and you will be humiliated for thinking cousins don't count as relatives." This went on for a little bit longer, but eventually Jens's bluff overcame the punk's bluff. Nothing happened. Perhaps the ardour of the Iran-Iraq War was ancient history for these saplings.
Shushu waited until the Basiij punks sped away before she started the engine again. But just as soon as the minibus disappeared into the night and we set off in the same direction, there came a horrific screech from the front, the sound of the minibus making an abrupt halt. The punks had perhaps changed their mind. They reemerged and approached our car, only this time they didn't bother with Shushu. Instead they sidled up to my window. Prompted by the thud on the glass, I nervously opened the window in response. The punk exhorted: "Either marry this lady immediately or leave the country!"
The pious message delivered, he and the other punk sped off into the night.
57. thrakkorzog - 10/6/1999 12:09:26 AM
Are female foreign tourists expected to wear a chaador and conform to hejaab, or are they allowed to get away with some token adherance to Iranian laws (head scarf, long skirt)?
58. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 12:29:06 AM
#57
Every woman in Iran, whether Iranian or foreigner, is expected to conform to the hejaab. However, this is not as onerous a requirement as it might at first seem, for a woman can fulfill the requirement in several different, even fashionable, ways, not necessarily by covering yourself up in a "tent". I will have some comments on this in my continuing remarks about Iran.
64. proudnerd - 10/6/1999 2:07:30 AM
Some months ago, there was an op-ed piece in NYT about something like "lipstick as a symbol of protest in Iran". Did you read that pseudoE ? It told a story about how women this restaurant in Tehran started wiping off their makeup when the vigilantes showed up and promptly put them back on when they went away. Could this be much ado about nothing ?
68. EricCartman - 10/6/1999 2:28:34 AM
Pseudo:
Very interesting thread. The stories are excellent so far; as for the prefatory material you included for Iran, personally I think it'd be great if you were able to put that sort of thing in for all the countries you visited, as you get to them.
Were you able to photograph some of the historic sites you visited in Persepolis and elsewhere?
How strictly are the hejaab and other moral codes enforced, anyway? Are they taken seriously in all the social strata, or is it more a province of the middle and lower classes (usually the more devout)?
69. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 4:50:57 AM
Proudnerd #64
No, I didn't read that article.
EricCartman, #65
I didn't go to Persepolis on this trip, that was on the 1994 trip.
As for photos, yes, I did take some. I'm really a terrible photographer, and I find the task usually distracts and thus detracts from the pleasure of travel. But I will be posting some accompanying photos for one of the stories, the one which in my opinion is the best of the bunch.
70. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 4:52:24 AM
As for the hejaab, women's makeup and other strictures, the next installment of my Tehran travel report will address your questions pretty thoroughly.
71. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 6:20:38 AM
How do you entertain yourself in Tehran?
Tehran is a dour and bored and boring place. Or, it seems that way in public. Most Tehranis certainly look bored. After all, there is virtually nothing for them to do in the city outside of work, home and mosque. There is very little public entertainment at night to speak of, other than the traditional chaikhuné (teahouse) where one can experience the palpable excitement of doddering old men reciting medieval Persian poetry in a state of semi-trance. (Well, actually, I was interested, but the average Tehrani is supposed not to be.)
Perhaps to relieve the boredom of broad daylight, ordinary Tehranis appeared (to my eyes) in a constant state of purposeless movement & activity. One afternoon, Jens and I went up to the hills overlooking Tehran in a telekabin. (A telekabin is a carriage or cabin suspended from a cable to convey passengers up and down a slope or a side of mountain. What the hell do you call that in English? I can only come up with chairlift and funicular, which are not the same thing as a telekabin. In French the telekabin would be a téléphérique.) On our way up, we met and casually chatted with a young Tehrani couple with two children; back at the bottom, we met the same couple going back up again. Where and why were they going? They told us they were killing the time going up and down the mountains numerous times, staring from the telekabin at the charmless vista of Tehran.
72. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 6:22:48 AM
How do you entertain yourself in Tehran?
But looking closely you can see little rebellions which hide the longings for dolce vita. For example, the ubiquitous epic signs exclaiming "Down with the USA" (in Farsi) are often defaced by such graffitti (in English) as "Majid + Aysha = Love" or "Los Angeles is cool". I saw another public notice board -- a pictorial reminder of the hejaab -- garnished with spray-painted flowers and smily-faces. At the huge mall not far from the American Den of Espionage Museum (the former US embassy of hostage fame), there are teenaged boys (often dressed in American ghetto-type outfits) reconnoitering the vicinity for the rare erotic sightings of a girl's exposed arm or neck. Stay long enough and you will catch a glance of girls, covered in their black tents, furtively approaching the randy boys for a quick chat or to drop an illicit note; and just as furtively absconding to avoid detection by the Komité. I was told these trysts manqués were most likely attempts to pass information about private social gatherings at night.
For despite all the enforced dourness of public life in Iran, Iranians insist until they turn blue that they are the world's most passionate bon vivants and connoisseurs of the soft life. It's an inalienable part of their self-image: they love to dance, to drink, to eat, to talk, to get together with friends and family. Their melodious poetry doesn't celebrate wine, women and love for nothing. According to the unofficial party line, it's a nation of 65 million Zorbas. So where is all the joie de vivre? Buried deep in-doors, totally hidden to foreign visitors without local connections.
73. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 6:25:47 AM
How do you entertain yourself in Tehran?
Average Iranians retreat to the safety and comfort of their homes for huge gatherings of friends and family, where the chaador comes off, home-made vodka is served, feasts are held to the glutton's content, and men & women mingle without care. And Iranians insist that all but the most backward and hickish of them drink alcohol at every opportunity. Although the less affluent must settle for moonshine, those more prosperous usually have connections with dealers trafficking in their own produce or contraband from the neighbouring former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. The thrifty and the intrepid even trudge up to the border with Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan to buy or barter directly from traders. Apparently the exchange is made over the barbed wire.
But the most common method of obtaining alcohol for anyone slightly well-to-do is to buy from dealers. For it takes no more effort, involves no more risk and causes no more fuss than buying marijuana in the West. It's simply a matter of knowing a few people.
74. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 6:27:13 AM
How do you entertain yourself in Tehran?
When some ten of us -- of both sexes and varied ages -- went camping in the Alborz Mountains north of Tehran, Jens, I and the aforementioned Shu-shu were deputed by the rest to go buy alcohol from somewhere. This was not a major operation, nor an act of profound skullduggery. The three of us simply showed up at a random kabaabii (an eatery found everywhere in Iran serving grilled meats with basmati rice) in the nearby town, and the brazen Shushu took charge of all negotiations. A thick film of mascara glazed across her eyelids, she craftily let pornographic tufts of hair protrude from her Hermès headscarf. She then coyly inquired in her most flirtatious Farsi: "I know it's something you probably don't have, but do you have some alcohol (arak)?" The owner of the eatery brushed aside the question as a matter of form and politely referred us to another eatery in town, saying "goat kebabs are served only at ____". Reproducing the same overbaked charm, Shushu obtained the loot at the other eatery. It was as simple as that.
(That night, our party grilled our own kebabs, drank the bad bottle of vodka, and listened to some indifferent Spanish pop group which my companions claimed was quite popular in the USA. Gypsy Princes? Or something like that.)
76. ScottLoar - 10/6/1999 6:43:48 AM
Cable car. It's called a cable car.
83. Blaise - 10/6/1999 11:56:41 AM
PE: Isn't it dangerous to travel through these regions for Americans? It's common knowledge to hear about the hatred many people hold towards Americans (can't say I blame them after all the CIA wars), but weren't you a little bit afraid of being held hostage or kidnapped, which happens a lot over there, or thrown into prison?
I enjoy your journals on these travels, exquisitely written and FAR from boring, but that thought did occur to me; I'm a little surprised that you took such risks.
88. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 1:04:15 PM
Janjon (#84): Please see Message #22.
Blaised asked in #83
Isn't it dangerous to travel through these regions for Americans?
First, I'm not an American. But that doesn't matter. Americans face no problems in Iran. Your question is answered more thoroughly in Message #20.
...but weren't you a little bit afraid of being held hostage or kidnapped, which happens a lot over there, or thrown into prison?
No, hostage-taking and kidnapping do NOT happen there "a lot". I repeat: Iran is one of the friendliest and safest places in the world a tourist can visit. There's virtually no crime (except in the drug-smuggling region bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, but in general there's nothing there to attract tourists) and there is little political instability of any kind in the country. I took no risks whatever. Hell, I was in Iran in 1994 as well, when the country hadn't really begun embracing tourists yet.
89. stostosto - 10/6/1999 5:43:25 PM
Pseud
Why are the Iranians three times richer than the Pakistanis or Indians? Is it all to do with oil? Or have they actually developed their industry to a higher level, perhaps a long time ago?
90. Blaise - 10/6/1999 7:26:29 PM
PE: Hi. (I checked out #20) Perhaps the "a lot" is an exaggeration--but even from your own testimony over the punk militia investigations--sends a warning message to the sane. Something like that is enough to keep _me_ from visiting Iran. I certainly would be scared by that sort of scary intrusion. I would be scared about having blonde hair and captured and sold into slavery...Those things do exist.
91. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 7:32:09 PM
#89
Iran's per capita income is three times Pakistan's or India's today, but it used to be almost six times theirs in the mid-1970s under the Shah. Yes, since the Revolution, Iranian income has nearly halved.
Iran's relative wealth has not to do with oil in the sense that Kuwait or Saudi Arabia or the UAE is "rich" because of oil. These countries produce hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of oil per citizen, which means the state could simply spend people out of poverty. Not so with Iran, whose per capita oil production has always been a fraction of the Gulf states'.
Iran's relative prosperity does have something to do with oil in the sense that the Shah, believe it or not, invested the proceeds from the oil revenue with a certain amount of wisdom, for example, by making massive investments in education and infrastructure. Even today, despite the economic fiasco that was the Iranian Revolution, Iran has quite respectable human development indicators among developing countries, with life expectancy at around 70 and infant mortality at 30/1000. By contrast, Pakistan has life expectancy of around 60 years and infant morality 90/1000. (The literacy rate fell from the 90s under the Shah to the current 70s.)
Contrary to urban legend, the Shah, for all his repression and corruption, took a half-desert, half-agricultural country and transformed it into one of the richer developing countries with substantial industry.
92. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 7:35:26 PM
#90
Blaise, I don't know what you've been reading (or imbibing) but no one is enslaved. No one will know you have blonde hair because you won't be allowed to show it in public. Anyway, thousands of Europeans and Japanese already visit Iran every year and return with no problems whatever.
101. MrSocko - 10/6/1999 9:34:42 PM
How safe is Iran for visiting Jews? I realise that the country has a very small Jewish community that is by regional standards pretty well treated. I wonder if the same care is extended to Jewish guests, or would they automatically be viewed with anti-Zionist suspicion?
102. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/1999 10:38:22 PM
#99
Blaise, we were never in any kind of danger from the Basiij. They don't kill anyone!
#101
I really can't answer that question. But if you visited Iran how would anyone know you were Jewish?
103. RickNelson - 10/6/1999 11:23:08 PM
PE,
I'm not sure if these are necessary. But, the stories support what you've said of hospitable Iranians.
I have had experience with two Iranian families. The first an Iranian man and a Malay women. The Komité would have skewered this couple I think. Well, they were good friends when I first married. They had a son, Nasir and a daughter Somia before we parted ways. They went to Iran and we to SIUC. Well, Mr. Ghomsari encouraged visits, which he would play host.
His ability to cook was helpful. His rice dishes always tasted good. His wife and mine had shared four years at university and always were good company.
Our second encounter was at SIUC with an old couple. We were introduced through our church. I think they really were christian, though I'm not sure now after all these years. Well, they were gushing with enthusiasm as hosts. Just wonderful people. Our student years were blessed by their kindness.
105. RickNelson - 10/6/1999 11:29:10 PM
I'm sorry I mixed up the Komité with the Basijj "punks".
106. proudnerd - 10/7/1999 12:49:11 AM
Contrary to the popular belief in the US, minorities aren't regularly persecuted in Iran. There are restrictions on their religious practices though. My friend F's parents are Ba'hais from Iran who immigrated to the US in the early 80s and she indicated to me as such. Another friend A's family who are Iranian jews, immigrated to Israel and the US (her brother is in the Israeli army) after the revolution. Both are ambivalent about Iran and I suspect that having lived in the US for most of their lives, they have little inclination to ever visit Iran again, atleast not while a possibility of oppression still exists.
109. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 1:14:58 AM
#106
But the Bahai are officially persecuted in Iran. Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians aren't. In fact, Armenian churches, Jewish synagogues and Zoroastrian temples have no trouble getting permits or even grants sometimes to bulit or restore their places of worships.
#107
Why curieux? What would be my patrie? Why wouldn't I feel apatride?
#108
Yes, that's what I hear also, but in popular perception it's a dangerous pariah state. Actually, Libya, along with North Korea and Afghanistan, is on my priority list of places to visit. But NK is top priority, since I believe its pristine Stalinist state will soon come to an end.
110. proudnerd - 10/7/1999 1:23:12 AM
The Bahai aren't allowed to practice or preach their religion but they aren't getting jailed for just being born Bahais.
111. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 1:27:08 AM
#110
That's because being a Bahai is not a genetic condition. In Islam what matters is what you practise, not necessarily what you believe. This is a big difference between Christianity (traditionally) and Islam in the the attitude toward minority religions. The former insists on orthodoxy, the latter more on orthopraxy.
112. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 1:42:02 AM
A quick linguistic note which I'm sure only IrvingSnodgrass will care about. Long vowels in Farsi are not like those in Urdu or Hindi. The former are lengthened, not doubled as in the latter. So the transliteration hejaab that I've been using is technically incorrect. I will henceforth use a circumflex (ˆ) to denote long vowels. Thus, hejâb and the Basîj.
Iran: Tehran: Women's Dress
Everywhere in the world the rich and the ordinary and the poor lead rather different lives, but in Iran one is tempted to see these social gradations as points on the spectrum of Westernised behaviour. That is, the richer an Iranian is, the more likely his private behaviour will be totally Westernised; and the poorer an Iranian is, the more likely he/she will conform faithfully to the Islamic conventions officially imposed on society.
One immediately gets an inkling of this spectrum on the street through the subtle variations in the observance of the hejâb. First, note that in the strictest interpretation of the code of the hejâb, a woman must wear the tent-like, one-piece, all-body-covering called the châdor, in black of course, leaving only the face exposed. A woman fitted in such outfits, especially also if she has a moustache she has not bothered to bleach, is generally referred to as a châdorî, a member of Iran's devout lower class. (If you see her in the city, her husband may very well be a bazârî, an aggressive, uncouth person tending to stalls in the market.)
113. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 1:42:49 AM
Women's Dress
But in practise, the conventions of Iranian society are loose enough that a woman can take several licences with the hejâb. You can tell immediately that an Iranian woman on the street is middle-class if she has eschewed the châdor in favour of the combination of manto and maghmaé. The former, derived from the French word manteau, is a kind of baggy trenchcoat, and the latter, a practical, no-frills dark headscarf. This is probably now becoming the norm among women in Iran. All the same, the popular rules of thumb when it comes to complying with the hejâb are: only a woman's face and hands can be visible, and the rest of her must be covered up in such clothing as will not reveal the shape of her body. No one should really be able to tell her weight.
Those who exploit the vagueness of these unofficial rules to the hilt are the rich. One woman in my friend Jens's circle by the name of Gholi, formerly a resident of London, is regularly mantled in a Valentino cape and her head in a colourful Hermès scarf. (When I asked Jens how did he know that the scarf was Hermès, he replied: "An Iranian woman wouldn't wear anything else!") A rather expensive compliance with the Islamic code, I thought to myself, perhaps on the order of $1500. In fact, Gholi herself is credited by many as having initiated early in the 1990s the Great Sartorial Revolution. Now, wearing bright, gaudy headscarves has passed from being audacious rebellion to harmless mischief.
114. proudnerd - 10/7/1999 1:47:36 AM
Why do clerics in Iran tolerate other minority religions, but oppress the practice of Bahai ? My somewhat muddled theory has been that Islamic clerics have always been severe on sects that spring out of Islam and Bahai is one of those.
115. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 1:56:00 AM
#114
The only minority religions Islam traditionally tolerates are Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. This is because the adherents of these religions are known in Islamic theology as ahl al-kitaab, or People of the Book. Their prophets appear in the Koran, they are seen as predecessors to Muslims, superseded by Islam but not infidels. So, providing that these communities recognise the primary of Islam unequivocally and obey certain regulations (including those against prosletysing), they are in theory left alone to practise their religion.
I think your theory is correct that strict Muslims view the Bahai as apostates practising some heretical variation on Islam. Islamic courts in both Iran and Pakistan have ruled so; other "variations on Islam" such as the Ahmadis, the Zikris and even the Ismailis (in some countries) have been declared anti-Islamic.
116. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 1:58:38 AM
The compact between the Islamic ruler and the communities of the People of the Book is called the dhimma, and the beneficiaries of the compact the dhimmi.
117. proudnerd - 10/7/1999 2:18:02 AM
Of course! dhimmi makes it clear. I wasn't sure the Bahai are considered dhimmi or not. That brings us to the question - Do dhimmis have to pay higher jizya (tax) than the Muslims in Iran ?
I have also read somewhere that dhimmis aren't supposed to ride on horses with saddles (so says the Sharia), did that cause you any inconvenience while you were there ?
118. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 2:35:44 AM
#117
I don't know anything about the jizya in modern Islamic societies, only in the past. As for your second question, that wouldn't matter. My last name is plausibly Muslim, and, according to my father, I am technically a Muslim. My mother insists that I am technically a Roman Catholic. Personally, I use religious status like nationality, a matter of convenience according to situation.
119. EricCartman - 10/7/1999 2:40:48 AM
#71
"American Den of Espionage Museum (the former US Embassy)".
Now that's funny! I envision the central hall of the museum being labeled "Antechamber of the Great Satan, once used by his pig-dog imperialist lackeys". Who says the Revolution has no sense of humor?
121. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:04:35 AM
As you can imagine, rich Iranians don't just wear different clothes, they live altogether differently from all other Iranians. Their purpose in life, it seems, is to simulate the West in Iran as much as possible.
Rich Tehranis have getaway houses on the Caspian Sea coast, complete with private beaches shielded from the prying eyes of the Komité, where the dress code has been whittled down to the bikini. They ski all year round in the mountains, where men and women mingle freely knowing that the Komité cannot reach them. ("They don't know how to ski!") They also go on quick shopping trips to the duty-free fantasyland of Dubai. Need a quick tan? Go sun-bathing in (Greek) Cyprus. And, naturally, they have the full stock of alcohol, bootleg videotapes from the West and other luxurious contraband.
The affluent youth of Tehran from the late teens to their mid-30s, unwilling to shed the tastes and lifestyles cultivated in New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris, take unabashed liberties in the privacy of their posh suburban homes. For Tehran, at least for the rich, has a nightlife verging on the wild, complete with deep underground parties of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.
Basically, a close knit circle of friends hold parties in the basements of their parents' houses, appointed especially for the purpose of dancing, alcohol binges and extended socialising into the morning. Although the female guests in this posh circle would ordinarily be wearing capes or manto, just for such outings they take especial care to look pious on the surface and don the châdor. Naturally, as soon as they pass the door, they hastily slough their oppression to reveal all the vestments of sin and debauchery with which the châdors were meant as ironic contrasts.
122. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:06:32 AM
It's a real fashion show. The older women, in their late 20s and early 30s, whether single or married, will disport expensive Western fashion, the likes of Valentino or Chanel. But whatever is worn, the point is to show legs, arms, necks, and otherwise to emphasise the shape of the body. The younger women would be a little more brazen, wearing the microjupe ("microskirts"), or exposing the navel, or flaunting cleavage. The purpose for these women, of course, is to attract males, who oblige by salivating in satisfaction of the urge pent up during the week to behold female skin.
Also, at these Tehrani parties, the 1970s style that is so inexplicably favoured by people in their late teens & early 20s on American university campuses was very much in evidence among the Iranian teens on vacation from college. The one wearing low-waisted, tight-fit, bell-bottomed trousers hanging daintily about her narrow hips, with the stomach teasingly exposed by a taut chemise, might just as well have been a girl in the sophomore macro section that I taught last spring term.
One teen went rather overboard with this look. The bell bottoms of her trousers weren't simply wide. They were little yurts, a pair of teepees growing out of her groin. The diameter of the bottoms could easily have been 60cm (2 ft). Naturally, the hem dragged on the floor, giving the observer no inkling that she possessed feet. I could not help thinking that in trying to look current with the latest Western trends she inadvertently fell into compliance with the hejâb.
The men dressed a lot more conservatively; thankfully, no one was wearing jeans six times their size and fallen to the knees with that studied carelessness.
123. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:08:30 AM
Thus in such costumes did the demimonde of Tehran swirl and sway and whirl the night away on the makeshift dance floor, to the tunes of the latest Western pop music, amid rays of light produced by those stroboscopic globules, prompted to libido by Baltika beer and Azerbaijani vodka. The only thing Iranian about all this display was the method of dancing: the denizens of the night took to the Levantine habit of forming circles, converging on the centre in one moment and diverging in the next.
Drugs are in plentiful supply too at these gatherings, mostly hashish and something the locals call tar'yak, which none could translate for me but by trying I found to be some variety of opium.
For good many of these Tehranis, these parties serve the single purpose of permitting trysts, or at least meeting people with whom they can later start some illicit sexual romance. But sex, or really any kind of physical contact between unmarried men and women, is a grave offence in Iran, a matter of criminal law and severe punishments. So those who go to these parties for trysts are probably taking risks far greater than those posed by consuming alcohol, let alone exposing the tuft of hair through the headscarf. And while few at the party would talk openly about their own trysts and relationships, they are quick to tell stories of men and women being arrested by the inquisitive Komité and tried by the Islamic courts.
124. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:10:09 AM
A woman who was present at each of the several parties I attended was the aforementioned Gholi, the headscarf revolutionary. In her Hermès scarf, this six-footer looked rather like Audrey Hepburn on a 1950s film set -- except with golden tanned skin and the brightest green eyes I've ever seen. She is also one of those factitiously genteel arrivistes who with great skill insinuate themselves into posh circles. For in the hopes of reaching the apex of the Iranian exile community in the West, this nouveau riche social climber spent the better part of her early 20s pursuing the exiled Crown Prince Reza, or, as Iranian loyalists call him, Shah shahanshah (the king of kings) -- the elder son of the late deposed Shah of Iran. When this King of Kings felt he could not marry such an arriviste, Gholi turned with equal determination to cultivating the younger son (whose name I forget), a drunk in London who with all seriousness imagines himself the heir to Darius and Xerxes. She met even less success with the Darius the Drunk. Thus her presence in Iran. In conversations with others, I at some point began referring to her as the "Azerbaijani". Calling a Farsi-speaking ethnic Persian Iranian an Azerbaijani is equivalent to calling a Serb a Turk or a Japanese a Korean.
(To be continued)
125. SpenceMirrlees - 10/7/1999 4:12:06 AM
From your description it seems that many people break the official customs, and everyone knows it, and everyone knows that everyone knows it etc., but it's not quite common knowledge. And that appears to be what allows the customs to persist. Or do people who flout the customs privately actually prefer public observance?
127. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:20:09 AM
#125
Well, I would say that what allows these breaches of official stricture is primarily that while these people are rich, they are not powerful politically. The clerics and the Islamic police hold the power in Iran, the drama between reformers and hardliners take place entirely among mullahs. So the popular cynicism about corruption and debauchery focuses on them. I'll get to the popular perception of mullah debauchery tomorrow.
128. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:21:09 AM
"Or do people who flout the customs privately actually prefer public observance?"
Oh, no, my impression is that most Iranians, rich or not, want the social strictures liberalised.
129. PincherMartin - 10/7/1999 4:24:29 AM
PseudoErasmus --
Wonderful stuff.
#28 -- Regarding the Basiij: I've heard that this large group of rural youths not only enforce the moral code, but also provide a sort of militia to beat down those who protest too strongly against the theocracy. I'm a little surprised that the two youths you ran into were armed with rifles, as most reports I've read say they are poorly equipped, usually only with clubs or other hand-held weapons.
#112 -- Regarding the Bazaaris: Are they as crude as you make them out to be here? Supposedly, they are the strongest supporters of the new president and his liberal regime. Surely, such a group can't be that bad.
A couple of things I hope to see you cover on Iran before you go on to the next country are:
The Demographics of Iran: I've read some 60% of the Iranian population is under thirty, which would make you one of the old men of the country. Do the demographics seem as skewed as the statistics say they are when you're in the country?
Freedom of the Press: Iran supposedly has (or had, before this last bit of rioting took place) some of the freest presses in the Middle East. Did you hear any evidence of this, at least from Jen?
To All:
Visiting Iran is much safer than visiting any American city, according to those who have visited
130. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 4:34:46 AM
PincherMartin, #129
(1) We were in Tehran. If we had been in Gorgan or Tabriz, the Basiij would have had not much more than clubs.
(2) I'm just giving you the reputation of the bazârîs. But you must remember, the circles I had access to were basically upper-class.
(3) I turn 31 this November. And yes, Iran is full of young people, they're everywhere. There is no doubt the most important element in the disgruntlement with the public dourness and the Islamic strictures.
(4) I really can't say. I seriously doubt that's the case, though.
131. pellenilsson - 10/7/1999 6:32:49 AM
Here is the official site of the Bahai in case anyone wants more information. It was founded by a certain Bahá'u'lláh (1817-92). As far as I understand it is a so called syncretistic faith containing elements from all the major religions.
I didn't now that the zoroastrians belong to the dhimma. Very interesting. Are they much in evidence in Iran? Places of worship and so forth? The calendar in use is zoroastrian, is it not?
132. MrSocko - 10/7/1999 7:07:22 AM
#102:
[I]f you visited Iran how would anyone know you were Jewish?
Well, if one had an obviously Jewish name, say. And if one's passport contained -- }}}shudder{{{ -- an Israeli stamp as well.
134. marjoribanks - 10/7/1999 10:19:56 AM
Excellent anecdotes, Pseuder.
During the Iran/Iraq war, many families sent their sons to India as well. Perhaps, these were the families who couldn't afford to send them to Europe or the USA. Anyway, the universities were filled with Iranian boys, particularly those institutions which welcome foreign students like the University in Pune. The result of this influx - markedly better sports teams particularly in football, markedly higher drug and alcohol consumption on the campuses, and quite a serious rise in "unwed" pregnancies. I spent time hanging out with little pockets of Iranians on two occasions, they were bachannalian compared to the Indian students, and the parties they were famous for hosting were quite like the kind you mention, except with mostly Indian and African women (the latter are also found in some numbers in Indian universities.)
135. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/1999 10:33:10 AM
#131
PelleNilsson: To answer some of your questions, you need only wait till my reports on Yazd, the Mecca of Zoroastrianism.
#132
Socko: Well, then, you would never be given a visa to Iran anyway. (Or to Pakistan, by the way.)
145. ilyavinarsky - 10/7/1999 9:29:18 PM
Wondeful little thread. So Ryszard Kapuscinski's reporting on the Iranian Revolution is wrong - the Shah was not such a bad SOB.
147. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/1999 1:35:49 AM
#145: Privet, Ilya! (Eto TLJ.)
No, I think Kapuscinski was right in one thing: the Shah was by the end irredeemably corrupt and repressive. Also a sick and spent man.
149. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/8/1999 4:14:07 AM
the Shah was by the end irredeemably corrupt and repressive. Also a sick and spent man.
This sounds like it could be a description of the dictator I knew best.
My one and only visit to Iran was in late 1977, and although the visit was short, I was very impressed with the development I saw and the people I met. Little did I know that a revolution was brewing.
The atmosphere in Iran at that time, one of fast-paced development, rampant corruption, a greedy elite, and heavy-handed internal security remind me of Indonesia before Suharto's fall. It all looked great on the surface, but the common people were getting very tired of it.
150. stostosto - 10/8/1999 6:57:43 AM
Pseud
I am glad you're responding to Cartman's request. I too found the intro to Iran highly interesting. Your emphasis on the mere size of the country still boggles my mind, along with the ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity of it. And thank you also for answering my query on the relative affluency (or should one say low degree of poverty) of Iran.
One question - feel free to ignore it: Do Iranians eat much feta cheese? My curiosity stems from the fact that this little food exporting country has (or used to have) a sizeable export of the stuff to Iran. It has caused a political stir whenever there has been discussions of boycotting Iran, mostly over the Rushdie matter.
153. pseudoerasmus - 10/9/1999 2:10:13 PM
Stostostosto: Here's some more information about the economic development of Iran under the Shah:
The Shah then proceeded to carry out a national development program, called the White Revolution, that included construction of an expanded road, rail, and air network; a number of dam and irrigation projects; the eradication of diseases such as malaria; the encouragement and support of industrial growth; and land reform.
By 1961 the Shah was able finally to take the initiative. Dissolving the 20th Majles in May of that year, he cleared the way for the first Land Reform Law, enacted in 1962. The landed minority had to give up its lands to the government for redistribution to cultivators. (Among those stripped of land was the Shi'ah Muslim religious establishment.) Profit sharing in industry was introduced, and the former landlords could receive compensation for their holdings in the form of shares in industries. Cultivators and workers were given more voice in national affairs, and cooperatives in rural areas began to replace the former landowners as sources of capital for irrigation and agrarian maintenance and development. A campaign was organized to reduce illiteracy, and education was further removed from the control of the clergy. The country's power structure was radically changed in a program termed the "White Revolution."
On January 26, 1963, the White Revolution was overwhelmingly endorsed by the nation. By 1971, when land distribution ended, about 2,500,000 families, comprising a farming population of more than 12,000,000, were estimated to have benefitted from the reforms. During 1960-72 the percentage of owner-occupied farmland in Iran rose from 26 to 78 percent.
154. pseudoerasmus - 10/9/1999 2:11:23 PM
Continued from previous post:
Per capita income rose from about $176 in 1960 to about $2,500 in 1978. During 1970-77 the gross national product was reported to have increased to an average annual rate of 7.8 percent.
The new policies did not go unopposed, however; many clerical leaders were critical of land reform, liberalization of laws concerning women, and the extension of government and royal authority. The arrest in 1963 of Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini--an Islamic jurist accorded the honorific title of ayatollah ("sign of God")--after he had made a speech directly attacking the Shah and his policies, touched off rioting; the riots were severely suppressed, and Khomeini was exiled, first to Turkey and then to Iraq, in 1964.
155. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 5:39:05 AM
Tehran: Mullahs, Concubinage & Gholi's Dad
Gholi, the aforementioned "Azerbaijani" social climber of message #124, has got a father in jail whose predicament illustrates many interesting aspects of post-revolutionary Iran.
Her father whom I will call Mr Parvez owned a Mercedes dealership before the revolution, which as you might imagine netted him quite a bit of money in the Shah's nouveau riche Iran. Because he was also well connected to the Ancien Régime, he had to flee the country with his family in 1979-80. But in the early 1990s, he returned to seek his expropriated property. This was quite an audacious move, for most others like him would have been at the very least arrested. One of the "saffron kings", a scion of a great landed family who was stupid enough to set foot in Iran in the late 1980s, was promptly arrested for his invovlement with the Shah, tried in a kangaroo court, and executed.
By means no one fully understands, but surely reviving his once-great gift for bribery, Mr Parvez managed to insinuate himself into the good graces of one of post-revolutionary Iran's powerbrokers, a mullah by the name of Rafik Dust. This Imam Dust fellow was at the time the most powerful man in Iran after Khameini himself. For he was the head of Bunyat, a mullah-controlled "charitable foundation" which owns all the wealth expropriated from the Shah. (Which is very implausibly estimated today to have been a fifth of the economy in 1979.)
156. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 5:40:54 AM
Tehran: Mullahs, Concubinage & Gholi's Dad
Although the tales Iranians tell about Bunyat are typically hyperbolic, this "foundation" does seem to own or control a huge array of assets: gold mines, saffron farms, satellite dish manufacturing (many Iranian homes have satellite dishes), railroads, a large stake in the national airline, etc. Almost everybody I spoke with strongly insists that Bunyat is also involved in Afghan drug-running and even booze-running within Iran.
Moreover, the mullahs that control Bunyat are the very people, usually unidentified, who are referred to as "hard-liners within Iran". They are probably also the ones who finance Hezbollah and/or Hamas.
This combination of fabulous wealth, corruption and hypocritical conservatism in the context of a declining economy is a huge cause of resentment among Iranians. Almost no one will say a good thing about the mullahs; on the contrary, many will even go out of their way to make sure foreigners hear their grumblings. In this respect ordinary Iranians are very much like ordinary Russians -- cynical about their leaders to the point of suspecting their hand in every possible national mishap and attributing to them every possible depravity on the planet. Drinking, whoring, homosexuality, pederasty, poisoning inconvenient people, blasphemy, thievery, murder, even idol worship -- such charges verging on salacious gossip are constant and ubiquitous.
157. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 5:42:40 AM
Tehran: Mullahs, Concubinage & Gholi's Dad
Back to Mr Parvez. He succeeded in flattering or buying his way into Dust's circle and thereby gained a powerful benefactor in getting his expropriated assets back. He even became something of a man about town, flaunting his connections and naively thinking himself immune to the risks of being involved in Iran's treacherous politics. His public indiscretions, including the fondness for alcohol he no longer kept private, became more numerous; and if the police ever questioned him he would simply brush them off by making meretricious references to his warm friendship with Imam Dust.
Eventually, Mr Parvez brought over his wife and children (including Gholi) from abroad and decided to live in Iran for part of the year. He became so confident of his station in Iran that he even took a mistress. (Under Iranian law, signé or "concubinage" is permitted as long as the man provide for his mistress's as well as her family's well-being. Yes, this does seem a contradiction of Iran's other laws on sexual practises, but don't ask me to explain.)
Well, it so happened one day that the mullahs of Bunyat had a falling out with the Komité (Iran's revolutionary secret police), their long-time political ally and comrade-in-arms. No one could really explain to me why, but many speculated that it was a dispute over the proceeds of the foundation's assets. (Observers of Iranian politics are a bit like the Kremlinologists of old, they must infer most of the behind-the-scenes political shenanigans from the barest of public hints.) What emerged was a secret warfare between these quondam allies, or so melodramatic Iranians like to say, without adding too many details.
158. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 5:44:13 AM
Tehran: Mullahs, Concubinage & Gholi's Dad
As part of their war to wrest control of some of their huge financial empire, the Komité began investigating the lives of mullahs. And they felt the heat. Soon several of their mid-level brethren were brought up on pederasty charges, which caused one hell of a scandal in Iran. Thus, sensing mortal peril to their class and privileges, the mullahs got together and decided to purge the Imam Dust and his circle from Bunyat's pinnacle. The man who engineered the usurpation was the Ayatollah Haeri Shirazi, the Imam Jomé (the mullah who does the Friday call to prayer, a very important post in a city) of Shiraz.
He was not just your run-of-the-mill conservative, but an ultra-conservative's ultra-conservative, a mullah who had done his best to bury Shiraz's progressive reputation. In that liberal city Ayatollah Haeri demanded separate cabs (currently men and women can mingle in taxis), separate sidewalks, and even separate TV stations for men and women. He also did his best to scuttle the city's list of moderate & progressive candidates for elections to the Majles (parliament), charging the many "Islamic feminists" on the roster with scandalous behaviour, violations of the hejâb, Western decadence, etc.
159. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 5:45:43 AM
Tehran: Mullahs, Concubinage & Gholi's Dad
Anyway, through this change in leadership, the mullahs hoped to heal the rupture with the Komité. I guess it must have worked.
But Gholi's father was now out of favour. His benefactors were either disgraced or jailed, and the Komité began rounding up the Dust circle's sycophants and beneficiaries. Mr Parvez was eventually accused of "marrying his mistress without the wife's consent" as well as miscellaneous drugs charges. Soon enough he was hauled off to jail. He still languishes there.
Since I pieced this story together from at least a dozen people in Tehran, I assume that pretty much everybody knows about Mr Parvez's fate. But Gholi maintains the fiction that he is abroad on business. (And because I pieced this story together from what amounts to gossip at parties, I can't vouch for the accuracy of every detail in the story.)
160. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 7:53:53 AM
Endnote on Tehran: Driving
Tehran must be one of the most dangerous places in the world to drive. Other cities such as Moscow, Rome and Mexico City have great worldwide reputations for lunatic driving, but Tehrani driving is special. Tehranis drive to simulate sin. "We have some of the worst car accident statistics in the world", one English-speaking Tehrani told me, with evident pride.
For such an easygoing people, Tehranis certainly drive as though the world were coming to an end. On two-lane roads I regularly saw up to five cars next to one another at a stop sign. Or, a car could be speeding at 150km/hr in a narrow, two-lane road, but another car in the back might want to go faster and decide to overtake it by crossing into the other lane, even if a car coming from the opposite direction were only a few yards away. Or, in the hills just outside Tehran, even on a road with hairpin turns, without guardrails, and with just enough room for vehicles to navigate single-file in either direction, drivers don't hesitate to pass as many vehicles as possible and dodge oncoming traffic. Apparently Tehranis consider lane marks to be voluntary guidelines.
162. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 7:56:36 AM
Endnote on Tehran: Driving
During the drive to the Alborz mountains for the camping trip earlier mentioned, our car got trapped in a hideous traffic jam on the road just outside Tehran. The focal point of this vexation was a roadblock at a T-shaped intersection formed by a small causeway perpendicular to the road we were plying. This causeway ascended a hill to one of the many cemetaries around Tehran for the Martyrs of the Revolution (the dead from the Iran-Iraq War). What the roadblock was for, we weren't sure. But two of Tehran's traffic police, normally ignored altogether by drivers, stood beside the obstruction and chatted amiably among themselves, without a care in the world, even for the cacophony of honks and horns and the chorus of Farsi cursing.
On either side of the intersection were two queues of cars facing each other on opposite lanes. Drivers languishing in the back of the queues evidently grew impatient and eventually broke formation. Soon, our two-way road was transformed into a pair of one-way roads converging at loggerheads. Then the ruthless practicality of the Tehrani driver won the day: the first car in the queue opposite ours knocked over the road block and, unable to proceed forward on the road, simply swung around to the left (our right) and sped up the causeway. Without the slightest hesitation all the other cars in front followed the leader in a straggling, disorderly column and began blazing a trail through the cemetary. As the queue in front dwindled, we could see the impatient defile plowing its way through the martyrs' sanctum going in the direction we had come from.
163. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 7:59:09 AM
Endnote on Tehran: Driving
The sheer number of accidents and semi-accidents that I witnessed during my short stay in Iran is horrifying. While walking on the street, Jens and I saw a car dart through a street crowded on either sidewalk with strollers, careen suddenly and crash headlong into a lamp post. But before the crowd could gather around the site, the driver put the car into reverse, lurched forward and sped away as though nothing had happened.
Only a day later, during that same drive to the mountains, we saw two cars strewn about on the side of the road, totalled, crinkum-crankum hulks of metal and indeterminate innards. Behind these lay immobile two figures. One was fully covered in a sheet. The other, a young woman, was apparently still alive but bleeding profusely from God knows where. No one had bothered to remove her châdor; nor yet had an ambulance arrived in this remote mountain locale. But the curious part of the scene was that along with the normal traffic police were found on the site several members of the Basîj. What were they doing there, I asked the others. Jens's father, the driver on this expedition to the mountains, observed mordantly: "They're probably making sure the poor girl doesn't die in sin".
164. stostosto - 10/11/1999 11:09:48 AM
PE
You forgot to indicate the source of your #153-4. It's very well written. It's also very favourable to the Shah. Based on this view it would seem Jimmy Carter wasn't totally idiotic in his praise for the shah's Iran as an "island of stability". (When was that, btw; 78?) The shah would seem to be a wise westernizer - a sort of Iranian Atatürk even. (Not that I know all that much about Atatürk).
165. Hashke - 10/11/1999 11:25:59 AM
Pseuder:
Well done. Are there posted speed limits?
The chaotic driving and the casual unconcern for prolonged roadblocks that you describe is also muy mexicano.
176. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 5:32:37 PM
Oops, I forgot to reply to these comments.
Stostosto: Iran Under Khatami : A Political, Economic, and Military Assessment, ed. by Patrick Clawson. (A former World Bank man, so Pelle ought to make some snide comments.)
Hashke: There are speed limits posted, but irregularly and undependably.
179. pseudoerasmus - 10/11/1999 6:55:15 PM
Stostosto: The Shah openly admired Atatürk and sought to emulate him.
185. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/11/1999 8:53:51 PM
PE:
I certainly noticed the quirks of Iranian driving during my own short visit there. What struck me especially was the Iranian way of dealin with their fender benders. I saw a number of instances where two cars had bumped each other (no damage was visible) and the drivers were standing in the road shoving each other or trading punches.
211. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 5:38:44 AM
Gombad-é-Kavus
But I found the Tower of Kavus rather disappointing. Instead of conveying my description of the tower, I will simply give you the best possible one, that of Robert Byron, the master of architectural description:
A tapering cylinder of café-au-lait brick springs from a round plinth to a pointed grey-green roof, which swallows it up like a candle extinguisher. The diameter of the plinth is fifty feet; the total height about a hundred and fifty. Up the cylinder, between plinth and roof, rush ten triangular buttresses, which cut across two narrow garters of Kufic text, one at the top underneath the cornice, one at the bottom over the slender back entrance.
The bricks are long and thin, and as sharp as when they left the kiln, thus dividing the shadow from the sunshine from each buttress with knife-life precision. As the buttresses recede from the direction of the sun, the shadows extend on to the curving wall of the cylinder between them, so that the stripes of light and shade, varying in width, attain an extraordinary momentum. It is the opposition of this vertical momentum to the lateral embrace of the Kufic rings that gives the building its character, a character unlike anything else in architecture.
There is nothing inside. The body of Kabus used to hang there, suspended from the roof in a glass coffin. He died in 1007. For more than a thousand years this lighthouse has announced his memory, and the genius of Persia, to the nomads of the Central Asian sea. Today it has a larger audience, which must wonder how the use of brick, at the beginning of the second millennium after Christ, came to produce a more heroic monument, and a happier play of surfaces and ornament, than has ever been seen in that material since.
212. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 5:39:31 AM
Gombad-é-Kavus
Actually, what I saw was a pointy, dun-coloured penis sheathed in a ribbed condom. A bit later on the page, Byron cautions that "superlatives applied by travellers to objects which they have seen, but most people have not, are generally suspect"!
219. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/13/1999 8:40:36 AM
PE:
Byron's book is on my list of books to read. Is it still in print? Isn't that where Marjoribanks got his name?
If Kabus died in 1007, why does Byron say "for more than a thousand years"?
220. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 8:44:47 AM
PE
Obvious cross-post there.
221. PelleNilsson - 10/13/1999 8:49:40 AM
222. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 9:18:10 AM
Gombad-è-Kavus
Take a look at where Gombad-è-Kabus is located on this map. The region bordering the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan is home to the one million Turkmen of Iran, a traditionally nomadic people of Turkic stock. Their nomadic existence came to an end in Turkmenistan earlier this century when the Russians herded them into cities. Iran had been a refuge for Turkmen nomads resisting Soviet forced settlement campaigns, but during the 1950s and 1960s the Turkmen of Iran too were forced to settle and become farmers.
The Turkmen are a funny-looking lot, rather like a whole race of Eurasians. Imagine a Stalinist social engineer (say, named, Pseudoerasmus) took 5 million Italian men and 5 million Chinese women and forced them to breed. Then their offspring might then be called the Turkmen.
A male Turkmen by Iranian stereotype is always attired in a combination of red vest over a white shirt, baggy trousers tucked into black boots, and that trademark huge black, fleecy sheepskin hat that looks like a dreadlock peruke. (This stereotyped appearance is actually quite close to the reality in Turkmenistan.)
223. pseudoerasmus - 10/13/1999 9:20:50 AM
Gombad-è-Kavus
The Turkmen, referred to in Iran simply as "Turks" (Turkeh), are the butt of innumerable jokes. At any time, an Iranian has got several to tell and sometimes detains the listener for a whole afternoon with Turk jokes. I was surprised how many more Turk jokes I heard than mullah jokes. But they're the sort found around the world, in which the ethnicity of the person being derided isn't really crucial to the joke and could just as well as be Polish or Sikh or Korean. A sample:
An Afghan, an Arab and a Turk get sentenced to death. They are given two choices. Die by the bullet or an AIDS injection. The Afghan says, "Just shoot me, I will not suffer from the shame of AIDS". So they shoot him. The Arab says, "Shoot me too". The Turk asks for the AIDS injection. After they are done, he says, "Haha! I tricked you! I cant get AIDS because I was wearing a condom!"
A Turk gets on a bus and sits in the last seat. On the next stop a woman gets on and finds no seats so she stands in front of the Turk. After a couple minutes she turns and slaps him. A couple seconds later she slaps him again. When she gets off the next stop, a man in front asks the Turk why she hit him. The Turk replies, "I don't know. I saw her dress caught in the crack of her behind so I pulled it out for her. Then she slapped me. I thought I did something wrong so I put it back."
232. ElliottRW - 10/14/1999 10:01:32 AM
pseudo,
Loved the primer on Iran. The "ethnoliguistic" map confused me a bit, though--are the various ethnic groups of Iran really as segregated as the map suggests? I would have expected a bit more integration, at least in major urban centers.
Also, to what (institutions, policies, cultural values, geography, etc.) do you attribute Iran's success as a multicultural state?
241. pseudoerasmus - 10/14/1999 11:27:05 AM
#232
Yes, for the most part, Iran's ethnic groups live in their own regions, but most major cities are melting pots.
"Also, to what (institutions, policies, cultural values, geography, etc.) do you attribute Iran's success as a multicultural state?"
Repression.
#236
There is nothing in that link I can see which indicates anything but a risk or a threat to Baikal, not actual contamination. The pollution problems in Baikal are all up in the north, on the coast off the industrial city of Severobaikalsk, where a Soviet-era paper mill has dumped waste. But that's confined.
#238
Go upthread and read my post on my plan to visit Afghanistan next summer. I can assure you that I am quite informed about travel conditions there. There are no tourists in Afghanistan.
#240
Baikal is the oldest and deepest lake in the world, and contains more water than any other lake.
303. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:09:03 PM
Iranian Food
There are two kinds of Iranian cuisine: the kind you eat outside the home, and the kind you can eat only in private houses. By this division I do not mean to repeat the old advice that most dishes are better home-made than at restaurants. No, what I mean is that there is a whole class of Iranian dishes which are for the most part not served by public eateries and which someone without an invite to a private home probably wouldn't get to sample.
First, the "public" Iranian food. This is basically the stuff one finds at Iranian restaurants in the West and, within Iran, at the so-called kabâbîs. These kabab houses are found absolutely everywhere in Iran, on street corners, even on the side of the road, serving as a combination of bistro, Ratskeller, delicatessen and pub. When ordinary Iranians dine out, they usually head for a kabâbî (and not the few expensive restaurants catering primarily to the elite in Tehran or Esfahan).
The Iranian kabâb is generally a long, thin strip of grilled meat, filleted or minced, usually flavoured with a purplish-red herb called the sumagh (also used in tanning hides). The meat is almost always served on a platter with raw onions, grilled tomatoes and basmati rice drenched in butter. (Note basmati is fluffy and "al dente", not soft and sticky.) But because that's just not enough cholesterol and saturated fat for an Iranian, the platter is frequently accompanied either by a raw egg to mix avidly into the rice, or by a small plate of yoghurt for the same purpose. It's usually enough for me to work sumagh, egg and butter into the rice, but on occasion I've added yoghurt on top of all that. A true Iranian rice snob in addition demands that his pile of basmati rice come from the Mâzandarân province, situated north of Tehran along the Caspian Sea coast, claimed by Iranians to grow the most aromatic rice in the world.
304. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:11:21 PM
Iranian Food
If in Iran you get sick, in order to be cured you need only show up a kabâbî and eat to your heart's content.
There are four basic kinds of Iranian kabâb: kûbidé, based on minced lamb or beef; barg, a fillet of lamb or beef; jûjé, chicken breast or thighs flavoured with olive oil & saffron; and mâhi, or fish kebab. A A combination of kûbidé and barg is a soltani. At the real chophouses, kababs are served typically by the metre, but sometimes they're even larger: imagine dangling monoliths of grilled slaughterhouse flesh. A metre (!) of kûbidé and a metre of barg, with all the works including the ubiquitous all-you-can-eat salad bar, usually costs about $10.
In Iranian foods, as far as I know, chilis are completely absent and spices even remotely producing heat are extremely rare. So those of you who like the Indo-Pak minced meat tubules called seekh kebabs but find them too hot, should really like the Iranian kûbidé.
Any kabab house in Iran offers different side dishes, including some many will find familiar like dolmas (grape leaves stuffed with meat & rice) and kofte (meat balls). The really amazing ones unfamiliar to most Westerners include nargesî (spinach fried in eggs and onions) and my favourite, mirza ghasemî (fried aubergines/eggplants in eggs, tomatoes & garlic). None of these things can really be called sophisticated foods, they're just tasty hearty stuff. But probably the most common sidedish anywhere is diced vegetables such as cucumber and carrots in yoghurt containing garlic and mint or red basil.
305. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:12:50 PM
Iranian Food
Such kabâbî fare are also eaten at home, but two types of dish predominate the traditional output of the Iranian home: polô and khoresht. The former is a rice pilaf with vegetables, nuts and oftentimes meat, similar to the Indo-Pak biriyani, except usually much sweeter. The latter, the quintessential Iranian dish, a thick meaty stew. There are literally dozens of varieties of both dishes, so instead of describing them I will simply give you a recipe for each kind.
Note: The following are my translations-rationalisations of recipes written down for me in a German/English/Farsi mishmash. So they may not fully reflect their authors' designs.
306. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:15:26 PM
Shushu's Fesenjân
Khoresht Fesenjân is the showcase Iranian dish, a delicacy served on special occasions.
2kg (approx. 1lb.) chicken, duck, pheasant or any fowl
1 teaspoon of cardamon powder (not the seed)
1 teaspoon of black pepper
1 tablespoon, flour
1/2 teaspoon of saffron powder
500g, walnuts or chestnuts, ground or finely chopped
3-4 medium-size onions, finely chopped
500ml, pomegranate juice
2-3 tablespoons of sugar
150ml, cooking oil
salt to taste
Directions: In medium heat, sauté the onions with black pepper until they turn golden. Cook the meat with the onions until the meat browns. Then distribute the flour and nuts evenly. Fry the mixture for a few more minutes. Then add 750ml of hot water, pomegranate juice and salt. Cover the pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Then add saffron and mix. Simmer for 5 more minutes. (If the water evaporates, then you add more according to your discretion.) Sprinkle the cardamon over the stew but do not mix into it. Serve with the longest-grain basmati rice you can find.
Notes:
Substitute any meat at will. But fesenjân is usually made with fowl. Gamey fowl is better.
Without pomegranate juice is not fesenjân. You can squeeze Persephone's breasts yourself, or you could substitute 4-5 tablespoons of pomegranate paste. If you're using paste, increase the amount of water.
Depending on how sour your pomegranates are, you can increase the amount of sugar.
Oils based on walnut or chestnut or pistacchio are best, but try to match the oil and the nut. If you can't find these (and you will not find pistaccio oil), then substitute the mildest oils you can find. Canola or safflower oil springs to mind.
307. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:16:25 PM
errata
cardamon = cardamom
308. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:16:38 PM
There are many other kinds of khoresht involving mint, pistacchios, oranges, garlic, pumpkin, rhubarb, aubergines, legumes, potatoes, mushrooms, plums, even ladyfingers, etc.
309. Dantheman - 10/15/1999 1:23:21 PM
pe,
There's an Iranian restaurant in Philly's suburbs, called The Persian Grille. It serves nearly all of the dishes you described, plus a few dishes which they describe as being "special occasion" dishes. These are typically roasted cornish game hens with sweet spices and fruit sauces (cherry, as well as local berry), with the basmati rice and yogurt as a side dish. How authentic is it?
Also, I once had there as a side dish a whole garlic clove marinated in vinegar. Authentic? I'm glad to see the nargesi is authentic, as it's my favorite side dish.
310. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:25:47 PM
Dantheman: Is that the diner in Chestnut Hill?
311. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:26:42 PM
Oh, there is a whole array of pickles in vinegar, including cucumbers and garlic.
312. Dantheman - 10/15/1999 1:27:56 PM
pe,
It's in on Germantown Pike in Lafayette Hill (just outside the city's limits from Chestnut Hill). It clearly looks like a converted diner. Probably the same one.
313. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:31:39 PM
Dantheman, actually, I'm convinced that dump serves better Iranian kebabs than any Iranian restaurant in the West.
314. Dantheman - 10/15/1999 1:38:34 PM
pe,
High praise indeed. Since it's one of the few South Asian restaurants the Squirrel likes, she is obviously a woman of high taste (but then again, she married me, he said modestly).
I've only eaten at 2 Iranian restaurants otherwise, one in NY and one in Brighton, England in 1983 (long story). I liked the one in Brighton better, but that may have been due to the contrast with the remarkably dull English food we had been served before.
315. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:42:54 PM
Jens's German Mother's Polô
500g, basmati rice
1kg, chicken pieces
olive oil
2 tablespoons, butter
50g almonds
50g pistacchios
100g dried orange peels
4 medium onions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons, brown sugar
500g brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon, saffron
salt & black pepper to taste
Directions
Rice preparation: Wash rice twice and keep in salted water for a couple of hours. Drain. Boil some water in a pot. (I suppose 500g of basmati rice deserves about a litre of water.) Add rice and salt. Cover and boil on low heat for ten minutes or so.
Slice the almonds. Soak the almonds, the orange peels and the pistaccios in cold water for an hour.
Sauté onions in oil until golden. Then sauté chicken with the onions until they brown. Add a cup of hot water, salt and pepper. Cook on medium for 15-20 minutes. If the liquid evaporates, add more enough, such that in the end, about half a cup of liquid is left.
Separately, dissolve the sugar in boiling water; add saffron, the liquid left over from the chicken, and 3 tablespoons of oil.
In a separate pot, pour some oil at your discretion. You'll create four layers: a third of the prepared basmati rice at the bottom; a layer of chicken pieces; another layer of rice this time sprinkled with orange peels, pistaccios and almonds; and a final layer of rice. Then pour the sugar/chicken-juice mix over the whole thing. Cover and cook on low for half an hour. When it's done, mix thoroughly.
316. marjoribanks - 10/15/1999 1:44:53 PM
Well, the reason I'm not overfond of the Iranian food I've tried is precisely the lack of chilies. And I'm not fond of the fruit-meat combination either. The chili/fish/tamarind ratatouille sounds preferable in the long run, what can I say. Only the Bengali and the Konkani Hindus eat fish, by the way.
317. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 1:45:02 PM
Dantheman: Iran isn't South Asia. You should realise that kababs aren't really a regular food item inside the home, it's food eaten out. Also, the Iranian restaurants I've tried in NY and Europe all really suck.
332. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 3:14:51 PM
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention.
Most of Iran's jams are in my opinion better than those found elsewhere: carrot & rosewater jam; fig & vanilla jam; quince jam with cardamom; pear jam with lime (though the non-Iranian substitute of tamarind improves it). Yum yum yum yum yum yum. I'm beginning to ache with pangs of desire just jotting these down.
334. Seguine - 10/15/1999 4:12:54 PM
Dantheman,
The Persian Grill used to be one of my favorite joints; it was located about 15-20 minutes from where we lived in Mt. Airy. The lamb kebabs were excellent, and they carried decent beer. I think it must at one point have been a MacDonalds or Arby's or something. But the fish pond and rampant garden they planted out front kind of made up for the dreary decor, don't you think?
I was always sort of curious about the large array of taped music available behind the front counter, but never got around to investigating.
BTW, have you ever eaten at that 300 year old cottage on Germantown at Gowen (across from the beer distributor) that was converted into a restaurant a few years ago?
337. PelleNilsson - 10/15/1999 4:31:25 PM
PE
You referred to generous amounts of butter poured onto the rice. Is that fresh butter or what in Arabic is known as 'ghee'
339. pseudoerasmus - 10/15/1999 4:35:39 PM
Pelle: Ghee = clarified butter, and the word is used in Farsi and Hindi/Urdu as well. No, ghee is used in cooking, not over the chelô, or the plain basmati rice served with kababs.
403. JayAckroyd - 10/17/1999 8:23:09 AM
Jewish Spies
Here's an article about some tension between Jewish Iranians and the current government. An excerpt:
"This is my country, my Iran," he said, pressing close, speaking clear English despite years of little use. "When the mullahs made their revolution 20 years ago, I could have left, like many Jews, but I decided not to go. And why? Because my family came here 2,500 years ago."
The man looked quickly at the rows of small boys and girls, teen-agers in T-shirts and sneakers, men and women, doctors and lawyers and engineers and businessmen and university professors, as well as merchants from the bazaars and janitors and taxi drivers and off-duty soldiers. Filling the balcony and every row of chairs in the hall, they were a cross section of a community that traces its origins to Jewish slaves freed by an ancient Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great, after he conquered Babylon in the sixth century B.C.
Survivors of countless upheavals through the ages, the Jews who remain here have endured an Islamic revolution that gave the country a Government that was, at least until the rise of a powerful reform movement in the last two years, the most militant and anti-Western in the Muslim world. Although recognized as an official minority in the Islamic Constitution, and allowed to observe their religious practices and traditions, the Jews of Iran have rarely known more difficult times.
"Imagine, 2,500 years!" the bearded man in the synagogue continued. "My father, his father, and his father before him, for centuries and centuries we have been here, always loyal to whoever has ruled. And now, because of Shiraz, I know I must take my family, and lock my house, and leave."
404. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 7:39:58 AM
Mashhad
After Gombad-e-Kavus, I visited Mashhad, one of the holiest cities of Shi'ah Islam. A few remarks first on the Shi'ah sect before I describe Mashhad itself.
While the Sunni Muslims who dominate the wider Muslim world amount to only 8% of Iran's population, the vast majority of Iranians, about 90%, belong to the Shi'ah sect.
The Great Schism of Islam between the Sunnis and the Shiites broke out in the late 7th century when the Ummayads of Damascus seized the caliphate after the death of Ali, the fourth caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Claiming for the Prophet's direct descendants the divine right to rule over all Muslims as caliphs, the party (shi'ah) of Ali revolted in the name of his son (and Muhammad's grandson) Husayn. However, the Ummayad forces crushed the Shiite army at a town called Karbala in southern Iraq, and Husayn was decapitated.
Thus, the Shi'ah sect emerged out of what was essentially a legitimatist controversy -- just try to imagine millions of Scotsmen fasting, weeping, screaming and beating themselves on the anniversary of the beheading of England's Charles I. But the Shiites eventually developed a theology of their own, in which the imam (or political ruler) was transformed into a mystical being with esoteric knowledge and the sole infallible authority to interpret the Koran. Or something like that. Now you know more about Shi'ah theology than the vast majority of Shiites.
405. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 7:41:25 AM
Mashhad
The most distinctive thing about the Shiites is how they celebrate the Muslim holy day of Ashura, when they mourn the violent death of Husayn at the hands of the Ummayad army. In what is ashurely among the most graphic displays of aggrievement practised by any religion in the world, Shiites take to the streets shouting, listen to fiery orations on the life of Husayn with tears streaming down their cheeks, watch reenactments of their martyr's life, and join a procession on the street to flagellate themselves with chains until they bleed. I have seen Ashura celebrated by the Shiite minority in Pakistan, and it's a frightening combination of frenzy and passion. Outside Iran, Ashura almost always produces riots between Shiites and Sunnis.
The holiest shrine of Shi'ah Islam is in Karbala, Iraq, and pious Shiites impose upon themselves the double burden of making a pilgrimmage not only to Mecca but also to Karbala. But now that hardly anyone can visit that country, Mashhad (the burial site of several imams) has become something of a substitute. I am reliably told that Mashhad plays host to five million self-flagellating pilgrims on Ashura alone. (Just as those who have gone on pilgrimmage to Mecca during the holy month are entitled to call themselves Hajj, so Muslims who have been to Mashhad are entitled Mashtee.)
406. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 7:43:22 AM
Mashhad
As befitting a holy city, Mashhad is visibly more conservative than the rest of Iran. The procession of ambulatory black tents on the street announces that literally without exception Mashhadi women are hidden away in châdor and none wear scarf & trenchcoat as in other parts of the country. Even Mashhadi men take the hejâb more seriously (for Islam has a dress code for men also): despite the heat I didn't see a single man in a short-sleeved shirt or even a long-sleeved one with the sleeves rolled up. A larger Komité presence than normal makes sure of all this.
And it's a city occupied by mullahs. Even in Tehran's central square with its myriad mosques and madrassas, one doesn't see as many mullahs as I saw wandering and loitering in that dour, humourless town. It's as though every third person is either a mullah, or a religious student, or a permanent pilgrim, or an aspiring martyr.
None of this piety results in much reserve, however. If the rest of Iran has a few sporadic signs reading marg bar Amrika (death to America) which no one pays any attention to, the mullahs that rule this municipal theocracy plaster them all over like talismans. And in Mashhad each day is a little Ashura: a small procession of penitents and bleeding self-flagellents gathers in the central square every single day, screaming about one thing or another (especially "marg bar Amrika"), in an attempt to redeem themselves in the eyes of God.
I must say, after one whole monotonous day of mullahs, "marg bar Amrika", chadors, and Shiite penitents, I was overjoyed to read in the local paper some sign of normalcy and sanity: a serial killer who had raped, mutilated and brunt a dozen women was executed in the city only a few days before we had arrived.
407. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 7:52:53 AM
Mashhad
The passion of Shiite religiosity and the sensuality of the Iranian character combine to produce in Persian architecture that unabased resplendence famed around the world. And that's Mashhad's worth for a non-pilgrim visitor like me: there are so many stunningly beautiful mosques and shrines and monuments.
The centrepiece of Mashhad's architectural treasures is the complex of the Shrine of Imam Reza, one of those mystical beings mentioned earlier, who died in the 9th century. Complex is exactly the right word: it's a huge compound, walled and circular, a city within the city. Inside are mosques, museums, tombs, libraries, gardens, squares -- but no gift shops or restaurants.
The security at the complex is for some reason very tight. Each person entering is frisked thoroughly, forced to move through a metal detector, and made to show his identity card. Any cameras, tape recorders, cell phones, or any electronic equipment are temporarily confiscated at the gates. I addition, foreigners are required to fill several forms and their passports are scrutinised. The skeptical guard looked at mine for ten minutes. Inside the complex, the Komité keep a tight watch on the goings-on, but the visitors in general are so well-behaved that the overarmed guards are reduced to doing little more than ordering men to roll down their sleeves.
The shrine of Emam Reza itself is actually off-limits to non-Muslims, but that sort of thing has never stopped me. I press on. Although my mother had me baptised as a Roman Catholic, my father reminds me that I am still technically a Muslim. At holy sites off-limits to non-Muslims in most Islamic countries, I'm invariably denied entry at the beginning. But as soon as I show an ID revealing my plausibly Muslim last name, the resistence usually crumbles and I'm allowed in.
408. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 7:54:48 AM
Mashhad
But not at the Emam Reza Shrine!
I showed my passport, but that didn't satisfy the mean-looking Komité man who acted as the Shrine's unofficial bouncer. This man with the classic Iranian three-day beard then asked me to cite the Shahadah, the Muslim affirmation of faith. That was easy, for I had always had that memorised for needy occasions such as if my plane were hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists: Ashhadu alla Ilaha Illa allah wa ashhadu anna muhammadun rasulu'llah, or "I swear there is no god but God and Muhammed is his prophet". He quizzed me some more: name the five pillars of Islam -- easy; recite the Fatiha, the eight opening lines of the Koran -- more difficult, but I eventually managed to produce a mangled version of them. I was completely stumped when the stubbly thug demanded I recall some verses of the Tarawih, the required evening prayers during the month of fasting (I think). At which point Jens intervened and argued that even Iranians couldn't retrieve such lines from memory! Then without further ado the bouncer directed us to remove our shoes for the ablution. (You must wash your feet, face, hands, etc. before entering a mosque or a shrine.)
Jens and I spent the better part of the afternoon exploring the rest of the Shrine complex. But by early evening, I had yet to see the interior of the Mosque of Gohar Shad, and I wanted to see it. One of the few mosques in the Islamic world named after a woman (Tamurlane's daughter-in-law to boot), it was famed in the country for the golden portal as well as the ceiling of the prayer hall. Since the mosque would close after the early evening prayers (isha'), and it was prayer time now, I insisted that we join the throng of devotees to pray. (No one is barred from prayers.)
409. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 7:58:13 AM
This was no big deal, it's something you must occasionally do in Islamic countries if you want to inspect their architectural splendours, which are not museum pieces but functioning workaday structures. So Jens and I filed into the giant, ornate prayer hall and found ourselves in the dead centre of a praying crowd numbering at least 1000.
In any prayer hall, congregants organise themselves into neat columns and rows. (Men and women are separated by some kind of temporary divider.) When prompted by the mullah, each falls to the knees while lowering the head and then prostrates himself with forehead, knees, hands and toes firmly touching the ground. Then he bends back. Then he prostrate again. Repeat a couple of times. Then stand up. Then repeat the full procedure ad nauseam. (Actually, Islamic law prescribes minute details of every little movement in the prayer posture, so many in fact that I don't see how anybody can remember them all.)
Well, in architectural ogling mode, your humble narrator deviates substantially from such rigours. While the congregation of pious Musselmans were solemnly bending forward in submission to God and exposing their butts in unison, I remained seated with the knees bent and adjusted my head heavenward.
410. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 8:04:20 AM
Mashhad
The intervals between the motions of the congregants' reverence were my chances for furtively examining that wonderous terrain of mosaic, moulding, calligraphy and florals which forms the ceiling of a Persian prayer hall. One minute I would be delighting at some dainty calligraphic flourish which curled around a tri-colour pearl-inlay motif, only to be snatched away from bedazzlement half a minute later when the pious began to return to their seated positions. Nonetheless, amid the whispered din of "Allahu Akbar" and "salaa Allahu alihi wa salaam", I managed at least thirty fleeting glances of the ceiling -- a ceiling whose colourful mosaics refracted the dim lighting from below and bathed the prayer hall in a kaleidoscopic glow.
When the prayers were finished, we naturally didn't stay for the obligatory sermon and began to navigate our way out of the throng. (It's difficult for the pious staring up at the mullah not to notice that one man is conspicuously looking elsewhere.) But as Jens and I were leaving the mosque through the Golden Portal, some grumpy old man caught up with us from behind and let loose some excited palaver. This observant old bugger had caught me in my impieties! "Ignore him, just start walking away", Jens commanded me. But the man began raising a minor stink and caught the attention of several Komité guards, including that bouncer with the three-day beard.
411. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 8:05:38 AM
Komité: What's happening?
Old Bugger: These foreigners were showing disrespect in the mosque!
Komité: Is this true?
Old Bugger: I saw this one just sitting and idling, not praying.
Komité: Is this true?
Jens: Look, I apologise, but this man is a stupid foreigner, he doesn't know what he's doing.
Then they seized my passport and Jens's ID from our hands. They didn't do anything as serious as detain us, but these Komité officers did escort us to the gates while shoving us in the back. At the entrance to the Shrine, a guard was ordered to scribble down the information contained in my passport (but not Jens's ID), and we were, in essence, booted out of the complex.
Outside on the dusty street, Jens asked me, "So what do you think of being banned from the Most Holy Shrine of the Emam Reza?"
412. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 8:07:01 AM
A quick endnote on Mashhad.
The Trans-Khorasan rail link between Mashad and Ashgabad (in the Republic of Turkmenistan) has recently opened, making it possible for an intrepid traveller to go from Beijing to London via Central Asia, Iran and Turkey. Previously, the only routes available were Beijing-Siberia-Moscow-London and Beijing-Central-Asia-Moscow-London. By the way, the previous gap in this route, the Urumqi-Almaty link, was filled in 1996.
413. marjoribanks - 10/18/1999 10:37:03 AM
Very nice, Pseuder, you're hitting a good rythym now. Inshallah, this will sweep us, like the smooth chug-a-chug-chug of a good railway, through the remainded of Iran and into Pakistan very soon.
414. ElliottRW - 10/18/1999 5:20:34 PM
PseudoErasmus,
What types of gambling (if any) are tolerated in Iran?
415. PelleNilsson - 10/18/1999 5:42:10 PM
PE
If you brush up a bit on the Koran and adopt suitable attire, do you think you could enter Mecca during the hajj?
416. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/1999 6:49:45 PM
#414
I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure none at all. Maybe cockfighting.
#415
Well, Pelle, if you recall last spring, this was a question which exercised me for a little while in an exchange in the international thread with Irving Snodgrass, whose wife has been on hajj. But it is not a question of knowing a few verses of the Koran, I believe one must know quite a few of the prescribed (and elaborate) rituals. One must also get a special hajj visa from Saudi Arabia.
As an experiment, I call on any non-Muslim among us to go to the Saudi embassy, proclaim himself a Muslim (having to say, if need be, Ashhadu alla Ilaha Illa allah wa ashhadu anna muhammadun rasulu'llah) and try to get a hajj visa. I would do this myself, except that my last name would make it less than a good control.
417. PelleNilsson - 10/19/1999 7:57:24 AM
You are right, of course. I recall now that both Burckhardt and Burton prepared themselves extensively as regards expected behaviour. Burton, I believe, posed as an Afghani doctor in order to explain his dialect and any shortcomings in his knowledge about the rituals.
418. Seguine - 10/19/1999 4:22:33 PM
PE, you didn't mention whether you retrieved your passport. Are you down to two now?
426. marjoribanks - 10/21/1999 11:37:27 AM
Pseuder,
You were lucky to see the interior of a fire temple. This because it is forbidden for Non-Zoroastrians to enter one. I've smuggled myself (with assistance) into a small one in Bombay, but generally they're impossible to enter.
It's interesting to hear your observation about the looks of the Irani Zoroastrians. They're the same way in India, though centuries of inbreeding and resistance to intermarriage have also bequeathed most Parsis with large hooked noses. It may interest you to know that many Parsis believe that they are descended from a tribe that came to Iran from the North Pole! It's not a joke to them.
Some other notes: Parsis have been in India for at least a thousand years. Their oldest temple, in Gujerat, has kept that "eternal flame" going for all of that time, so the legend goes. The first place they settled in India was around and near that temple, and they soon adopted the local language. Hence, almost all Indian Parsis speak/write Gujerati as their native language.
Also, the Parsi community in India is finally being depleted to the point where the numbers in Iran have supposedly grown greater than the number remaining in India. Besides immigration (to England, mostly) inter-marriage has finally become a significant phenomenon, and this has affected the numbers quite heavily.
The heyday of the Indian Parsis was during the British Raj, where they dominated certain aspects of banking, the opium trade, and even manufacturing and the law. Many Parsis at this time became extremely rich, and their legacy of philanthropy can be seen everywhere in Bombay.
427. marjoribanks - 10/21/1999 11:38:12 AM
BTW, there was a second wave of migration of Zoroastrians to India at the turn of the 20th century. These newer arrivals aren't strictly called Parsis, they're called 'Iranis' and unlike their predecessors these stuck to meaner trades. They established the Bombay institution, now universally called 'Irani restaurants' which specialize in tea, snacks and biscuits. These still dot Bombay, particularly South Bombay.
428. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/1999 11:38:51 AM
Marzipranks: I don't know about India, Parsi temples in Pakistan and Zoro temples in Iran are not off-limits to non-Zoros. What's off-limits are the Towers of Silence.
429. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/1999 11:39:47 AM
Also, the interiors of Chak Chak are visible from hundreds of metres away! They're exposed to the elements.
430. marjoribanks - 10/21/1999 11:41:27 AM
Pseuder,
Did you eat any typically Zoroastrian food in Yazd? I'd be interested to know what it was like.
Parsi food in India is terrific, one of my absolute favorites. Dhansak, Patrani Macchi, Sali Boti, it's all really excellent. Most Bombayites wait eagerly for invitations to a Parsi navjote (coming of age ceremony) or wedding, since these are famous for superb never-ending spreads.
431. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/1999 11:41:36 AM
It's interesting to hear your observation about the looks of the Irani Zoroastrians. They're the same way in India, though centuries of inbreeding and resistance to intermarriage have also bequeathed most Parsis with large hooked noses.
The Parsis I've seen are visibly more Asiatic-looking than the Zoroastrians of Yazd.
(There are, presumably, some Zoroastrians in other cities of Iran, but I don't know anything about them.)
432. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/1999 11:44:10 AM
#430
I asked about that, and all the answers I got were that the Zoroastrians in Yazd eat pretty much what other Iranians eat. The eateries in Yazd, even right near the temples, served run-of-the-mill Iranian food.
433. marjoribanks - 10/21/1999 11:44:47 AM
Pseuder,
You can enter a fire-temple in Pakistan with no problems? How odd. It's near impossible in India. In fact, I believe there is a serious religious proscription about unbelievers viewing the fire of Ahura Mazda.
BTW, the Towers of Silence are also forbidden for most Parsis. In fact, the only people allowed past a certain point are Parsis descended from a kind of Cohanim. In other words, very few.
434. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/1999 11:49:10 AM
#433
Well, I've no idea whether they are technically off-limits to non-Zoros, but I've entered a Parsi fire temple in Karachi openly, without any subterfuge or chicanery. The same with the two temples in Yazd, and the one at Chak Chak. (In the Karachi temple, it was empty, there was no ceremony going on. I think Karachi has only a few hundred Parsis left.)
435. marjoribanks - 10/21/1999 11:50:54 AM
Some good books related to the Parsis (all novels)
The Memory of Elephants: Boman Desai (deals with the sweep of Parsi history)
Such a Long Journey: Rohington Mistry
Tales from Firoshah Bagh: Rohington Mistry (both are lovely and accomplished accounts of life in the Bombay Parsi community)
Cracking India: Bapsi Sidhwa (an account of Karachi Parsis set during the Partition, made into a movie out right now called 'Earth'.)
529. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 8:06:11 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
At Yazd, Jens and I parted company. After all, this was his vacation from his bank job in Frankfurt, he wasn't going to spend it all at my leisure. So he flew back to Tehran and I headed off on land in Pakistan's direction. (My movements in Iran, once again.)
Henceforth by myself and without his interpretor services, I had to rely on my own pitiful broken Farsi. Years ago, I underwent a frenetic Hashkean episode of Farsi self-study, with help in pronunciation from Jens. Although I know the grammar pretty well, my vocabulary could stand improvement. So I frequently relied on the handy pocket dictionary I carried around. Yet, because Farsi shares a mulitude of cognates with Urdu and Pashto, it's possible to guess at the meaning of many words; and sometimes even to formulaically convert Urdu or Pashto words into Farsi ones, just as one might convert the French traîter into the Italian trattare. (Of course by this method one can fall into dangerous traps: for example I discovered to my embarassment the Pashto word for "foot", pekha, is cognate with a Farsi obsenity. Let's just say in the Farsi incarnation the geography has shifted slightly.) All the same, as long as a kind and indulgent Iranian spoke at a snail's pace and enunciated every syllable, I managed alright. And most Iranians I met were extremely kind and indulgent. Unfortunately, the linguistic situation did not make for particularly sophisticated conversations.
My first lonesome trial-by-fire in Farsi was buying an overnight bus ticket for Bam at the Yazd bus station. At the ticket office, I successfully exchanged tens of thousands of tomans for a brown, square piece of paper which had lots of Farsi print about nothing in particular, but no sign of destination.
530. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 8:09:31 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
Then I noticed that the back of this scrap read, "Zahedan" (
) and the stated price I paid, both hand-written. I found this informality a bit alarming, plus I was heading to Bam, not Zahedan. (Zahedan was my eventual destination, but the ticket clerk didn't know that.)
I returned to the ticket office to meekly register my complaint. The clerk very kindly spoke to me at half his normal speed:
Clerk: No...problem...bus...goes...to Bam.
PE: But...it....says....Zahedan.
Clerk: No...problem...bus...goes...to Bam.
PE: But...it....says....Zahedan.
Clerk: To Bam first. Bam...half...price...Zahedan.
PE: Really?
Clerk: Kerman first, then Bam, then Zahedan. Driver wakes you up at Bam.
Prompted by my puzzlement, the clerk repeated the last sentence three times. Had I understood right? The driver will wake me up at Bam? Somehow things didn't seem right, but the bus was an overnighter, so I didn't dwell on it.
A few hours later, in the late afternoon, I climbed aboard the squeaky-clean minibus, a thirty-seater, whose destination header only read "Zahedan". All but two seats had already been filled, but the driver was nowhere to be seen. To reassure myself, I asked the other passengers where they were going. All but one of them replied Kerman, with the nonconformist bound for Zahedan. That the bus was going to Kerman was reassuring; still there was yet no evidence whatever that we were also headed for Bam. I was apprehensive.
531. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 8:10:39 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
As soon as the middle-aged driver claimed the helm, I trod up the aisle to inquire about Bam: "Bus goes to Bam?" Perhaps uniquely grouchy and brusque among Iranians who are neither mullahs nor Komité nor Mashhadis, the driver spat out the litany of "Kerman, Bam, Zahedan" without the slightest interest in being helpful.
Then a good samaritan in the form of a woman in her mid to late 40s came forward and pursued my cause. In an aggressive Farsi she thundered at the lout: "Is this bus going to Bam or not? Why don't you answer properly?" (Or I believe that's what she said.) Then the intimidated driver emitted the reassuring confirmation I needed.
After the bus sped off outside Yazd, I could see that the road we were plying was among the best paved roads I'd ever seen in a desert. You could see for miles and miles in either direction the gloss of the black macadam contrasted with the surrounding dull tan of the Dasht-e-Kavir.
The samaritan took the empty seat in the back next to mine. This was apparently because she -- surprise surprise -- wanted to practise English with me! (So gentle are the ulterior motives in Iran.) Her English was actually quite rudimentary, so we spoke to each other in a broken mixture of Farsi and English, both of us frequently resorting to the use of my dictionary.
It turned out that this extremely garrulous woman was a journalist at a (presumably) progressive magazine in Kerman and called herself an "Islamic feminist". A devout Muslim but not a châdorî, she argued, or so I pieced together, that the true Islam was being subverted by the mullahs and the rightful role of women in Islamic society diminished. She's part of some group who go around public places giving impromptu speeches on the rights of women and using quotations from the Koran and the Hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) to support their arguments.
532. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 8:11:45 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
The cause for which she was most ardent, however, was making divorce laws fairer for Iranian women. She spoke quite a bit about this, but I didn't really understand her well enough. However I did catch her saying she had been to Pakistan and had worked with women's groups there. (Hadn't known there were any!)
In addition to providing decent conversation, she acted as conduit between me and the rest of the passengers. Thanks to her sponsorship, I was soon showered in offerings of snacks: golden semi-translucent sugar pretzels (like the Indo-Pak jalebi), roasted sugared pistaccios, little petits fours of chocolate & nuts, rose-flavoured sugar solids, etc.
By the time I finished politely accepting every offer, I felt queasy from sugar-poisoning. Could a diabetic be culturally sensitive in Iran? The ubiquitous Iranian tea, almost black and passed through a lump of sugar suspended between one's teeth, might have been more plentifully forthcoming were it not for the bus driver's habit of downshifting in treacherous road conditions.
In this somewhat downscale crowd, only my Islamist-Feminist spoke any English, but the rest were nonetheless full of questions about the West: are there many Muslims in the West? is everyone corrupt like in Iran? do you really eat pork? are Western women aggressive? Is there a lot of immorality? You can tell from the frequency with which variations on the last question were asked, that many Iranians think of Western women as nothing short of Jane Fonda in Barbarella.
The friendly interrogation was so persistent, and the merriment inside the bus (often accompanied by their singing) so ample, that I forgot all about the desert sunset I wanted to see. The crowd pretty much went at it with their convivial rioting till they exhausted themselves well into the night.
533. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 8:12:38 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
And soon we reached the first of our destinations: after nearly eight hours of riding, a little before midnight our bus came to a halt by a well-lit roundabout in Kerman and all but one passenger got off. I was sorry to see my Islamist-feminist benefactor go, but before leaving she had a word with the driver and assured me that the bus would stop at a similar roundabout in Bam a couple of hours later. She also left behind a warning I'd already heard from others: don't stay in Zahedan too long and leave for Pakistan as soon as possible! (One must get to Zahedan in order to cross into Pakistan from Iran.) It was a bad town, she said.
Our bus stayed in Kerman for maybe half an hour, during which the remaining passenger and I stretched our legs outside in the illuminated cold of night. I tried to strike a conversation with this mystery man, who alone among the passengers didn't participate in the revelry of hours earlier. Either because my Farsi was appalling, or because he was simply not sociable, or because he was exhausted and sleepy, he remained a man of few words. All I could get out of him was that he was headed for Zahedan.
The bus resumed its course. I saw the driver yawning a lot, not a good sign, and the Kerman-Bam road wasn't lit at all, unlike the Yazd-Kerman road, even less of a good sign. (Eastern Iran is much less developed than central and western parts of the country.) Exhausted from the long day, without company, without lighting inside the bus, in a darkness relieved only by moonlight, starlight and the bus's headlights in front, I naturally grew sleepy. I asked the driver to wake me and warn me before our approach to Bam, if I fell asleep. Then I did fall asleep in the clean but uncomfortable seat.
534. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/1999 8:14:00 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
When I woke up after maybe two hours, my watch read half past three. We should have been either in Bam already or extremely close. When I inquired with the driver, "Already past Bam", he blurted out.
PE: Why didn't you stop at Bam?
Driver: [Clearly irritated] I called you before Bam, you didn't wake up.
I'm not a deep sleeper. If he had really called me or had simply stopped the bus at Bam, I would have woken up.
PE: Why didn't you stop at Bam?
Driver: You didn't wake up. [And a lot more jabbering I couldn't understand.]
PE: Where are you going now?
Driver: Zahedan.
I really didn't want to get to Zahedan just now, not because of the woman's warning, but because the train to Pakistan would not be leaving till a couple of days later and there were reportedly no lodgings in that town. Plus, I intended to make the most of my visa for Iran and didn't want to waste a few days in some stupid frontier town.
So, I kept on insisting. Bam! Why didn't you wake me up? After some importuning, the driver stepped on the brake, took a U-turn and headed in the opposite direction. And no wonder he was willing to do this: he drove no more than twenty minutes before he stopped and thundered: BAM!
"This is Bam?" There had been no change in the view from the window since he had made the turn: it was unmitigated and unadulterated blackness outside, not even a flicker of light, a featureless void in all directions. Kerman station had been brightly lit.
Driver: Yes, Bam.
PE: Where?
Driver: This is Bam station!
536. joezan - 10/23/1999 12:50:48 AM
Holy crap!
My girlfriend and I were once stuck in the South Bronx, across the street from a jail, till 3am, in a little parking lot a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, when my car wouldn't start.
I'd rather be there than where you were.
I think I'd kick that driver off and take his bus before I'd get off at that stop.
537. pseudoerasmus - 10/23/1999 4:24:16 AM
Oh, no, I would much rather be in the middle of that desert than in the middle of the South Bronx!
539. pseudoerasmus - 10/23/1999 4:51:04 AM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan
He was in a foul mood, no doubt from a combination of sleeplessness and having to comply with my request. He swung the door open, but I didn't want to get out. It was, after all, only a little after 4AM and pitch dark. And cold. Maybe going on to Zahedan was better than getting out! He insisted that I get out.
PE: Can I go to Zahedan?
Driver: No. You bought a ticket for Bam.
PE: But where is Bam?
Driver: This is Bam station.
I looked for support from the mystery man, but he was either impassive or asleep. Apparently the driver was intent on depositing me at Bam. He even went to the back to collect my bag and tossed it outside through the rear exit.
Having little choice, I got off the bus, and it sped off.
The darkness was almost complete: the only relief came from the moon and the stars. These made the asphalt of the road glow eerily with a purplish hue; on either side stood great walls of unrelieved blackness. That crucial oasis of illumination that I had expected Bam like Kerman to be, was nowhere in sight. But the natural lighting of the heavens did confirm that I was indeed stranded at a bus station just like the one at Kerman. Or at least what passed for a bus station in these parts: a traffic roundabout where, were it light, taxis would be swirling eargerly to pick up the bus passengers away to Bam town. But of course there were none now.
Even with one of those thin tubules of light for reading, I could see nothing beyond the blurry outline of the road and my own limbs. I hoped there were no wild animals in the dark. But I really had no choice but to stand there, immobile, waiting anxiously for the dawn. It was freezing. There were inexplicable noises in the dark.
To be continued
540. pseudoerasmus - 10/23/1999 4:52:55 AM
FYI, I had completely messed up the HTML in my "Incidents on the Road Pakistan" messages, and therefore had to delete and repost them. An edit feature would have been most useful!
550. pseudoerasmus - 10/23/1999 12:30:59 PM
At this point, I invite all readers to post their experiences of being stranded in the middle of nowhere.
558. pseudoerasmus - 10/23/1999 3:09:25 PM
Here is my
Editing/Deleting/Moving Policy:
(1) Any sequence of nontopical remarks is subject to deletion or to being moved to another thread.
On-topic remarks:
(2) are related to my travels;
(3) are related to the countries in which I travelled; and
(4) can also be sharing your travel or other experiences similar to what's described in this thread.
Marjoribanks's posts on the Parsis of India were eminently on-topic, as is JoeZan's brief remark about being stranded in the South Bronx.
559. proudnerd - 10/23/1999 4:04:27 PM
pseudoE,
Didn't you take any photographs during your travel ? If you did, why don't you just post them ?
560. pseudoerasmus - 10/23/1999 5:00:25 PM
In Tehran, I loaded a 24-exposure film in my camera; when I arrived in Moscow six weeks later, I still hadn't finished that roll. I don't like taking pictures. But in Russia my fiancée took a whole bunch of them. I will definitely include several accompanying photos for the one story in Russia that requires them ("The Story of all Stories from the Russian Far East".)
561. PelleNilsson - 10/23/1999 5:15:38 PM
PE
I don't like taking pictures.
I join you in that. These days we seldom bring a camera at all. I find that one gets preoccupied by finding "good spots", "good angles" and all that. It distracts from the experience.
563. BGPelaire - 10/24/1999 7:08:36 AM
I was last in Iran in 1972, when it was still a bastion of stability. After a horrific drive through eastern Turkey (with me at the wheel of our aging VW Bus most of the way), we were glad to see all the policemen on the Iranian side of the border, and the nice smooth road that led to Tehran. We stoppeda few times en route and I was twice offered money for my girl friend, a blonde. I declined and was then asked, "How about you?" just like in, well, a story. We ate rice, eggs, and "mutton" as there was nothing else, and drank Coke.
The stranded story is actually about Turkey - way up in the hills just before we got to Iran. Dark night, four of us sacked out in the VW Bus, outside some small town where we'd entertained the locals with a bit of bouzouki and flute noise earlier in the day. Rain, lightning, and then - tapping on the windows! Angry Turkish muttering! I stole into the driver's seat and we sped off without looking back, and didn't stop until we got to the bastion of stability.
564. BGPelaire - 10/24/1999 7:14:12 AM
In Tehran and the other cities we visited, but especially Tehran, the order of the day was complaining - about the Shah and the inequality of the society. We were waylaid by returning students (from San Francisco, always) who insisted we come to their house to listen to freedom songs, and share some forbidden hashish or opium.
The younger siblings of these freedom lovers and nonstop yakkers are probably those who welcomed the mullah's great revolution, and who now are complaining along with their children about the same conditions that the Shah created - namely, a corrupt elite that controls or owns everything and lies to the public to stay in power.
BTW, my next stop was Afghanistan, the illiterate Dodge City of the East, and then Pakistan, and then to India - only one border post was open, and then only one day a week. The Afghans never complained, but then they had a LOT of opium readily available.
565. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 8:30:08 AM
Excellent, Pelaire, did you make the Mirjavé/Taftan border crossing? Or did you go through Afghanistan? If the latter, where did you enter Pakistan? Through the Kojak Pass?
566. proudnerd - 10/24/1999 5:10:27 PM
pseudoE,
I don't like taking pictures.
I understand the sentiment. It prevents me from absorbing beautiful sights and sounds of a fascinating land. I finally managed to shoot a bunch of them during a boat trip in Thailand earlier this year, but I had to rent the boat solely for that purpose.
If need be, I can post photographs of Arg-e-Bam and maybe some others.
567. PelleNilsson - 10/24/1999 5:15:59 PM
PE
How long shall you keep us in suspense?
568. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/1999 5:16:04 PM
Proudnerd: You can post whatever picture you like, though I've got a good photo of Argh-é-Bam for the ready. Have you been in Iran? If so, where and why not recount some of your travels?
569. proudnerd - 10/25/1999 12:52:54 AM
pseudoE,
I have never been in Iran, but I am fascinated by all things Iranian.
570. proudnerd - 10/25/1999 3:46:11 AM
pseudoE,
However, the Ummayad forces crushed the Shiite army at a town called Karbala in southern Iraq, and Husayn was decapitated.
Is Moharram an exclusively shiite ritual ?
571. proudnerd - 10/25/1999 4:12:49 AM
The shrine of Imam Raza where pseudoE nearly got busted for faking a Muslim.
Main courtyard of the shrine of Imam Reza.
More about Imam Reza's shrine.
Persepolis pictures and information at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago who sponsored the Herzfeld and Schimdt expeditions.
572. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 7:21:51 AM
Proudnerd: Excellent links, thanks.
Muharram is simply the name of the first month of the Islamic calendar and does not signify anything else. Ashura, or the 10th of Muharram, is a very minor holi-day for Sunnis, when fasting is voluntary. However, since Ashura coincides with the day Husayn was killed by the Umayyads, it is a major festival for the Shiites. (The festival itself is called taziyah, I think.)
573. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/25/1999 7:36:32 AM
PE:
I was in Iran for Ashura in 1977, and it was quite a spectacle. Unfortunately, my hosts were Zoroastrians, so they tried to keep me from seeing a lot of what was going on. However, I do recall parades of men flogging themselves (weakly) on the back with chains. It was mid-winter, and they were still wearing heavy coats, so they didn't appear to be doing much damage.
574. RickNelson - 10/25/1999 7:50:39 AM
Irv,
Have you compared notes with PE wrt the Zoro's. features, language and second languages?
They seem a fascinating mixture, or purity? Maybe you two could say which? Did you find them more literate as PE did? Did their mix of languages seem more extensive than other places?
575. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 8:03:35 AM
Irving, where did you spend your time in Iran? I assume you were in Tehran, but where else?
576. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 8:08:38 AM
Yes, do answer Rick's questions, Irving. How did you find your Zoros?
577. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/25/1999 8:19:49 AM
Rick:
I found the Zoros exactly as PE has described them. My hosts were transplanted Parsis, originally from Pune (then known as Poona), but I met a number of Iranian Zroroastrians while there, and all of PE's comments hit home.
PE:
I was only in Iran briefly, and only in Teheran and environs. I've always wanted to return, and I'm sure I will someday.
578. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 1:47:19 PM
My "in the middle of nowhere" story:
India's border with China is a heavily restricted "inner-line" area, where tourists were absolutely forbidden until recently, and even Indians had to get special permits to travel. These permits were handed out at a rate of something like a dozen a year, ensuring that the places in the region remained almost completely cut off from the rest of the country.
Anyway, a dozen years ago, I managed to get a permit and with my best friend and his sister (who was my girlfriend at the time) we headed off along the Hindustan-Tibet road deep into the Kinnaur Valley of Himachal Pradesh. There are lots of great anecdotes I could share of wild bus rides (some of which I enjoyed from the roof) and encounters with the locals, but this story is of the most deserted place on the route, a tiny village of Tibetan exiles set in a moonscape of ice-desert mountains, a place called Pooh.
There are two institutions that any traveller in the area gets to know very well. One is the DC, the IAS officer who basically functions as God in the region. The other is the network of government 'dak' bungalows, built mostly by the British, which are generally the only places to stay in the remoter areas. To get permission to stay in the latter, one has to go through the former. This we did, brandishing contacts and references. Staying in one of these places, room and board, cost a grand total of $2 a night for all three of us.
579. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 1:48:44 PM
So, winding our way through the fascinating and beautiful Kinnaur valley, we three wound up at our ultimate destination. Pooh, set high in the mountains, a few Km from Tibet. And, as usual, we commandeered the dak bungalow and ordered our dinner. The hills surrounding are covered in naturally growing cannabis, and since it was the end of weeks of hiking, we cut clumps of it, dried it by roasting it on a frying pan and lit up the high-quality stuff. An hour or so later, having eaten, we decided to sit outside and enjoy the stars. I've never seen so many, a blanket of light. The nearest real town was hundreds of miles away and there was no glow at all to hinder the starlight. As you can imagine, this was highly enjoyable.
Then, the sound of a siren. In this desert mountainscape you can hear it from very far away, and we idly listened to it grow closer and closer. Then, the source of the commotion pulled up almost at our feet. It was the DC! And he had with him another character, obviously even more powerful because the DC opened his door. Somewhat dazed, we pulled ourselves to our feet. Looking at us somewhat nervously, the DC said this was 'his' minister from Simla (the capital of HP) and he was touring the area. He had heard there were "kids" travelling in this sensitive area and wanted to check us out.
580. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 1:50:59 PM
We looked at the minister. He looked at us. Where are you from, he asked. We told him. Very good, he said. Now get into my car, you are spending the evening with me. Completely blasted by the altitude, the meal and the several joints, we whined a bit. But no choice, we were in the car and driven twenty miles or so away to another bungalow, where the minister stayed. My friend's sister stayed behind.
On arrival at his bungalow, the minister made a sign to the DC. Who produced a two-litre bottle of Scotch. Drink, boys, I hope you have learned how to drink, he said. And so we drank. And listened to the minister's lectures on the future of the nation, the uselessness of foreign education, and the values of the soil. This went on for most of the night. At some point, the DC excused himself, went outside to vomit noisily, and then returned and fell asleep. The minister then spent twenty minutes insulting the calibre of IAS officers the centre sent him. Then my friend fell asleep. It was the minister and me. Finally, the bottle was finished, and we completely shattered. Have you ever tried ganja, the minister asked.
Er, yes, I replied. Then go get some, he said. I did, it grew all over the slope at the back of his bungalow. He went to his room and pulled out a huge stone chillum (pipe) and we smoked vast quantities till dawn. By the time the DC woke up and took us back to Pooh it was 11 o'clock the next morning and neither my friend or I could do anything for another two days. The minister, I swear, was virtually unfazed and continued on his official tour without so much as showing any particular ill-effects.
This is an entirely true story.
581. stostosto - 10/25/1999 1:57:02 PM
Great story, marj. Even if it is entirely true.
582. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 1:58:13 PM
The mountain regions of the subcontinent all have lots of easily harvested narcotics. And this figures briefly in my story about the Karakorum Highway, but there are no officialdom involved!
583. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 2:20:25 PM
584. proudnerd - 10/25/1999 2:23:31 PM
I saw this BBC documentary about a mysterious village in the region marj mentioned where several tourists had disappeared. The people in this remote village, accessible only by foot, claim to be direct descendents of Alexander the Macedonian and are millionaires. Apparently, back in the 60s and 70s, a group of hippies found that the weather there produces the best canabis crops and turned it into a flourishing business with the help of the locals. The tourists who vanished were suspected drug carriers who died in the ravines there probably after datura poisoning.
585. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 2:27:25 PM
Marzipranks: I'm spending the next summer in Russia as well, and I'm planning another indirect route to get to Moscow. But this time I'll have only 4 weeks instead of the 6 weeks I had this summer for the route.
I've beem thinking of somehow working the Rohatang Pass into the picture. How is that accessed? From Simla, yes? And must one go back the road one came on? How about the India-Nepal-Tibet road?
586. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 2:28:24 PM
Nerd,
But Alexander never went anywhere near Himachal Pradesh. But every mountain tribal in or from the subcontinent claims to be descended from the Macedonian. Look at our host, for a good example.
587. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 2:29:24 PM
Alexander the Great never found himself anywhere near the area Marjoribanks was talking about. He crossed the Indus, and perhaps got as far as the current locations of Swat or Gilgit.
588. janjon - 10/25/1999 2:29:46 PM
It is difficult to feel sorry for someone who will ONLY have four weeks instead of six to get to where he is going to be spending the summer.
589. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 2:36:09 PM
Pseuder,
Rohtang Pass is best accessed from Manali, as far as I know.
You can drive into Tibet from Nepal. But why would you want to drive to Nepal from India? Take a plane, it'simpler.
590. PelleNilsson - 10/25/1999 2:37:02 PM
Well done marj! But not entirely true.
591. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 2:40:18 PM
Pelle,
That anecdote most decidedly is true in its entirety. I've even left out some more outlandish bits.
592. proudnerd - 10/25/1999 2:43:13 PM
But Alexander never went anywhere near Himachal Pradesh.
I said they claim to be Alexander's descendants. I have not seen any anthroplogical evidence to back it up.
593. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 2:46:56 PM
Well, failing that India/Nepal/Tibet thing, I was thinking of the following route:
Start in Beijing, then by train to such cities as Dunhuang and Turfan. Urumqi. Then to Kyrgyzstan via the Torugart Pass. Train to Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan. Ferry to Baku in Azerbaijan. Bus or train to Tblisi in Georgia. Bus to Stavropol in Russia. Train to Moscow.
Return by train from Moscow to Odessa or Crimea, then ferry to Piraeus in Greece.
594. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 2:51:31 PM
Nerd,
The funniest example of subcontinentals claiming to have Greek antecedents is the Toda tribe which lives around Ooty in Tamil Nadu. The evidence: they wear Greek-looking robes. And they look a little different from other Tamils.
But I was under the misconception that you are a proper subcon nerd. You're not, you're an ABCD nerd aren't you?
595. PelleNilsson - 10/25/1999 3:27:15 PM
marj
Must unelaborate due host's deletepolicyruthlessness, Amount drunk noncredible youngindianconsciousnesswise.
596. marjoribanks - 10/25/1999 3:37:25 PM
Hahahaha.
Pelle, there were four of us. Noncredible? I suggest you haven't spent too much time with hard-drinking Indians.
597. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 4:08:07 PM
I cannot bear the thought of writing further about Iran, so I will rush through the story left off in Message # 539 and omit details:
continued from Message # 539
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan, Part II
Despite the cliffhanger, nothing happened. After being stranded by the bus, I stood (terrified) in that darkness for about an hour and a half, until the sun began to peek out of the horizon. Eventually a Paykan taxi came to the rescue and sped me away. (A Paykan, believe it or not, is an Iranian-assembled car, an imitation of the old Hillman.)
I went to Bam for one reason: to see the famous ruins of the medieval mud Citadel of Bam, or Argh-é-Bam.
There I ran into a group of about a dozen Hungarians who claimed to belong to an ethnic minority in Hungary who trace their origins to Baluchistan. They didn't look any different from Hungarians I've seen, and spoke no language which was remotely Asiatic. When asked how they traced their ancestry to Baluchistan, not one of them could give me a plausible explanation.
In Bam town, I stayed at a mosakhûfernê, a dormitory/hostel type lodging. I slept on a cot along with some forty others, all Iranians, in a big room full of cots. Many of them unsurprisingly wanted to practise some English, and one kept me awake most of the night repeatedly whispering the formula "I want to go to [some exotic Western locale]".
598. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 4:09:32 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan, Part II
The early morning bus ride to Zahedan was smooth and uneventful. During the ride it dawned on me that I hadn't missed much of a view at all by taking an overnight bus between Yazd and Bam. For the Dasht-e-Kavir was not exactly the fetching landscape full of anomalous features which break the monotony of other vast terrains. Here the only interruptions in the flat yellowness were a few camel-backed nomads; some rocks strewn about refusing to look picturesque; some dismal little pleats in the ground which passed for dunes; and the occasional whirlwind.
Everything good that I've said thus far about Iran --about the friendliness of its people, about its safety, about its cleanliness, about the smart appointments of its public spaces -- should be forgotten in the case of eastern Iran, particularly any place which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. For this region is where, as far as Iran has any crime at all, it happens. There's drug-running, gun-running, kidnapping, thievery, and even the occasional murder.
Pelaire described Afghanistan in the 1970s as Dodge City. Well, Zahedan is like a combination of Dodge City and an abandoned mining town in Alaska or Siberia. All the buildings are small, the streets are dusty and empty, there are no food stalls, the few people are unfriendly and suspicious, nasty-looking dogs reconnoiter the outskirts. Not a nice place to be.
Within hours of arriving in the shitty little Zahedan, I was on a train bound for Pakistan. However, at the Mirjavé/Taftan border crossing, the train was held up in the middle of the Baluchi wasteland -- with no explanation given. And, although it was not yet June, it was quite hot, perhaps 35 C. But the Iranian border guards kindly sealed all the windows and doors of the train. (On these compartments, the windows could be locked from the outside.)
599. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 4:11:09 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan, Part II
Outside the window, there were no bushes, no stones, not even sand, no features at all, just a flat expanse of hardened, pounded beige dirt in all directions of the compass, weighed down by a horizon misleadingly azure. If there were black billows of burning oil, it could have been a scene from the Persian Gulf war.
After about six hours, I found the heat, the stuffiness, the waiting, the whole state of affairs unendurable. Many of the passengers even looked heat-stroked. So I decided to kick open one of the compartment doors and ran away into the bright-yellow-blue world outside. I then hitched a ride back to Zahedan with an Iranian coming back from Pakistan on a shopping trip. (He was carrying about 200 Western & Indian videos.)
That night in Zahedan, I could find no lodging, as I had expected. The several seedy "hotels" and mosakhûfernês where I inquired about a room or a cot rebuffed me. In some Iranian towns, foreigners are simply not allowed in any but the priciest hotels, but there weren't even any pricey hotels in Zahedan! The only mosakhûfernê which even considered taking me in demanded that I first go get a permit from the local Komité. I spent an hour looking for the office, only to be denied the permit. In the end, I installed myself on a bench at the Zahedan bus station, located near the town square, and decided to wait out the morning. In the morning I would take a bus this time to the Pakistan border, or hitch a ride. Yet another night outside.
600. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 4:12:38 PM
Iranian Incidents on the Road to Pakistan, Part II
Naturally, I fell asleep without meaning to on the bench, and in the middle of the night, I was woken up by a policeman. At first I thought he was some Komité officer out to arrest me or something, but it turned out he offered to take me in briefly at his house, not too far away. (The policeman was a Shirazi, thus preserving my opinion of the beastliness of Zahedanis in general.) I slept for some two hours on his sofa, and in the morning he fed me tea, some torshi pickles, feta cheese (yes, Stostostosto, Iranians eat a lot of feta cheese) and pita bread.
A few hours later, I found myself a taxi driven by a Pakistani, to share with several Belgians en route to Taftan, just like myself. From Taftan, I got on a train bound for Quetta. With much sleep and with little incident, I arrived in Quetta on the evening of 28 May.
601. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 4:15:24 PM
Pray bid adieu to Iran. That was the last installment. Onward to Pakistan!
Since I'm impatient to do Russia, and since I'm off again travelling at the end of November, I will try to zoom through both Pakistan and Xinjiang. Russia will take at least 2-3 weeks to finish recounting. I never meant to spend so much time on Iran!
602. proudnerd - 10/25/1999 10:51:09 PM
pseudoE,
Muharram is simply the name of the first month of the Islamic calendar
I know about the Islamic calendar, but I have heard a few people refer to the whole ashura celebration as Moharram. Also, the actual celebration on the street (replete with self-flagellation) is called tazia. I was curious if sunnis actually care about Karbala and the story of Husayn.
603. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/1999 10:58:31 PM
Yes, the Sunnis are supposed to care about Karbala, but in reality it's not such an important part of their religious observance. Some really devout Sunnis fast on Ashura.
Also, the actual celebration on the street (replete with self-flagellation) is called tazia.
I thought I had mentioned this. And it's taziya.
604. ElliottRW - 10/26/1999 10:24:04 AM
Pray bid adieu to Iran. That was the last installment. Onward to Pakistan!
You have set a high standard with your accounts of Iran, PE. Really great stuff--interesting and vivid. I look forward to Pakistan.
605. janjon - 10/26/1999 2:15:50 PM
Terrific stuff indeed. I worried all night about pseudoerasmus standing out there in the dark. Could hardly wait for today's episodes!
606. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/1999 11:41:45 PM
The next several posts constitute the introduction to Pakistan.
I will risk incurring the wrath of ScottLoar, and of being charged with perversion, by making reference to my family background once again. I do this to show why the entries on Pakistan will differ in tone from those on Iran.
Because we have an Indian in our midst, I say from the outset that I don't want any Indo-Pak polemics in this thread. If any develop, I will summarily move them to the International thread.
607. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/1999 11:43:20 PM
Pakistan
The most salient reality of Pakistan is that it was cobbled together from bits and pieces of the British Indian Empire as a homeland for Indian Muslims. It is in essence a region of India in a state of secession. For there was no such thing as Pakistan or Pakistani identity before independence from Britain. Nor was there any Bangladesh, which first began its life as the eastern wing of Pakistan, separated from the western wing by the very breadth of India. Before 1947, it was all British India.
In 1940, after a complicated history of rivalry and coexistence with Nehru's Hindu-majority Indian National Congress (which we need not go into), the All-India Muslim League of Muhammed Ali Jinnah decisively broke with the idea of a unified Indian state in the famous Lahore Resolution:
The problem in India is not of an intercommunal character but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such... If the
British Government are really in earnest and sincere to secure peace and happiness of the people of the subcontinent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into autonomous national states.
608. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/1999 11:46:22 PM
The Partition of India, when it finally came in 1947, was accompanied by a paroxysm of violence as Hindus and Muslims all over the subcontinent rioted looted & raped, slaughtering each other, burning people alive in houses, bashing children's heads against the wall, and driving whole communities out of neighbourhoods where they had lived for centuries, even a millennium. My grandfather, at the time an officer in the British Indian Army serving in the Muslim-majority Punjab and fanatically opposed to Partition and Pakistan, saw a group of Muslims blow up a bridge as hundreds of Sikhs were crossing it. His brother and my late great-uncle, a fanatical proponent of Pakistan serving in Hyderabad, often spoke tearfully of seeing Muslims being hung from trees and gutted.
That year, in the largest exchange of population the world has ever seen, millions packed up all they could carry and literally moved --Hindus, Sikhs and other non-Muslims toward the mainly Hindu region in the centre of the subcontinent retaining the name India; and Muslims toward the two wings of Pakistan on opposite sides of the subcontinent. In the end, what Gandhi called the "vivisection of India" was achieved at the cost of more than 2 million lives and 15 million refugees. For all the butchery & dislocation of a Yugoslavia or an East Timor, the post-war world hasn't seen anything as epic as the Partition.
609. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/1999 11:51:51 PM
Contrary to popular legend, Pakistan was not founded as an Islamic republic. Not until 1956 was it proclaimed as one, and this relabelling was not accompanied by any substantive changes before the late 1970s, when Zia-ul-Haq took Pakistan down the path of Islamicisation.
The Pakistan that was founded in 1947 was a secular state, but a secular state created on behalf of Muslims. Muhammad Ali Jinnah made this clear in his inaugural address as Governor-General: "You will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State". But given the preconceptions Islam suffers from in the West, some may find all this incongruous. What is a Muslim state which is not an Islamic republic? Well, look no further than Israel -- a state which is Jewish but decidedly secular.
And if you read the writings of Muslim intellectuals such as Muhammed Iqbal, the first to propose a separate Muslim state, the analogy with secular Judaism is quite apt. According to his "Two Nation Theory" of India, Indian Muslims were a distinct nation unto themselves, with a distinct history and culture which went beyond the common religion. In essence, he propounded a cultural Islam which even secular Muslims could abide.
But I would go further: Iqbal envisioned, and Jinnah founded, Pakistan in much the same sprit as did Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann the State of Israel. (Of course, Pakistanis would blanch at the analogy with Zionism.) These men not only demanded recognition for the Muslims of India as a distinct culture and community, but also craved a homeland for them. Although Jinnah realised that Hindu-majority India would continue to be home to millions of Muslims, Pakistan would at least be there to look after their interests and provide a haven if need be.
610. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/1999 11:54:28 PM
[My grandfather, a Pathan who never set foot again in India or Pakistan after 1947, once supplied a more waggish interpretation of the founding of Pakistan: "Pakistan was founded to protect the sacred right to eat beef".]
Of course, the reality of Pakistan today has fallen far short of this ideal, especially since Muslim immigrants from India are pretty badly treated in the country. But there is no denying that Jinnah's vision remains the implicit ideology of the Pakistani state, the very raison d'être that Pakistanis take seriously. Pakistan's interminable dispute with India over Kashmir (a Muslim-majority state within the Indian union), and the popular enthusiasm for continuing involvement in that region, cannot be understood without this context. The ideal of the Muslim haven is also what Pakistani intellectuals mean when they say they believe in the "idea of Pakistan".
I personally think that India has done a pretty good job of protecting the rights of its minorities, including the Muslims (despite such incidents as Ayodha, where a Hindu mob burnt down the Babri mosque, or the 1984 mass slaughter of Sikhs in Delhi after a Sikh bodyguard blew up Mrs Gandhi). But I can sympathise with this "idea of Pakistan". For all minority peoples want a place where they can control their destiny, a place free from even the slightest possibility of a threat from the majority.
611. pseudoerasmus - 10/26/1999 11:56:56 PM
It is the history, it is the political culture, it is the passion of the Muslim to live in Daar-al-Islaam, or the Abode of Islam. Muslims everywhere have always striven to live within it. Islam even makes it the onerous duty of every Muslim, should he be unfortunate enough to find himself therein, to quit Daar-al-Harb (the House of War, or Non-Islam) and to seek refuge in a land ruled by a Muslim state. And I believe the Muslims of South Asia, most of whom had always lived under Muslim rulers, yearned for Daar-al-Islaam. Morever, in the eyes of many Muslims in 1947 only a Muslim state could be considered the legitimate successor to the Mughal Empire, the last great dynasty in a long line of Muslim dynasties which had ruled northern India for almost a millenium before the British showed up.
Many Indians today, craving what was before, denounce the founding of Pakistan and claim that it was undertaken by the Muslim elites without consulting the masses. But I note for the record that in the national legislative elections held in 1945 across British India, the Muslim League captured all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Assembly; and in the elections for state legislatures in 1946, the ML won 439 of the 494 seats allotted for Muslims in all British Indian states. These elections were held more than five years after the Muslim League issued the Lahore Resolution and the question of partition had been debated endlessly. Perhaps there were three or four Muslims in the land who didn't know about the intentions of the Muslim League. I would call these victories nothing less than an unequivocal popular mandate for the establishment of Pakistan.
616. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 1:07:51 AM
Here is a pretty good map of Pakistan for general reference: 
And one of the better provincial maps of Pakistan that I've seen: 
Pakistan's provinces are Punjab, home to the Punjabis who comprise Pakistan's ethnic & linguistic majority (about 60%); the legendary Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), a piece of Afghanistan inside Pakistan, inhabited by the lowland Pathans; Azad Kashmir, that slice of the disputed territory of Kashmir which is occupied by Pakistan (though not marked on this legalistic map); Baluchistan, where, despite the name, the native Baluchis of Iranian stock are outnumbered by non-Baluchis; and Sindh, whose population is divided between the native Sindhis and the Muhajirs, Muslim immigrants from India. Thus, you have got the constituents of the acronym devised by a bunch of Cambridge subcon nitwits in the 1930s: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Iran, Sindh. (Conveniently, Pakistan also means the "Land of the Pure".)
The are also two non-provincial units: the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a string of self-governing mountainous territories, where the highland Pathans still live in traditional tribal structures, complete with blood feuds and defiance of civil authority; and the Northern Areas, Pakistan's answer to Nepal, with three of the ten tallest mountains in the world -- K2, Rakaposhi and Nanga Parbat.
617. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 12:06:58 AM
Also, take a look at this very revealing ethnolinguistic map of Pakistan: 
First, the only territory of Pakistan's which is not shared with another country, is Sindh. All the others are shards of a larger culture: the NWFP is merely that small piece of Afghanistan which the British managed to snatch away; next door to Baluchistan is another Baluchistan in Iran; and Punjab should really be called West Punjab in recognition of the "East Punjab" that is home to the Sikhs of India. (India's Haryana state also used to be part of once-united Punjab.)
Second, just as India has a linguistic dividing line between the Indo-Aryan north and the Dravidian south, so Pakistan is divided between the Indo-Aryan east and the Iranian west. On the one side, Punjabi, Sindhi and the Urdu of the Muhajirs are Indian languages, descendants of Sanskrit and therefore related to Hindi, Bengali, etc. On the other side, Pashto (of the Pathans-Afghans) and Baluchi are Iranian languages, relatives of Farsi and Kurdish.
617. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 12:08:25 AM
Third, the map goes a long way toward explaining why, despite the common legacy of British institutions, Pakistan has failed miserably at democracy while India managed to erect the "world's largest democracy". Most of Pakistan is frontier territory, far from the political heartland of British India. Really the only significant cities in Pakistan are Karachi and Lahore. Yet the former was a provincial capital under the British and a minor port, a distant second to Bombay's commercial preeminence; the latter, an architectural gem but without the institutions of power that were erected in Delhi and even Simla.
Pakistan's territories were also the last acquisitions of the British in India: the NWFP was acquired in 1893-1901, the wastes of Baluchistan in 1877; Punjab in 1849; and Sindh in 1843. By contrast, Calcutta in Bengal was made the capital of British India in 1772. The imprint of the British in Pakistan is necessarily shallower.
617. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 12:15:00 AM
Enough intro nonsense.
Now, here is my route through Pakistan: 
618. cmboyce - 10/27/1999 1:12:12 AM
Intro nonsense? Hah! I'm glad I can be first to note the virtues of that presentation, Pseudoerasmus. As informative and brief as each will admit of the other.
I have a question: on the ethnicities map, what goes on up north? All Pathan? All Pashto-speaking?
619. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 1:20:31 AM
When you say up north, do you mean the Northern Areas or the extreme northern tip of the NWFP?
The NA are a congeries of former statelets and khanates, including Gilgit and Baltistan, with dozens of languages and ethnicities, some of them with no relationship with other languages of Pakistan. The lingua franca is Pashto, but no one in the NA is a native speaker of Pashto.
620. cmboyce - 10/27/1999 1:35:16 AM
Well, the provinces map didn't work, so I'm not sure about NA vs NWFP; I meant the area in white at the top of the ethnicities map (Message # 617); I gather that what you just said covers this.
621. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 1:49:28 AM
Oh, the provincial map doesn't work because, apparently, Geocities (where the map is stored) is down. It should be working soon.
Most people think that Pakistan occupies only a sliver of the Jammu & Kashmir state, but in reality the fairly large Northern Areas also fall under the territory of the J&K state as it was constituted before 1947.
Take a look at this map of Pakistan from the Lonely Planet website. It doesn't include any part of J&K, not even the NA, as part of Pakistan. In other words, as far as visitors of the LP website could know, Pakistan doesn't share a border with China!
Perhaps there was an Indian intern at the LP offices.....
622. proudnerd - 10/27/1999 2:00:21 AM
Perhaps there was an Indian intern at the LP offices.....
Or perhaps Lonely planet doesn't want its books banned in India.
623. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 2:55:12 AM
Boyce, by the way, I love the elegance of this sentence of yours: "As informative and brief as each will admit of the other."
624. EricCartman - 10/27/1999 3:10:10 AM
Pseudo:
I'm glad to see that you are continuing to do the intros for the places you visited. Not nonsense at all; I find it highly informative and interesting.
I'm curious as to whether your travels in Pakistan (back in June, correct?) provided any hint at the time of what must have been an impending coup. Also, given your knowledge of the country, what your opinion is of the new regime.
Sorry if you already addressed this in International; I haven't lurked there much lately.
625. proudnerd - 10/27/1999 3:19:26 AM
Since there is sufficient reason to believe that psudo didn't engineer the coup during his trip, the discussions thereof should perhaps be in the International thread.
626. proudnerd - 10/27/1999 3:39:44 AM
pseudoE,
When did Azad Kashmir (the Pakistani occupied portion of Kashmir) become a province ? I thought it was some kind of a funky quasi-state without many political rights. Also, didn't the Kashmiri supreme court rule that Northern Areas were part of Azad Kashmir ?
627. EricCartman - 10/27/1999 3:40:49 AM
Nerd:
I suppose it depends on whether he noticed (or heard rumors of) any indications of disquiet during his stay there. Or anything that seems like it in retrospect.
I didn't want to discuss the point, anyway, but was merely curious as to the possibility that he saw anything along that line that colored his impression of Pakistan.
628. proudnerd - 10/27/1999 4:00:42 AM
It is his thread, as pseudo thundersously proclaims. That makes him free to do whatever he wants in this thread. However a protracted discussion about the coup and its players would be much nicer in the International thread where we can fight viciously arguing about democracy, economics and military rule.
629. PelleNilsson - 10/27/1999 4:17:52 AM
Right. I'm trying to get a democracy discussion going in Political Ideas on the line "is democracy always best?". I don't want a specific Pakistan discussion there but as an example of democracy gone wrong it would fit in well. Welcome if you have the time.
Sorry about this, PE.
630. stostosto - 10/27/1999 4:27:20 AM
#600:
"(yes, Stostostosto, Iranians eat a lot of feta cheese)"
Great, Pseuder, I nearly thought you'd forgotten all about my question. Thanks. It was probably Danish feta cheese, don't you think? (Now I see why our possible trade boycott of Iran would have Iranians trembling with fear).
631. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 8:20:33 AM
Boyce: The provincial map in Message # 616 is now working.
Cartman (Message # 624)
Contrary to the tone of my reports on Iran, I'm not a political traveller. I really don't like politics. I try to take as little notice of it as possible. (Of course it was in the middle of the Kargil thing, which one had to notice, but what a boring thing that was.)
Proudnerd (Message # 626)
You're right that Azad Kashmir is technically not a province, but it is a province in all but name. It has a provincial assembly, it sends MPs to the national assembly in Islamabad, etc. The "funky quasi-state without many political rights" is the Northern Areas.
Also, didn't the Kashmiri supreme court rule that Northern Areas were part of Azad Kashmir?
Hahahahaha! Maybe they did. Who really cares?
632. marjoribanks - 10/27/1999 11:55:14 AM
Pseuder,
As you know, I energetically disagree with some of the statements you make in #611. But I'll avoid taking this thread on a digression. But perhaps a discussion of your #617 is in order, I mean #617 parts II. Why, by the way, do you have three posts marked #617?
633. marjoribanks - 10/27/1999 11:55:22 AM
Pseuder,
As you know, I energetically disagree with some of the statements you make in #611. But I'll avoid taking this thread on a digression. But perhaps a discussion of your #617 is in order, I mean #617 part II. Why, by the way, do you have three posts marked #617?
634. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 12:34:28 PM
To the subject of inadequate political institutions bequeathed to Pakistan in 1947 (Message # 617, part II) this is quite relevant:
Division of the all-India services of the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Police Service was also difficult. Only 101 out of a total of 1,157 Indian officers were Muslim. Among these Muslim officers, ninety-five officers opted for Pakistan; they were joined by one Christian, eleven Muslim military officers transferring to civilian service, and fifty Britons, for a total of 157. But only twenty of them had had more than fifteen years of service, and more than half had had fewer than ten years.
An addendum: a little known curiosity of partition is that the Northwest Frontier Province, the land of the Pathans, was the only British Indian state that joined Pakistan, which also had a Congress government right before Partition. A plebisicte was held in July 1947 to decide the NWFP question. Khan Gaffar Khan, known as the "Gandhi of the Pathans" and a friend of the real Gandhi, vigorously opposed the plebiscite and demanded reunification with Afghanistan. The "Yes" vote (for acession to Pakistan) barely won, though many Pathan nationalists at the time argued that it was rigged.
635. pseudoerasmus - 10/27/1999 12:35:13 PM
Marizpranks: There will be no subcon political discussions of any kind. Expect Xinjiang before Monday.
636. EricCartman - 10/27/1999 8:33:23 PM
Pseudo (Message # 631):
It's OK; I didn't mean to turn it into a digression by any means. It was merely a question of simple curiosity. I was in Vienna in 1991, on the day Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia, and I recall at the time a distinct feeling of unease among several people I encountered in cafes. So I mainly wondered if perhaps you had gotten any hint along that line from anyone while you were in Pakistan. Despite the assumptions from the peanut gallery, I wasn't trying to turn the thread into anything else.
Anyway, carry on. The travelogue has been excellent so far.
637. stostosto - 10/28/1999 6:03:58 AM
Before you rush onwards to Xinjiang, perhaps you could expand on this puzzling bit:
"My grandfather, at the time an officer in the British Indian Army serving in the Muslim-majority Punjab and fanatically opposed to Partition and Pakistan, saw a group of Muslims blow up a bridge as hundreds of Sikhs were crossing it. His brother and my late great-uncle, a fanatical proponent of Pakistan serving in Hyderabad, often spoke tearfully of seeing Muslims being hung from trees and gutted. "
How was it that these two brothers ended up on opposing sides in this horrible bloodshed? Even "fanatically" so?
---
I also want to tell you that your exposition of the Partition falls on a completely deserted place in my general knowledge. I simply didn't know any of this, I am ashamed to confess. Not that I harbour any fantasies about my own breadth of knowledge. But the Partition seems to be an event of such monstrous proportions, you'd think it'd be referred to occasionally in the media outpour. The people exchange, for instance, would seem to offer an example to ponder when discussing Kosovo...
An example of the thorough public neglect of these issues: Right now, there is a historic BBC TV series on here about the 20th century. Last night they were dealing with post-WWII events: Air bridge to Berlin, Churchill's iron curtain speech, the Soviet nuclear bomb, the Korean war, the Soviet clamp-down on Hungary, the construction of the Berlin Wall. No mentioning of the Partition - or any other events on the sub-continent, like the small matter of Indian independence from Britain. You'd think a British TV series would at least register these. But no. Apparently it doesn't fit the one overriding - ethnocentric - pattern of recent history: The cold war.
(Sorry for digressing, I didn't mean to be so long-winded).
638. pseudoerasmus - 10/28/1999 10:42:12 AM
Message # 637
I wouldn't wring your hands over Eurocentrism too much. The Partition of India is a well known story.
How was it that these two brothers ended up on opposing sides in this horrible bloodshed? Even "fanatically" so?
Perhaps "vehemently" would have been the better word. All the same, they didn't end up on opposing sides of the bloodshed -- they were not rioters or sniping partisans, after all. Actually my late great-uncle (Jahangir) was the odd man out, since most Pathans opposed Partition. As for why he stood out in the crowd, that's really an enduring mystery. I don't know. Later, when I get to Peshawar, I'll have a few words on the three brothers (which include my other, still-living great-uncle).
639. marjoribanks - 10/28/1999 10:50:14 AM
Sto,
It is true that Partition has been amply documented and written-about. It may not figure in some UK "greatest hits of the 20th century" gala spectacular, but that by itself is not surprising.
I happened to be in England for part of the equally splashy '50 years since D-Day' commemorations, and while literally full days were spent minutely tracking the accomplishments of the various Allied troops involved, there was nary a mention of the "world's largest volunteer army" - the two million subcons who were in uniform for the Allies and who performed creditably wherever they were posted, particularly in N. Africa. The Aussies were feted endlessly, and the Canadians, and everyone else. But not one solitary havaldar was invited or acknowledged. We sub-cons are used to this kind of stuff.
640. stostosto - 10/28/1999 10:53:41 AM
"I wouldn't wring your hands over Eurocentrism too much. "
No, please don't wring my hands too much, thank you. It's enough that you wring my Mote posts.
641. stostosto - 10/28/1999 11:00:42 AM
marj
The subcontinent has been perhaps the single greatest discovery for me in my Fray/Mote existance. (That, and Indonesia by Urve). I usually don't comment on it, but I read everything with great interest.
(Of course, the above doesn't go for Goan politics, on which I am extremely well-vexed, as you know).
642. marjoribanks - 10/28/1999 11:08:31 AM
Well-versed, stostosto, well-versed. But then again, anyone well-versed is likely to be vexed as well.
Which reminds me, I randomly found this Danish-operated Goa-trance site a couple of days ago and thought you may find it amusing.
643. stostosto - 10/28/1999 11:26:29 AM
phmmuph... Well, well-versed, then.
What made you conclude it's Danish-operated?
(better answer in International...)
644. proudnerd - 10/31/1999 6:08:03 PM
pseudo,
Dont' forget to mention food in Xinjiang. Chinese muslim food seems like a curious blend of, uh, chinese and middle-eastern cuisine.
645. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 6:51:50 PM
Proudnerd: I will talk about food for every country.
646. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 6:53:18 PM
Earlier, in my Pakistan intro, I forgot to make some observations about language & ethnicity.
Pakistan has six languages with any kind of importance: Urdu, the official language of the republic; English, the language of business, science and the urban elites; and the official languages of the four provincial governments -- Panjabi, Sindhi, Pashto (NWFP) and Baluchi. None of this includes several dozen languages spoken in Pakistan by a million or fewer people.
Urdu and Hindi share pretty much the identical colloquial language called Hindustani, the language that was promoted by the British as the lingua franca of the subcontinent. But the two diverge sharply in formal speech and written form. While Hindi is written in the Devaganari script of Sanskrit and draws on a Sanskritised vocabulary, Urdu uses a modified Arabic script and looks to Arabic and Persian for loanwords. Moreover, the "chaste" Urdu that is written or spoken on formal occasions (such as the television news or sometimes even the pilot's announcements to the passengers on a flight) often involves so many Arabic words, even classical Arabic grammatical forms, that a person without education in formal Urdu, who only speaks colloquial Hindustani, might not understand it at all. I don't know whether Hindi has so great a formal/informal divide as Urdu, but I suspect it does. This is surely why the Bombay film industry churns out movies with the most colloquial form of Hindustani possible. Otherwise, millions in both India and Pakistan wouldn't understand.
Irving Snodgrass is something of an expert on national language planning, Indonesia being one of the few success stories in fostering and/or creating a national lingua franca for a country divided by many different native languages. Well, it so happens that Pakistan is another of these few success stories.
647. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 6:56:25 PM
Though the official language of Pakistan and the traditional language of Indian Muslims since the 17th or 18th century, Urdu is not indigenous to Pakistan and was in fact brought in as an import from India. It's spoken as a first language only by about 10% of the population, almost all of them Muhajirs, or immigrants from India. All other Pakistanis speak some other language at home and must learn Urdu at school. Moreover, Urdu was totally unknown to the very man who made it the country's official language, Muhammed Ali Jinnah! Despite all this, some form of Urdu is spoken by virtually everybody in Pakistan, except in the remote mountainous Northern Areas. Its very neutrality has made it acceptable to all Pakistanis as the national language.
The final word on languages in Pakistan. Although each of the provincial governments in Pakistan has declared the local language as official, only one of them uses it in practise. In Punjab, all official business is conducted in Urdu, and Panjabi remains pretty much an unwritten & informal language used in the home. In Sindh, because of the large Muhajir population, provincial government is conducted also in Urdu. The same with Baluchistan, where Baluchis speakers are decidely in the minority. Only in the NWFP is the business of regional government conducted in the local language -- Pashto.
Pakistan's dominant ethnic group are the Punjabis. If you include the speakers of the closely related Saraiki language as Punjabis, then they form the absolute majority of Pakistan's population. Therefore, they dominate the civil service, the business world, the political class in general, and both the officer corps and the rank-and-file of the army. Moreover, Punjab is Pakistan's agricultural heartland, where most of its output of such staples as rice and wheat are harvested.
648. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 6:58:32 PM
Ironically, despite the Panjabi dominance, most of Pakistan's leaders have been non-Punjabis. Muhammed Ali Jinnah was a Sindhi; his successor Liaqat Ali Khan a Muhajir; Generals Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, Pathans; the Bhuttos, Sindhis; and the latest, a Muhajir. Only Iskander Mirza, Zia ul Haq and Nawaz Sharif have been Panjabis.
Punjab, along with Sindh, is also home of those referred to in Pakistan as "feudals". These are landed families truly feudal in the old-fashioned sense of the word, sometimes owning hundreds of thousands of acres and leasing land to millions of devastatingly impoverished families. But "lease" is not the right word: many of these peasant families are willy-nilly attached to the land they live and toil on, indentured by centuries of inherited debts and obligations to the masters. Though a Sindhi and not a Punjabi, Benazir Bhutto comes from such a feudal family.
In Pakistan, it's taboo to talk about ethnicity. Every Pakistani, of whatever ethnicity, will uncomfortably claim that there are no ethnicity issues, that the alleged ethnic & communal violence has in fact to do with something else, like economic or political grievances. But this is patently false. Karachi, as well as the interior of Baluchistan, Sindh and southern Punjab, veritably brews resentment between ethnic groups. Although a Pakistani will admit this even less, I would go further and argue some of this amounts to racial conflict. Few outsiders realise it, but Pakistan has a great diversity of racial types, with a smooth continuum of colours ranging from the virtually black faces of the south, to the fairer skins of the Punjab, to the blondism & quasi-European features of the north. In southern Punjab, there are riots reported between the fairer-skinned Punjabi peasantry and the much-darker Sindhi peasantry; the same in Baluchistan, between the immigrant Pathans and the indigenous Brahui.
649. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 6:58:55 PM
Some typical stereotypes of Pakistan's major ethnic groups:
Panjabis = civil servants
Pathans = soldiers and carpet-sellers
Sindhis = landlords and peasants
Muhajirs = industrialists and beggars
Baluchis = brigands and smugglers
650. IrvingSnodgrass - 10/31/1999 8:00:47 PM
Its very neutrality has made it acceptable to all Pakistanis as the national language.
This is exactly why Urdu as a national language has succeeded in Pakistan (and Indonesian in Indonesia), while Hindi has failed in India (and Tagalog in the Philippines). The few success stories in language planning have all involved a minority language, infused with nationalist ideals.
Punjab, along with Sindh, is also home of those referred to in Pakistan as "feudals".
Are these the famed zamindars?
651. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 8:16:00 PM
Well, the feudal landowning elites predate the zamindar system, but yes, they are more or less the same thing. The zamindari were the hereditary tax collectors of the Mughal empire. The British turned them into landowners.
652. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 8:47:25 PM
Baluchistan
Known to readers of Greek history as Gedrosia, Baluchistan is physically the largest of Pakistan's provinces -- nearly half of the country's area and almost as large as France. (Iranian Baluchistan is even bigger.) Yet it's also the least populous province. After all, except in the fertile northern valleys surrounding the capital city of Quetta and adjoining the NWFP, there's barely anything in the land, apart from some beautiful rock formations reminiscent of the American southwest, and a bleak desert which takes up most of the province. Outside the north, the population is either nomadic, or agrarian but fiercely tribal.
At the same time Baluchistan is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the world. Besides the eponymous Baluchis, the largest groups in the province include the Brahuis, who are the true indigenous inhabitants of the province; Pathans, most of whom are either settlers from the NWFP or refugees from Afghanistan; and a couple of hundred thousand non-Pathan refugees from Afghanistan, a galaxy of ethnic diversity in itself. Besides these, Baluchistan is home to dozens of ethnic curiosities, including Arabs and descendants of African slaves in Gwadar, a coastal enclave ruled by the Sultan of Oman until 1958.
Although the inhabitants of Baluchistan don't have the same world-wide reputation for fierce & intractable independence as those of Afghanistan, they have given as much trouble and headache as anybody to conquerors & occupiers who have come their way. Alexander the Great's armies, returning from India via the Indus River and the Makran (the southern coastal desert of Baluchistan), nearly perished there, not only from the rigours of the bleak landscape, but also from the ferocious pincer attacks of Baluchi nomads.
653. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 8:49:41 PM
Baluchistan
For most of its history, Baluchistan has been formally ruled by one Persian empire or another, but never has anyone, including the British of yesterday and the Pakistani government of today, controlled anything other than the major towns and military fortifications. Tribal chieftains have always done pretty much what they wanted. The British putatively annexed Baluchistan in the 1840s, but hardly any of its inhabitants were aware of it, including the Khans of Kalat, chieftains of the Brahui tribes, who claimed to be independent rulers well into the 1970s.
The only time Baluchistan's autonomy was tested was in the 1970s, when both the Baluchis and the Brahuis rose up in revolt against Pakistani rule and the reaction was swift and harsh. Aided by the US-equipped Iranian airforce of the Shah (who had his own problems with Baluchi nationalism), Pakistani troops were directed by the democratically elected President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to hunt down the tribal armies of Baluch and Brahui separatists. This little bloodbath, leaving perhaps 10,000 dead, is even less well known than the Pakistani army's atrocities in Bangladesh. The final outcome was that separatism was crushed, but fierce tribal independence outside the cities persists. (For some remarks about the Pakistani army's crimes in Bangladesh or East Pakistan as it was then known, see here.)
Since the 1980s, as though adding fuel to fire, the government in Islamabad has pursued a policy of settling Afghan refugees, Pathans, Punjabis and Muhajirs in Baluchistan, a policy aimed deliberately to dilute the demographic influence of the resentful Baluch and the Brahuis. Inevitably, ethnic clashes have become common, at least outside Quetta.
654. proudnerd - 10/31/1999 8:52:27 PM
In southern Punjab, there are riots reported between the fairer-skinned Punjabi peasantry and the much-darker Sindhi peasantry;
Subcontinentals are obsessed with their skin colors. Dark skinned people are traditionally looked down upon and the feeling extends to non-subcon people with darker skin. I have noticed that a lot of subcon immigrants in the US consider blacks just plain evil.
657. marjoribanks - 10/31/1999 9:16:07 PM
But I have found the Pathans I know particularly obsessed with race matters. More than anything, they fervently try to deny/discredit any potential link to the mass of peoples in the rest of the subcontinent. Kashmiris of all religions tend towards this as well. Honestly, I find the rest of the subcontinentals more or less resigned to being a brown mishmash, though obviously when it comes to marriage they prize the lighter-skinned among them.
BTW, I think the treatment of Anglo-Indians in post-partition India the very best evidence available that it is not skin-color alone which subcons are stuck on.
658. marjoribanks - 10/31/1999 9:22:23 PM
Xinjiang by Monday, eh?
659. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 9:26:13 PM
But it seems to me that in Pakistan colour does correlate with hierarchy. The darker a Pakistani is, the lower he is likely to be on the ladder of social, economic & political influence.
#657
Yes, Pathans are particularly obsessed with race. Many of them frequently rate how "black" Pakistan's leaders are, and tend to look more highly upon those who are lighter-skinned. Educated Pathans are also prone to airing bizarre racial theories, whether about themselves or other groups.
More than anything, they fervently try to deny/discredit any potential link to the mass of peoples in the rest of the subcontinent.
Well, they are, after all, Afghans. But the Pathans of Pakistan respond this way also because they are taunted by the Pathans of Afghanistan for being soft and "Indianised" and effeminate.
660. marjoribanks - 10/31/1999 9:32:02 PM
"But the Pathans of Pakistan respond this way also because they are taunted by the Pathans of Afghanistan for being soft and "Indianised" and effeminate. "
I love this. It's always been a suspicion of mine and its great to hear someone confirm it. How wonderfully mountain-tribal.
BTW, slightly off-topic, I think someone should do an in-depth study and report on how the mountain peoples of the world despise the plains people closest to them. It's a totally fascinating and universal phenomenon. Pahadis don't like, and look down on, flat-landers, wherever you care to examine their relations.
663. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 9:43:02 PM
#660
The Pathans of Pakistan would rather die than be seen eating, say, parathas or chapatis by the Pathans of Afghanistan or their tribal cousins in FATA. The plains Pathans are today basically culturally Punjabis, eating Punjabi food and listening to Punjabi music. Of this they are secretly ashamed, and occasionally atone through bursts of highland Pathan machismo by, say, dying in Kargil.
665. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 9:45:52 PM
# 661
I wasn't aware that skin color had any role in the ethnic conficts in Pakistan. I thought that the different ethnic groups hated each other just for being different (and the Muhajirs for being immigrants). Then there are the dominant Sunnis battling the Shiites that you haven't mentioned yet.
You weren't aware of it because you have never before read my interpretation. Of course the cultural difference is probably the most important factor, but I'm hypothesising based on patterns of ethnic conflicts that it's also partly "racial".
666. proudnerd - 10/31/1999 9:48:14 PM
That is not to say that the Pakistanis are oblivious of their skin color. On the contrary, they are probably more sensitive in this regard than the Indians. I just wasn't aware that this causes them to shoot one another.
667. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 9:48:33 PM
I should say that the comments in # 663 are less true the farther away you go from the Punjab border, like in Chitral or Dera Ismail Khan. But in such districts as Hazara or Attock, Pathans are just Pashto-speaking Punjabis.
668. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 9:56:08 PM
#666
But I made it clear earlier and then now that this is my interpretation. I've never seen anyone either inside or outside Pakistan ever discuss the country's ethnic conflicts in terms of skin colour. Most Pakistanis would leap to scoff at the idea. But I think a strong case can be made that it's an aggravating factor.
I will not be talking about the Sunni / Shiite conflict in Pakistan, since I find it rather boring.
671. proudnerd - 10/31/1999 10:05:02 PM
I think someone should do an in-depth study and report on how the mountain peoples of the world despise the plains people closest to them.
Now that is a very sagacious observation. From what I have seen, it is true.
673. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 10:09:10 PM
The antipathy the mountain peoples of the world have for their plains cousins has at its root a much more basic dichotomy, I think. That is, it's like the dichotomy between Spartan & Athenian, between the virtues of frugality and the vices of bounty; between simplicity and complexity; between rural and urban; between morally upright and decadent. All this is also reflected in the traditional German divide between the "civilisation" of the West and the "culture" of the East.
674. marjoribanks - 10/31/1999 10:09:32 PM
Pseud,
Just delete it. I doubt anyone other than us three is in the slightest bit interested.
675. proudnerd - 10/31/1999 10:38:04 PM
That is, it's like the dichotomy between Spartan & Athenian, between the virtues of frugality and the vices of bounty; between simplicity and complexity; between rural and urban; between morally upright and decadent.
You are right about simplicity and complexcity, the rest are figments of your imagination. At thousands of feet above the sea, the laws of nature can force people to avoid complicate lifestyle.
678. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 10:51:48 PM
Proudnerd: You are awfully literal-minded, aren't you? You don't think simplicity/complexity can also foster the related dichotomies of uprightness/decadence, abstinence/indulgence, honesty/duplicity, etc.? I'm not saying that the highlanders are upright and the lowlanders decadent. But that is the perception of the highlanders. Far from being figments of my imagination, these dichotomies are very much themes associated with Sparta/Athens and Rhineland/Prussia. The Spartans thought of Athenians as soft, complex, decadent, indulgent, duplicitous; the same with Prussians about western Germans. Pathans are really big on Pakhtunwali which stress the first part of each of these dichotomies.
679. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/1999 11:02:01 PM
The one commonality I think you will find among mountain peoples as well as rural peoples is that they both perceive themselves as more honest, simpler in a noble way, harder-working, more trust-worthy, more abstemious, manlier, tougher, blunter, more straight-shooting, than urban or plains peoples. This is precisely how tribal and highland Pathans look upon not only their plains Pathan cousins, but Pakistanis and Indians in general. Not for these highlanders, the effeminate spicing of Persians with their rose petals & saffron or the Punjabis with their cinnamon-and-cardomom antics. The Pathan idea of a good honest meal is to slaughter a goat as God told them how and hurl the carcass into the fire
680. proudnerd - 10/31/1999 11:05:12 PM
I am not a lit-critter, pseudo. I was trained only to analyze, theorize and solve things.
Yes, simplicity/complexcity can foster the other dichotomies you mentioned in terms of how the mountain folk perceive themselves and the others.
692. PelleNilsson - 11/1/1999 5:32:23 AM
The discussion about highlanders vs lowlanders can be extended to nomads vs settled people in much the same terms. There are few nomads left in Arabia now, but the perceptions of simplicity/complexity and nobility/pedestrian can be noticed in for example Jordan, between the East Bankers of Bedu stock and the Palestinians.
697. cmboyce - 11/2/1999 12:55:13 AM
Don't go too fast, Pseudo; this is all fascinating.
I think the mountaineers/lowlanders, nomad/settled thing is a function of population density. The mountaineers are probably right that their ways involve simpler ways, etc., and that is because you can't get along in large populations on nothing but the ancient simple ways. Ever since Ur, the city-dwellers have been city-slickers, because ya gotta be slick in Ur or some guy who got their before you--and has either lost the ancient simple ways or had/has a different set--will take you for a ride. The newcomers who get slick, stay; the others go back home and promulgate notions of mountaineer vs. lowlander.
704. JayAckroyd - 11/2/1999 8:45:37 AM
PE-
This is off-topic, but I don't see anywhere to post it that would not be even more off-topic. Please forgive me. (BTW, this reminds me of your conversations with "dulcet wabbit" Did you know that erasmus routinely addressed correspodence with his friend Thomas More as (in latin) "Sweetest Thomas?"
IAC, I'm looking for advice. I mentioned not so long ago that I was planning to go to Egypt. That trip's been finalized. So I'm looking for hints and suggestions, in general. And I've got one specific question. It happens that the dates of the trip include the beginning of Ramadan. I'd appreciate any tips or hints of how to handle travel, dining etc. during Ramadan.
705. JayAckroyd - 11/2/1999 8:45:57 AM
That wasn't my fault.
706. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 8:55:12 AM
Jay
I don't think you have to worry at all about Ramadan, but there are a few hints about not causing offense. I have to leave now but I'll post again in a couple of hours.
707. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:13:16 AM
JA: Well, I've never been in Egypt during Ramadan, but in every Islamic country I've been to, dining during Ramadan is not a problem, except outside the cities, where food can simply disappear. The only serious advice I would give is not to eat or drink in public if you buy your own supplies.
Actually, some of the best meals you are likely to have may be during Ramadan, since Muslims break the fast in the evening with what amounts to a banquet every day of the holy month. Of course, the grandest banquet is held on Eid el-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. Try to get an invite to an affluent household.
708. DanDillon - 11/2/1999 10:01:20 AM
Some of my finest gastronomic memories rise with the setting of the Ramadan sun and the pouring of H'rira, the soup to break the fast.
709. PelleNilsson - 11/2/1999 12:48:26 PM
Jay
As long as you are on the "tourist circle", staying in hotels that cater to foreigners you are unlikely to suffer any inconvenience during Ramadan, nor will you cause inconvenience to others. If you care for a beer or wine with your lunch or dinner, you will have it.
Otherwise, you will note that many local restaurants are closed for lunch and some are closed altogether. This is not so much a question of religious observance as of lack of custom. Ramadan is a time for family reunion and for enjoying meals that are particular for Ramadan (think of a prolonged Thanksgiving with more food variety).
As PE mentioned and unless you are in a very touristy spot avoid eating, drinking and smoking in public (meaning, essentially, outdoors). Except for an angry glance or two, nothing will happen if you do; it is a matter of common decency and respect, of which, I'm sure, you have no lack.
710. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 8:33:02 PM
some posts on quetta coming in about half an hour.
711. CalGal - 11/2/1999 8:45:30 PM
Jay,
My father lived in Cairo for 10 years, and his wife is a practicing Muslim. In short, I think he could pass on quite a bit of information about the area and practical tips about Ramadan, if you're interested. I went to Egypt back in 1992 and had a wonderful time.
You can email me, if you like. Or we can take it to the thread of your choice.
712. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:16:28 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
The primary reason I went to Quetta was that one has no choice but go there when arriving from Iran; but it was an added bonus because Baluchistan was the only corner of Pakistan I had previously never set foot in.
Cities in Pakistan are usually adorned with beautiful mosques and Mughal palaces and British monuments, but Quetta has few such things. Located not more than 150km from Afghanistan's southeastern border, it began its life in the late 19th century as the western military outpost of the British Indian Empire. So it could hardly have much charm, but whatever it might have had was apparently wasted by some earthquake in the 1930s. Now, most of its structures are modern. But in many ways, Quetta is a lot more interesting than Lahore or Karachi. For the inhabitants of Quetta incarnate exoticism, anomaly and diversity.
It's a real ethnic hodgepodge, a paradise for the ethnological tourist. This frontier town of a few hundred thousand is divided into a dozen ethnically distinct neighbourhoods, including Pathan/Afghan, Brahui, Baluch, Hazara, Jats, Punjabi, Muhajir, and several defined by tribal affiliation. I spent my two days in Quetta wondering from one neighbourhood to another, striking up conversations with ethnologically & linguistically interesting specimens of humanity. (That idiot scholar Edward Said would likely say I was "exoticising" the Orient and oppressing its inhabitants by perpetuating the "Orient/Occident dichotomy".)
713. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:18:33 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
And this diversity is conspicuous on the streets: unlike the rest of Pakistan, where almost everyone wears some variation on the shalwaar qameez (a pyjama-like outfit of loose, knee-length smock & baggy trousers), Quettans announce their ethnicity through their fashions. For example, the Baluchi tribals wear flowing robes which fall to their ankles, as well as a turban which looks like a large bundle of laundry. Then they wrap themselves in a sheet around a diagonal axis between one shoulder and the hip. The Brahuis are more fashionable. Over a shalwaar qameez they sport smart, form-fitting jackets either plain or embroidered or otherwise ornamented, often topped by a long scarf or a stole over one of the shoulders. Moreover, the shape and the colour of a Brahui turban depend on the wearer's tribal affiliation. Thus the Brahui quarter in Quetta is a riot of colourful and funny-shaped heads, some conical, others rounded, still others convex casings which might as well be invitations for birds to nest.
Almost every Quettan I spoke to, even dirty street urchins, claimed to speak five languages -- Urdu, Pashto, Brahui, Baluchi and English. But I realised after a while that in practise what most Quettans speak is a native language plus some pidgin. In casually striking up conversations with shopkeepers, food vendors and the like, I noticed that whenever someone claimed to be speaking Urdu or Pashto (the two competing lingua francas in Quetta), what invariably flowed from his mouth was a jumble of words from different languages, but structured around the grammar of his native one. This last bit I infer primarily from the Afghans who spoke "Urdu" with a conspicuously Pashto or Persian syntax.
715. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:24:35 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
Pidgnisation in a place like Quetta with its constant ethnic flux is not surprising, perhaps, but what I did find truly surprising was that there apparently hadn't yet developed a standard for the pidgin. Different Quettans allegedly speaking the same language wouldn't necessarily call the same object by the same name. For example, in the Brahui quarter, I asked a food vendor in Pashto what meat was contained in his stew. His reply was bezâ, or "goat". Later, at a food stall in the Baluchi quarter, to the identical question in the identical Pashto about meat I knew to be goat, came the reply, bakree, which is "goat" in Urdu. When I repeated, "Is it really bezâ?"; the reply was: "Yes, it's bakree". Similar examples could be multiplied.
From my very superficial investigation I'd surmise that in the absence of a standard pidgin, ordinary Quettans improvise a pidgin of their own as they go along, confident that the others will know each words separately. That is, they all maintain a core lexicon of common words which they understand in several different languages (e.g., "goat" in Urdu, Pashto, Baluchi, Brahui and to a lesser extent Farsi), while for the purposes of speaking they arbitrarily choose one word from the set (e.g., bezâ). For all this I thought Quetta fertile territory for field work by sociolinguists interested in observing linguistic change as it happened before their eyes (ears). It's like the beak of the finch, evolution in progress.
716. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:32:56 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
Of the two Afghan refugee communities in Quetta, the Pathans mostly live among Pakistani Pathans in the Pathan quarter, but some segregate themselves into little tribal ghettos of their own, particularly the powerful and drug-dealing Achakzai.
The other big Afghan community is the Hazara, a minority which in Afghanistan number some 2 million. The Hazara are supposed to speak a kind of Turkic-Persian mixture and to be descended from the 13th century Mongol invaders of Afghanistan. But you certainly can't guess the latter from their appearance, for they look no different from other Afghans. But a subcommunity called the Hazaragi, who (again!) live apart from the other Hazara, do have strikingly Mongoloid features, complete with epicanthic folds over the eyes, straight black hair, and shiny tan skins. If you threw a turban and a shalwaar qameez over an Eskimo and sprinkle some dust on his face, he might just pass for a Hazaragi. In Afghanistan, the Hazaragis specialise in weaving the famous Hazara carpets, which are then distributed through Quetta. Many of the carpet shops in the city I saw were manned by these latter-day Mongols.
717. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:36:10 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
The word "Afghan refugee" connotes camps where men, women and children rot away from malnutrition and even leprosy. But of the three million plus Afghan refugees Pakistan has received since 1979, the majority have unexpectedly done well. (Most of those Afghans who've fared pretty well are Pathans, largely because these benefitted from the tribal social network of their fellow Pathans in Pakistan.) All over Pakistan today, especially Peshawar, Quetta and Karachi, Afghans own buses, taxis, restaurants and trucks, and now constitute an indispensable labour force in many walks of life, everything from janitors to security guards.
But in Quetta, Afghans thrive. Many native Quettans claim they own everything. Enterprising Afghans have mined for precious metals previously unexploited, work on the gas pipelines being built by the Islambad government, act as middlemen & distributors for the farm produce of their Pathan cousins in the north, and, of course, deal in drugs.
Although Peshawar has this reputation, it's actually Quetta which has become Pakistan's Medellín. (But it's much less violent.) After all, it's a city in spitting distance from Afghanistan, south of which the government exerts virtually no control. So probably with the cooperation of the Taliban, Afghan dealers brazenly haul truckloads of opium, heroine and hashish from Afghanistan through the Kojak Pass to Quetta; from where smugglers armed to the teeth cross the bandit-infested heartland of Baluchistan and arrive on the beaches of the Makran, unpatrolled except by confederates waiting with boats.
718. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:37:49 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
During the Soviet war, say the Quettans, Afghans strutted around the streets of Quetta because they were mujahiddeen, admired by Pakistanis for their valour against the onslaught of Russian arms. But today some of them are too filthy rich from the drug trade to strut around; rather, they parade through the streets in comically armoured motorcades and inhabit palatial residences. And they're much resented by the natives and even the non-Afghan Pathans.
The drug trade in all truth probably keeps Quetta's economy humming along, and many Baluchi and Brahui tribal chieftains have also gotten involved in the drug act. But in popular perception the little wealth Quetta has got is concentrated among newcomers, so the palpable resentment against the drug trade spills over into anti-refugee, anti-migrant, nativist passions. But the Baluch and the Brahui natives are in no position do anything about it, for they have been made into minorities in their own province by the influx of Pathan immigrants and Afghan refugees since the 1970s. To add insult to injury, the only lands suitable for widespread agriculture in Baluchistan -- the area north of Quetta and adjoining the NWFP --are farmed by Pathans. It's no wonder although Quetta town itself sees few ethnic clashes, a preemptive curfew is imposed on the city a couple of times a week.
719. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:39:07 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
Perhaps the strangest of all the communities in Quetta are the Gwadaris of the Kala ("black") quarter, in reality a small street without an outlet where the descendants of East African slaves live. They were once confined to the coastal enclave of Gwadar, but over the years perhaps a hundred or so had migrated to Quetta looking for work and business opportunities. At least that was the figure given to me by a Gwadari owner of a fruit & vegetable stand, who also claimed Karachi has a small community of his people.
Although their ancestors must have mixed with the locals, nonetheless with their bony, angular faces and kinky hair they most assuredly looked African -- except that they were in shalwaar qameez.
I was curious about two things: whether they were discriminated against, and whether any vestiges of pre-Islamic religion had survived. But I could hardly ask them directly, and from other Quettans I received nothing but puzzlement and blank faces. Certainly the Gwadaris in Quetta appeared to be eking out a hard living in a trade shunned around the world, for their primary occupation in the city is tanning hide.
720. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:43:39 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
For me, Quetta's -- indeed Pakistan's -- most fascinating ethnic minority is the Brahui.
Most people of Iran, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal speak languages which belong to the same family as French, German, Russian, Albanian and Greek -- the Indo-European family of languages. But in south India, you have a completely unrelated set of languages called the Dravidian. We're not talking about as different as French and English, but as different as English and Japanese. Naturally, the Dravidians have been something of a puzzle. Where did they come from? Were they always in India before the arrival of Indo-European speakers?
Well, the million Brahuis of Baluchistan answer this question most persuasively. For the Brahui too is a Dravidian language, a missing link of archaeology and historical linguistics, located thousands of miles away from the heartland of the Dravidian peoples in south India. Moreover, in Baluchistan are found the oldest archaeological sites in all of South Asia. What these facts suggest is that the Dravidians must have migrated to India from elsewhere, some place farther north and west than where the majority of them live today.
The Brahuis know they have been in Baluchistan far longer than anybody else, and consequently they take on airs of a breed apart, a special race. Indeed, having arrived no earlier than a thousand years ago, the namesake Baluchis of Baluchistan are relative newcomers to the province. They conquered the Brahuis, but in the 17th century the natives eventually overthrew the Baluchi yoke and for the first time established something resembling a united independent state of modern Baluchistan. Founded by some Brahui tribal chieftain, the Khanate of Kalat briefly encompassed parts of Punjab and Sindh, including Karachi.
721. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:47:37 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
Today, the impoverished little bugger that is the present Khan of Kalat can be seen sipping tea in the Brahui quarter, open to conversation with all and sundry who would listen to the proud tales of Brahuistan and the Brahui people. Which I did for half an hour or so.
The only thing about the khan of Kalat which betrayed his (slightly) elevated origins was his perfect English. Otherwise, he might have passed for just another Brahui chieftain with a scraggly beard, though other chieftains are fortunate enough to have splendid clothes and armed guards. This one brandished no bejewelled sword like other chieftains, no splendid broach bedecked his turban, his shalwaar qameez was frayed at the edges, and some of the fake jewels on his vest had fallen out and hadn't been mended. Pakistan is home to at least a hundred deposed amirs, nawabs, khans and rajas of one kind or another, and I have met a couple, but this one was the most pathetic.
After the British annexed his ancestor's khanate, his family were provided a nice pension and a villa and allowed to keep the pretence of ruling an independent princely state. At the time of Pakistan's gaining independence from Britain, the khan implausibly claimed, Muhammed Ali Jinnah personally promised his father that "Brahuistan" could remain an independent state and, indeed, there was a one-year period of independent Baluchistan. But he even claims his kingdom was recognised by Afghanistan and Iran! I could barely contain my titters at this unbelievable claim.
722. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 9:50:02 PM
Ethnological Tourism in Quetta
Nonetheless, after Jinnah's death in 1948, Pakistani troops occupied the Khanate of Kalat and officially declared the accession of Baluchistan province to Pakistan. The khan's family were allowed to stay in the villa in Kalat, but that kindness only lasted until Bhutto's campaign against Brahui and Baluchi separatists in the 1970s. The khan denies any sympathy or involvement in the uprising, but he got scapegoated anyway. After being ejected from his palace in Kalat, he was installed in a modest house in Quetta. "We were treated better as Mughal vassals!", he repeated to me several times. Now this sixtyish man, proud but not even quite the first among equals of tribal chieftains, is reduced to sitting in a teahouse and singing praises of his exalted family to beggars, tourists and those loyal members of his tribe who have no choice but to listen.
(end)
723. ilyavinarsky - 11/2/1999 9:55:10 PM
Wasn't Elamite also a Dravidian language?
It is connected to the mythology of my own people the Jews. The book of Esther has characters named Esther and Mordechai (Babylonian gods Ishtar and Marduk) triumphing over Vashti and Haman (who were Elamite gods, IIRC).
724. Hashke - 11/2/1999 9:56:33 PM
pseuder:
(shalwaar)'qameez'=qamiis=camisa=chemise?
725. IrvingSnodgrass - 11/2/1999 10:03:03 PM
ilyavinarsky:
Many linguists believe Elamite was a Dravidian language (and the family is sometimes referred to as "Elamo-Dravidian." Elam is thought to have been located in present-day Iran (most likely comprising the Western or Southwestern part).
726. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 10:15:21 PM
Hashke (Message # 724)
Yes, that's correct, the word means "shirt" in Urdu/Hindi, although I'm not sure the direction of the borrowing.
By the way, the correct transliteration is "qamiiS",
(
), with the Arabic letter Saad at the end, which is more or less as you have it. I wrote "qameez" because there is an understandably long history of transliteration into English from Urdu/Hindi to which I accede unthinkingly.
729. ilyavinarsky - 11/2/1999 10:29:55 PM
This stuff is absolutely fascinating, pseudoerasmus. You should publish it on dead trees.
730. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 10:40:05 PM
Thanks, Ilya. Given that each travelogue entry has ended up a 2000-word essay, I've thought along the lines of publishing it in a green-hostile manner. But I barely have the discipline to write what I've written, so I don't think I could actually write a book, especially since that would involve much less control over things than this format.
731. Hashke - 11/2/1999 11:38:11 PM
pseuder:
Yes, I know that a proper rendition of the Arabic is 'qamiiS', the upper case S representing the trowel that is the Arabic letter 'Saad'. In fact, sometime back I suggested using upper case for Arabic emphatics.
I noticed my slip after I had posted, and knew that you would call me on it in reprisal for my earlier mention of the erasmian Russian adjectival endings gaffe.
732. Hashke - 11/2/1999 11:39:39 PM
Nothing to do with Gafar, of course.
733. pseudoerasmus - 11/2/1999 11:49:41 PM
Hashke: I wasn't correcting you, I was only correcting myself in agreement with you.
734. Hashke - 11/3/1999 12:38:24 AM
Aha! Whatever, it's all a lot of fun, I do admit!
735. cmboyce - 11/3/1999 12:42:28 AM
Wonderful postings, Pseudoerasmus. I find the Gwadaris particularly interesting. When was the slave trade that brought their ancestors to--what, Sindhia? Brahuiland?--and why were they restricted to Gwadar? Was that the only place where slavery was permitted? Or did the rest of the region take its slaves from elsewhere (the untouchables will of course have served as unpaid labor, I suppose, though not chattel) and not want to have their turf "contaminated" by Africans?
736. cmboyce - 11/3/1999 12:47:40 AM
Btw, & fwiw, I too think you should consider this as raw material for a book. As for the requisite discipline, it can surely be attained in snatches. Just take your time and write a few thousand words on anything that memory brings to hand, over, say, the next 7 years, and voila!
737. cmboyce - 11/3/1999 1:15:25 AM
Here's a site on Gwadar.
738. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 1:19:56 AM
Message # 735
I don't know very much about Gwadar, and I plan to go there one of these days. All I know really is that Gwadar was sold by the Khan of Kalat to a Muskati nobleman who eventually became the Sultan of Oman. Gwadar then simply became part of the little known Omani Empire of the 18th & 19th centuries, which included the southern coastal areas of Iran as well as Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania and Mombasa in Kenya. I assume the African slaves simply came with the Arabs who settled in Gwadar. Many Arabs, I am told, still live in Gwadar. ("Gwadari" refers to anyone from Gwadar, but in Quetta the connotation is African, I believe.) This Omani territory was sold to Pakistan in 1958 for a couple of million dollars.
Marzipranks I'm sure will have something to say about African slaves in Portugal's Indian colonies.
739. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 2:05:24 AM
Here is a map of Baluchistan province which shows its districts, which are sort of rationalised according to ethnicity: 
The fertile valleys to the north and east of Quetta -- Pishin, Zhob, and Loralai -- are inhabited primarily by Pathans. Kalat and Khuzdar constitute the Brahui heartland. The Baluchis are spread out over the western wastes of Chagai and Kharan and the eastern wastes of Kachni, Nasiradbad, Kohlu and Bugti. The Jats live in Lasbela. The districts on the southwestern tip -- Gwadar, Turbat and Panjgur -- are supposed to contain dozens of obscure racial & tribal groups which I know nothing about.
740. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 2:30:58 AM
I should add that the minorities (natives) of Baluchistan are the social exclus of Pakistan, much much much more so than the Muhajirs who get all the attention. They are simply absent from Pakistan's national life -- you generally don't find them in the civil service or the army. Their own provincial government is controlled by a cabal of Pathans and Panjabis, just as Baluchistan's wealth is concentrated among these and other non-natives. Baluchistan is basically a colony. But what really puts the Brahuis and the Baluchis in the exclusive club of indigenous peoples to be royally shat upon by colonisers is that Baluchistan is where Pakistan's nuclear testing takes place. That makes them analogous with the Tuareg of Morocco, natives on the Marshall Islands and elsewhere, the Kazaks under the Soviets, and the Uighur of Xinjiang.
741. PincherMartin - 11/3/1999 2:57:18 AM
Truly outstanding pieces. You should make an effort to get it published.
742. marjoribanks - 11/3/1999 10:18:20 AM
Very interesting, Pseuder. All this makes me regret quite fervently that I still haven't been able to travel around Pakistan despite some opportunities. And now, my relatives who remained there after Partition (one a high-ranking Catholic bishop, one a drunken Cambridge-educated wastrel) are dead.
A bit more on Gwadar. As you noted, it was part of the personal possessions of the Sultan of Oman, and part of an empire that once included Mombasa, Zanzibar, Muscat, Oman and that stunningly rocky peninsula at the tip of the current UAE (I forget the name). The same process that deposited Arabs in Zanzibar placed these Africans (not all slaves btw) in Gwadar (and Muscat and Oman).
This territory (which includes an excellent port, now slated for development by Pakistan) remained the last overseas Omani outpost until 1958, when as you noted it was sold/released to the Pakistani government - for approximately three million pounds. Interestingly, Oman is participating in the contemporary development efforts for the port. When I was in the UAE early this year, I read an article saying that the Sultan of Oman was putting ten million dollars of his own money into the project.
743. marjoribanks - 11/3/1999 10:20:36 AM
Not that it's important, but why transliterate the word as "qameez" and not "kameez" or even "kamiz"? The second of the two options is standard for transliteration from Hindi.
744. Hashke - 11/3/1999 10:34:12 AM
Pak marj:
Perhaps the sound is a uvular, like the 'q' in Arabic and thus better represented with that letter.
745. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 10:57:44 AM
Message # 743
Well, in Pakistan you see it transliterated in a hundred different ways, and in the text of the travelogue I just chose one unthinkingly.
But qamiiS is the transliteration that faithfully recounts the Arabic source (and the Arabic script in Urdu). The Arabic letter Saad (represented by capital S) is the equivalent of the Z-like sound at the end (which in the Sanskrit script is represented by the symbol for J with a dot on the bottom). Urdu/Hindi speakers barely distinguish Q from K, but the initial sounds of "qamiiS" and "Kashmiir" are distinguished in writing in both Arabic and Sanskrit scripts, so why not reflect them in Roman transliteration?
[This is all pedantry, but....]
746. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 11:00:42 AM
I don't know why the graphics aren't working this morning. They were working last night. I'm sure the Geocities site will be up & running again soon.
747. PelleNilsson - 11/3/1999 12:18:22 PM
MARJ --- Message # 742
that stunningly rocky peninsula at the tip of the current UAE (I forget the name)
Musandam. It is still part of Oman.
It seems that Oman, like other colonial powers, retains an affection for its former possesions. We were recently engaged in a telecom project on Zanzibar. Oman had put up significant funds.
748. marjoribanks - 11/3/1999 1:44:30 PM
Pak Hashke,
You may well be right. However, I don't know what an uvular is.
Pelle,
The Musandam Peninsula. Thanks for reminding me. It's not the only pocket of Oman within the territorial borders of the UAE, a few of scattered villages belong to that kingdom as well. I spent a very pleasant day driving through these and the Musandam earlier this year. The terrain is spectacular and the local scene far less developed and thus more picturesque than the glass-and-steel of most of the rest of the UAE.
749. stostosto - 11/3/1999 5:32:37 PM
Pincher #741:
I agree. Sure beats Fukuyama!
750. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:17:49 PM
The Bolan Pass
The mighty British Indian Empire began modestly near what is today Calcutta, which was little more than the corporate offices of the British East India Company. But by 1947, the Empire had fanned out over the entire subcontinent to look like this.
(Notice that the grey, orange and red marks indicate nominally independent native rulers, but they were actually "protectorates" of the British. They could not defy the British Raj. The modern borders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, and western Iran look the way they do only, and for no other reason than, because that's how the British ended up drawing them.)
One reason the British kept acquiring territory was that each new addition was threatened, in its view, by forces on the periphery. But there was never to be an end to such a process, since every acquisition brought along its own periphery. When the British finally rounded out their possessions and reached the virtually insurmountable physical barriers that define the Indian subcontinent -- the great mountain ramparts of the north, the British lake called the Indian Ocean to the south, the tropical Burmese jungle in the east, and the wastes of Baluchistan and Afghanistan to the west --they began obsessing about how potential invaders might surmount them. After all, despite such natural obstacles, for millennia invaders had kept finding clever ways of pouring into India and looting its riches. Alexander the Great waded through Afghanistan and made it to the fertile Indus valley; and countless Afghans, Persians and Turks from Central Asia conquered and ruled northern India. But just how exactly did these interlopers make their way into India? What route did they take?
751. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:21:28 PM
The Bolan Pass
In addition, the Afghans were still restless and making trouble. The British dreaded the thought of thousands of those truculent pyjama people descending on Delhi or Lahore just as the Mughal rulers had dreaded.
But even worse, the Russians were coming. Before the British had even set foot in India, those Great Slavs had broken through the Urals barrier (which having seen them I know to be unimpressive....) and had reached Alaska in fulfillment of their own Manifest Destiny. But now they had turned south, subduing and swallowing one Asiatic potentate after another in the Caucasus and Central Asia. The ultimate British nightmare was the idea of the Russian Empire in Afghanistan, which could only be a prelude to dethroning Queen Victoria as Empress of India.
Whether all this was exaggerated or not, both the Russians and the British took it seriously and played the Great Game consummately throughout the 19th century. (I cannot recommend more highly Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game, a history which recounts the adventures & explorations of the Russian, British and native players of the game.) On the British side, the job of the moment was to make Afghanistan into a British protectorate before the Russians got to do it, and to discover every possible way previous invaders had reached India.
752. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:25:04 PM
The Bolan Pass
Hence the Bolan Pass. Before the 20th century, an invader from the north could attempt to reach India in a dozen ways, each very difficult. He could cross the awful, appalling, lifeless Taklamakan desert only to get stuck in the labyrinth of passes in the Pamir and the Karakorum mountains before reaching Peshawar, or die from exposure in the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayas before ever seeing the Ganges. He might also traverse the equally unappealling Karakum Desert and the Hindu Kush ("Hindu killer") mountains. If he survived the maurauding of Turkmen nomads, he would then have to brave the nastiest of the nasties, the Afghans, and make for the outlet through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar. An alternate outlet from Afghanistan is the Kojak Pass in the south, and then the Bolan Pass in Baluchistan, which would lead him to the soft underbelly of British India -- Sindh and southern Punjab. Hundreds of British officers died from beheadings or impalings or exposure to discover what I just told you.
Probably because it no longer straddles an international border, the Bolan Pass lacks the romance of the Khyber Pass or even the modern-day importance of the Kojak Pass. But in the 19th century, it was considered as strategic as the Khyber still is. The British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839-40 was a pincer attack, with one army rushing to Kabul via Khyber, and another up to Kandahar via the Bolan and the Kojak Passes. After the bulk of the British occupying forces were infamously massacred by the Afghans, the few straggling survivors made it through the Khyber and Kojak Passes despite the relentless Pathan sniping. But none made it through the Baluchi-infested Bolan.
753. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:30:09 PM
The Bolan Pass
Lest such calamities ever happen again, the British pacified these passes, clearing them of all hostile tribes. Then they blasted through solid rock and sheer cliffs and barren mountains to build a railway which would rush troops safely to Afghanistan. On such a track runs the Bolan Mail, at least as impressive a feat of engineering as the more famous train called the Khyber Mail.
Not long after riding the Bolan Mail from Quetta to Karachi in June, I emailed the following account to Irving Snodgrass, who presumably posted it in the travel thread of the Fray. I repost the remarks here, unchanged except for a few clarifications, added details, and deletions of matters which have already been aired in this thread.
The Bolan Mail passes through some of the most desolate parts of Baluchistan and the bandit-infested Sindh province. The only way to travel in the latter region is by train or air, for cars and trucks are regularly attacked by bandits or brigands known in South Asia as dacoits. (More on these when I get to Sindh.)
754. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:34:25 PM
The Bolan Mail
Not more than 100km outside the town limits of Quetta, the Bolan Pass began just like the Khyber Pass, arid and endlessly brown, the train clambering up rocky inclines dotted with old brown fortresses. We went up miniature mountains for a few thousand feet, then down, then up, then down, for maybe 20 miles. Just like the Khyber Pass. But unlike at the Khyber, the tracks inside many of the tunnels at the Bolan Pass were laid on steep inclines, so that we were frequently ascending or descending in near-darkness at gradients not very steep but steep enough that during the ascents I felt like I was slowly heading for the crest on a roller coaster. At one point we also moved on a track laid along the perimeter of a spectacular headland shaped like a tear-drop. Overlooking a very sheer and hair-raising precipice on all sides, our train ascended one side of this tear-drop, then swerved to the other side, and continued the ascent in the opposite direction to make the loop. I suppose this loop, along with the tunnels, are the stuff which cause people to wax lyrical about feats of engineering.
Then we descended back to the flat Baluchistan desert. But we weren't out of the Bolan Pass yet, for after half an hour or so there loomed in the far distance an abrupt interruption in the flatness. I can only call it a giant natural rampart of rock, a long long bluff rising out of the ground perhaps 500m into the sky and its cliff face nearly pependicular to the earth. It extended in both directions as far as the eye could see. Its top was not jagged and peaked but (it appeared) relatively flat. I asked the Baluchi gentleman seated next to me (more on him below): "Does that have a name?" Looking bored, he said he didn't know.
755. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:34:58 PM
The Bolan Mail
While marvelling at this Great Wall of Baluchistan, I was entirely oblivious to how the train might overcome the obstruction in our path. But soon I realised we were headed straight for it. Then I noticed not a tunnel but a narrow opening across the entire height of the Wall which cleft it into two. Thus our train was slowly sucked into the escarpment.
At the beginning the gorge (which I took to be natural) was several hundred feet wide, but it gradually narrowed so that at some point during the passage I could extend my arm and touch the sheer cliffs that immured us. (The train was moving at a snail's pace.) Cautiously sticking my head out of the window, I could see the sun peeking through the long slit 500m above. Yet, because the train followed the canyon's winding progress, the line of sight in front was continuously blocked by the arc of the train bending against the grim brown rock face. I could not see much farther ahead than 5m or so. If the train had been rushing headlong into the cliff side, no one would have known about it until it was too late.
So the train snaked through this claustrophobic trail for maybe two miles, interrupted just once by a large ovoid expanse, a veritable Nave of the Rock. From the sky this bulbous hollow in the wall would surely give the outline of the canyon the appearance of a boa with a lump of animal being slowly digested in its mid-section.
Anyway, I was mightily impressed. That rock was magnificent, poetically grand. Turning to the Baluchi, I managed to cobble together a simple Baluchi sentence (based on a phrasebook I had bought): "Your country is beautiful". The gruff and feisty Baluchi replied: "The British built the railway here. They were stupid. We dropped big rocks on their trains from up there".
756. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:51:40 PM
The Bolan Mail
Many hours later, I had dozed off and stopped paying much attention to my surroundings. But as we were traversing the interior of Sindh, perhaps a few hundred miles from Karachi, I slowly grew alert to the fact that most of the passengers had become glued to the windows. The view outside was as barren and yellow-white as Baluchistan, but the terrain was now totally flat and specked by green evidences that we were near the Indus and its delta. But what caught everyone's attention was a Suzuki pickup truck trailing the train in close quarters, speeding and slowing along the length of the train as though they were inspecting all its carriages. The load in the back of the truck was covered from view by a well-fastened blanket; at the helm were two men clearly armed with guns.
The sign on the Bolan Mail platform at Quetta station had read something like: "There is risk of dacoity in Baluchistan and Sind. Remain in train during stops". We were moving.
I had been told by my contact in Quetta, an acquaintance of my relatives in Karachi, that I should consider flying to Karachi rather than take the train. (But that was out of the question, since the only reason I was going to Karachi was to take the Bolan Mail.)
"A couple of times a year the Bolan Mail is attacked by dacoits in Baluchistan and Sind", he warned darkly. "You mean they blow up the tracks, just as T E Lawrence blew up the Turkish Railways in Arabia?", I asked with a bit of cheek. "No, they force the train to stop. The tracks mean more loot in the future, they would never blow them up. Sometimes the conductor is in cahoots with the dacoits and pulls the emergency brake. But no one has been killed or injured in a very long time." At Quetta station, I felt half-reassured when I saw two soldiers boarding the train as guards.
757. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:53:21 PM
The Bolan Mail
At any rate, it was dacoit alert! or so it seemed. I turned to the Baluchi: "Dacoits?" Clearly nervous, he remained silent. To another passenger: "Dacoits?" He wasn't sure, but he was pacing the length of the car yet his eyes were immobilised by the Suzuki. The other passengers chattered uneasily.
Well I was apprehensive, but I had brought nothing of much value with me anyway. Almost out of cash, I was anticipating more of it at the American Express office in Karachi. I would gladly have surrendered my Teach Yourself Sanskrit, which at that point I hadn't even opened. But I felt, if I was going to be robbed, at the very least these dacoits on the Suzuki could have had the decency of being picturesque: they weren't galloping on horses or hurtling on camels. And it's not like they needed a motorised vehicle to catch up with our bumbling train.
The Suzuki men began shooting their rifles into the air. Then the passengers went crazy. One man opened up his bundle, removed some items, began looking for places to hide them below and around the seats.
Another man was fidgeting the whole time. Yet another threw himself on the sleeper, took to lying frozen and expressionless on his back, and began staring at the ceiling. (The train cars were composed of open compartments on alternating sides, with windowed sleeper/sofa seats opposite each of the compartments. Also, the purdah was kept on this particular train, so there were no women in this carriage.)
Never, not once, did the Suzuki men aim their guns at the train, but they did keep shooting into the air. They sped up to drive parallel with the engine car and made some motion with their arms. Soon thereafter the train began to slow down. A bit later the train came to a halt. Right in the middle of nowhere. Where were the soldiers?
758. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:54:40 PM
The Bolan Mail
The din of the last half hour died down abruptly. The silence, unexpected but expectant, was softly broken when a few of the passengers began mumbling and hushing prayers. Muslims are more pious in panic than in any other state.
I could see the Suzuki stopped far in front of our carriage, but I couldn't tell what was going on. Everybody had returned to their seats and many who could were no longer looking out the window, as though curiosity had been overwhelmed by fatalism and terror. In the distance, I saw that one of the two Suzuki men, Scourge of Sind #1, alighted from the truck, picked up a large round basket and boarded the train. Scourge of Sind #2 screamed in Urdu at the passengers several cars ahead of us, "Open the windows!". He then dramatically threw open the blanket cover on his cargo to reveal....they were selling food!
When the Suzuki men finally arrived beside our carriage, we were regaled with the sight of bananas, mangoes, apples, quince, breads, kebabs; and sweets sweets sweets. The saviour of Sind, now on board, bore a basket riddled with barfis (a kind of fudge, made of milk solids, sugar and butter, frequently containing nuts and available in a zillion different flavours). There were pista barfiis and tri-colour barfiis and almond barfiis and the whole lot. The passengers didn't give a sigh of relief: there was spontaneous jubilation and an explosion of grasping grabbing food avarice. Which I duly joined.
759. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:57:06 PM
The Bolan Mail
At first I worried that the barfiis might have gone rancid in the heat of the Sindh, but, hell, the best part about them is their vaguely rancid-milk aftertaste.... Plus, I hadn't eaten at all in 10 hours and I was not going to consume any more of the miserable slops on the train. (Unlike other trains in Pakistan, this one was strangely devoid of passengers who board and make the journey for the express purpose of selling food and wares. So we were stuck with train grub. On this train, the Indo-Pak staple daal that was on offer had nearly hardened like dried mud and the breads looked mouldy.)
So I must have swallowed more than a dozen barfiis. If you piled them up like lego, a dozen barfiis would make a small brick of butter, sugar & milk fat. Long live dacoits.
Now, to the Baluchi gentleman. This middle-aged man of medium height wore a brand new, though ordinary, shalwaar qamiiz and a felt cap. A dense jungle of hair sprouted from all corners of his lower face. But otherwise there was nothing extraordinary looking about him.
Now, in Munich I had bought a Baluchi grammar/phrasebook and a Baluchi dictionary. But having exhausted myself in pathetic attempts to communicate in this language, I was talked out and in no mood for further Baluchi talk. So I resorted to Urdu.
I uttered the obligatory asalaam aleikum and did the introductions and the like. But he winced. Was it at my Urdu? I self-deprecatingly protested, again in Urdu: "My Urdu is not so bad!" He winced again and then covered his ears with the hands. He jabbered in Baluchi.
760. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 8:59:04 PM
The Bolan Mail
Apologetically, I announced in Urdu, "I don't know any Baluchi, only a few words." Again, he winced and plugged up his ears. More Baluchi jabbering. So I launched into my very broken Pashto: "You don't speak Urdu? How about Pashto, you speak Pashto?" He finally replied, in Pashto: "Of course I speak Urdu. Your Urdu is good, but I don't hear it." What on earth could that mean, I was puzzled.
Then I realised that this fellow must be that specimen of humanity which I had always heard about but had actually never seen and was beginning to consider a myth: an Urdu "refusenik".
Baluchis, as well as Pathans, being racially Iranian rather than Indian, are very conscious of their cultural exceptionalism within Pakistan. And both have toyed in the past with separatist sentiments. But whereas the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan killed off the Pathan urge to reunite with the motherland and made them into unequivocal Pakistanis, Baluchi separatism at least in sentiment is supposedly alive and well. And here, my Baluchi fellow passenger was the living breathing confirmation of this rumour.
"Acha", I sounded in realisation, inadvertently passing a common Urdu expression which could mean (depending on context) anything from "aha" to "right" to "I agree" to "as you wish". Then he winced again! Just for saying acha, which I had thought pretty universal. I managed to learn that this Baluchi gentleman spoke a little bit of Pashto and English besides the Baluchi and the self-verboten Urdu. So we arrived at a modus operandi (modus colloquendi?): he would speak Pashto using as many English words as he knew, and I would reply in an Anglo-Pashto pidgin with as many Baluchi words as I could glean from my Baluchi dictionary & phrasebook.
761. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 9:02:47 PM
The Bolan Mail
It turned out that this Baluchi gentleman was a veteran of the aforementioned Baluchistan uprising of the 1970s that was brutally crushed by the joint operations of the Iranian airforce and the Pakistani army. "You Pathans in Afghanistan had Stingers. We didn't. But we still fought bravely. Millions died." [In Pakistan, people learning my last name invariably consider me a Pathan.] I didn't have the heart to tell him that millions couldn't have died.
This information came out more slowly, more gingerly, but it also turned out that this Baluchi was a Zikri Muslim, a sect which actually recognises a prophet after Muhammed. The question I burnt to ask was whether that could even be called Islam. But since in Pakistan ethnicity issues and minority religions are a sensitive subject, I didn't want to pry too much. Plus, he could be arrested in Pakistan for being a Zikri.
Anyway I was more interested in why he was headed for Karachi. Was he visiting relatives there? No, was the answer, without elaboration. Friends? He shrugged. Maybe a bride was waiting for him, but being a subcon he would surely have told me about that as soon as we had greeted each other. Going abroad? I reckoned he might be heading off for one of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, since the many Pakistanis who go work there take a ship from Karachi. He shrugged, again, signalling more than anything else that what I suggested wasn't completely wrong, but still off the mark. But why so secretive? After all, he had already told me that he was a veteran of the Baluchi uprising, and that he was a Zikri, which is much more private information.
This laconic and increasingly sphynxian Baluchi then suddenly offered me a ride from the Karachi station to my aunt's house. I thanked and told him I didn't need one, she would be sending someone to collect me.
762. pseudoerasmus - 11/3/1999 9:04:03 PM
The Bolan Mail
At the Cantonment station in Karachi, the Baluchi accompanied me toward the exit overlooking the Fatima Jinnah Road. Where was his luggage? He claimed he hadn't any. But I saw him get on the train with a Western-style suitcase, which was why I thought he was going to the Gulf. No, no bags, he insisted. I didn't press the issue, but I grew ever more curious and even suspicious about what he was.
Never I would have guessed what car might be waiting to collect him! It was a big, black, shiny, brand new BMW, one of the eight (?) series, with windows tinted. Karachi has lots of rich people, but such cars are still pretty rare, and you usually don't find Baluchis in them. Are you sure you don't want a ride? he asked again. I thanked him for the offer and the conversation, he wished me good luck on my further travels. Then he sped away. I still have no idea who or what that Baluchi was.
[end]
922. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:05:00 AM
The Northwest Frontier Province
The Northwest Frontier Province. Sarhad ("frontier"), as it's known in Pashto. The Vale of Peshawar. The land of the Pathans. Where do I begin?
Of the four nationalities that conspired to create me -- Pathan, English, Japanese and German -- the only one that I have felt accepts me as their own are the Pathans. For they implicitly believe in the one-drop rule. That is, as long as the drop comes from the father and you carry his name, then that drop of Pathan blood overwhelms all else and makes you a Pathan -- even if like me you hardly look like one and stutter Pashto as might an epileptic.
Wherever you run into Pathans outside their native lands, they insist on overpowering embraces and subject you to an infinity of burdensome hospitalities and kindnesses. Along with a several-hundred-gun-Kalashnikov salute. OK, the last part isn't true. Once, my fiancée hired an Afghan emigré, a former mujahideen, to do some yardwork and repairs at her house. When I greeted him in my broken Pashto and revealed I was a Pathan, he was so overjoyed to meet a brother that later he refused to accept the several hundred dollars he was going to charge my fiancée.
When I am among Pathan tribals, in one very narrow sense, I feel a bit like Lawrence of Arabia among the Bedouins, that is, a bookish wimp fascinated with these simple toughs, accepted by them, nonetheless apart from them. But they embrace me, so I embrace them. I really don't care one way or another about Pakistan, but I do care about the Pathans. So, I am a Pathan.
923. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:15:18 AM
The Northwest Frontier Province
My earliest memory of the Frontier is the time when my parents took me there for the first time, around age 4, in order to show me off to my father's relatives. My grandfather was still alive and living in England but refused to set foot anywhere in South Asia. So the putative head of the family was his younger brother, the late great-uncle, Jahangir.
It wasn't such a good year for the family. The cataclysm of the Bangladesh War only a year past, Prime Minister Bhutto père had just conducted a mass indiscriminate purge of the Pakistani army officer corps, blaming them for the loss of East Pakistan. At least a dozen of my relatives got the axe, including my two great-uncles. Everyone was demoralised.
But I, the latest addition to the tribe, cheered them up. I was immediately snatched from my appalled mother's arms and to her horror paraded everywhere in Mardan.
This town outside Peshawar has substituted as our family seat since the turn of the century when my great-grandfather was forced to flee Kandahar in Afghanistan for political reasons to the safety of British India. And most of the Pathan townsfolk either work for us or belong to the same tribe.
924. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:17:17 AM
The Northwest Frontier Province
In the large green field behind the family house congregated perhaps a thousand people. Pulling by an arm the young, shy and reluctant Pseudoerasmus, great-uncle Jahangir mounted a platform and addressed a muster of the Pathan townsfolk. According to my parents' recollection, he proclaimed to the gathering the homecoming of their new son and fabricated on the spot some unreasonably long string of Pathan names which I do not actually bear. The crowd roared my enhanced name in the standard Pathan acclamation, repeating half a dozen times. Yours truly can only remember being frightened to death by the sight of a swarm of queer-looking dirty beggars in pyjamas chanting something resembling his name. But now you can imagine where my insufferable behaviour in the Mote comes from.
925. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:19:06 AM
The Northwest Frontier Province
Hemmed in by the Khyber Hills to the west, the Hindu Kush mountains to the north, the Bolan Hills to the south, and the Indus River to the east, the piece of land known throughout history as the Vale of Peshawar was once part of Afghanistan and today remains one culturally. At any embassy of the defunct but internationally recognised non-Taliban Afghan state, you will find that its political map includes the Vale of Peshawar. So, between Indian maps showing all of Kashmir inside India and Afghan maps biting a chunk out of the northwest, there isn't much left of Pakistan....
The Vale of Peshawar has also been a buffer between Afghanistan and historical India. In British times, it was said, once you crossed the Indus, you left India and found yourself in Afghan country. But the other Afghans looked upon the valley beyond the Khyber as a bit different from the rest of their land. First of all, it's much flatter, lower, more humid and more fertile than Afghanistan, which is basically an arid, dusty, barren plateau. Besides, the natural barriers have made sure that the Vale has never been possessed by one ruler for too long: it would be conquered now by an empire in India, now regained by Afghanistan, now overrun by some Central Asian potentate.
The last conquerors were of course the British. It was they who formalised the boundary between the modern Afghanistan and British India along the Khyber Hills to the west of the Indus. The so-called Durrand Line remains to this day the internationally recognised frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
926. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:21:04 AM
The Northwest Frontier Province
Here is once again the provincial map of Pakistan showing the Northwest Frontier Province:
A couple of districts which are today contained within the Northwest Frontier Province lie outside of the Vale of Peshawar.
For example, the Chitral district at the northernmost tip of the NWFP is part of ancient Kafiristan, now called Nuristan, the land that inspired Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would be King. Its location within the Hindu Kush range kept it free from conquerors until the 1890s, when it was partitioned between the British and the Afghans. On the Afghan side, the last remnant of the pre-Islamic, pre-Hindu, pre-Buddhist indigenous religions of the subcontinent was extinguished by forced conversion. But on the British/Pakistani side, it survives to this day among the 2000 or so pagans of Chitral. Invariably, they claim descent from Alexander the Great.
On this district map of the NWFP, you will notice that bits of the province lie to the west of the Indus River. Mansehra, Abbottabad (Hazara) and part of Kohistan are inhabited not by Pathans, but by Punjabis. These bits of the former Sikh Empire were supposed to be sold to the Maharaja of Kashmir, but he ran out of money. So the British just attached them to the NWFP.
927. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:23:41 AM
The Tribal Areas
Finally, on the above provincial map, you'll find an area light-purple in colour to the left of the NWFP, along the Durrand Line. Not technically part of the Frontier Province, but popularly mistaken as one and the same, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are a confederation of seven autonomous tribal "agencies" that straddle the Afghan/Pakistani border. Whereas the "settled Pathans" live in the Frontier province of Pakistan, their cousins, the famous "Pathan tribals", live apart in the FATA.
Naturally, this system was set up by the British, but they were forced to do so as a result of their inabilty to conquer the feisty and violent Pathan tribals. So, instead of subjecting them to rule from Delhi, the British decided to leave them alone within their own domains and appointed an "agent" in each tribal area who represented British interests. This was not such a bad arrangement, for not only did the tribals get to do whatever the hell they wanted within their own borders, but also the British got a valuable buffer between their Indian domains and the volatile Afghan state -- by whom the Pathan tribals were no more willing to be ruled than by the British.
The Pakistani government inherited this arrangement from the British and continues to send "agents" to the seven tribal areas. To this day, neither Pakistani law nor anything other than tribal law applies in these places, and no one other a Pathan is allowed to set foot within their confines. If a non-Pathan even inadvertently trespassed into these tribal areas and got shot by a sniper, the Pakistani police would do nothing, for the matter would be outside their jurisdiction and they are prohibited from violating the tribal boundaries. (Usually the tribal authority is quite responsible about punishing such behaviour.) The only tribal area open to non-Pathans is the Khyber Agency, through whose territory runs the Khyber Pass.
928. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:28:51 AM
The Tribal Areas
The importance of the FATA was underscored by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for Pakistan, the USA and the Arab world could not have supplied the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance without the tribals. The forbidding Afghan-Pakistani border is made as porous as a sieve by mountain passes in the FATA, which are allegedly known only to Pathans. Whether settled or tribal, whether Pakistani or Afghan, the Pathans have always moved freely between the two countries as a result of this knowledge. And this was exploited to transport American aid and weaponry to the Afghan resistance.
In the past, I have been inside two of the tribal areas (Bajaur and Khyber), and I'm reliably told they are all the same: brown, arid hills with no organised settlements, just a series of small military fortifications that house several families each, along with their farms and livestock. These fortification-households are linked by common tribal affiliation, but the only kind of government each tribal area has got is an ad hoc council of elders from each fortification.
Life inside is an astonishing combination of primitiveness and modernity. As I think I made clear in the Iran segment of the travelogue, Islam does not require that a woman be hidden away completely -- her face can be showing. But in these tribal areas, older customs predominate over Islamic injunctions and women disappear completely behind tent-like veils (burqa).
929. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:34:54 AM
The Tribal Areas
Moreover, the tribals are constantly feuding in the bloodiest way, especially over women. One man may merely glance at another's (completely hidden up) wife or daughter, and the other's hands invariably reach for the gun. Such feuds are often inherited: at least one hears such tall stories as how a Pathan man in London gets his throat cut while he sleeps, in revenge for some bawdy insinuations an ancestor of his had made a century earlier about the wife of the revenger's own ancestor.
On the other hand, the tribal chieftain may be modern enough to send his sons to Stanford or Cambridge, who might return home to improve gun or drug manufacture in his tribal agency, or bring home computers to keep the tribal accounts. Inside one mud fortification in Bajaur where I was invited, I saw satellite dishes receiving CNN broadcasts as well as technicians in Pathan suit eagerly modifying US- or Chinese-made weaponry.
The tribals have a simple ethic called the Pukhtunwali. Its principal tenets are melmastia, or hospitality, which must be extended lavishly to any guest. Nang is honour, but it usually pertains to the honour of women, which is so fragile in the eyes of the Pathan male that he might easily appreciate the quip, "Truth, like a lady's virtue, is not susceptible of partial diminution". Badal is the code of the vendetta, already mentioned. Finally, nanwatai is the formal abasement of the humble vanquished to the generous victor. The British were able to rely on this principle aftering conquering the Pathans of the Peshawar Valley. They became among the most loyal of native soldiers in British India.
The laws of the tribal areas are limited to the Pukhtunwali, and enforcement depends on the gun. But sometimes in order to control spiralling vendettas, the tribal elders agree to hunt down violators collectively with a posse.
930. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:39:27 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
"He is not a Pathan who does not return a blow for a scratch", goes a favourite Pathan proverb. Another is "an eye for an eye, a leg for a tooth". Still another -- and I swear this is a Pathan proverb, despite its currency in the popular culture --is "revenge is a dish best served cold".
For each such proverb illustrating the Pathan's pugnacity are a dozen which celebrate friendship, hospitality and dog-like loyalty. But unquestionably, both the self-image and the stereotype of the Pathan emphasise his recalcitrance, unreasonable independence, and the willingness to fight at the slightest excuse. Lord Rugby, an early British governor of the Northwest Frontier Province and one of two dozen who have authored a book on the Pathans, said of them, "...armed insurrection is his vocation, the blood feud his pastime, hospitality his passion..." As I said earlier, the Pathan idea of a good honest meal is to slaughter a goat as God told them how and hurl the carcass into the fire.
The Pathans are descendants of ancient Aryan invaders of Afghanistan who speak an Indo-European language called Pashto, a relative of Farsi and Kurdish. Today, they form the majority of the population of Afghanistan (7 to 8 millions, or 50%) and approximately 10% (about 14 millions) of Pakistan's population. Here is a map of lands inhabited by Pathans: 
(I'll refer to this area as Roh, which is an old Pashto term for the land of the Pathans.)
931. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:43:38 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
The words "Pathan" and "Afghan" used to mean the same thing; in fact, Pathans were the only ones to bear the label Afghan before it came to denote any native of the present land area of Afghanistan in the 20th century. It is because the modern Afghan state centred in Kabul was founded by a Pashto-speaking dynasty called the Durranis that the country is today called Afghanistan.
The Pathans claim to be descended from the sixty grandsons of Afghana, herself the granddaughter of King Saul of Israel, a woman who happens not to be anywhere mentioned in the scriptures. Nonetheless her grandsons went on to found the sixty Pathan tribes after they escaped from the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. In this delusion were the Pathans unhealthily encouraged by the great Sir William Jones, the pioneer of Indo-European studies and virtual founder of historical linguistics. He argued all his life that the Pathans were the ten lost tribes of Israel. But then who isn't? Most Pathans claim to have the blood of Alexander the Great as well.
Because the Vale of Peshawar is wedged in-between Central Asia and South Asia, every famous conqueror and his dog who had his eye on the riches of India passed through the land.
Until the arrival of Alexander the Great, the Vale of Peshawar was ruled from Persepolis by the Achaemenians of Persia and was deemed the Satrapy of Gadara, or Gandhara. The Greek historian Herodotus makes a reference to the Pathans in Book 3, 102 of his Histories: "...there are those who live near the city of Kaspaturos and in the country of Paktuiks [PaktuikhV]..., and their way of life is almost the same as that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the peoples near India". In another passage, he refers to a people "Persian in language and in dress half Persian and half Paktuan".
932. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:47:16 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
Not long after the Macedonian general destroyed destroyed the Persian empire, his Graeco-Iranian successors lost the Peshawar Valley to Ashoka's Mauryan Empire, a Buddhist kingdom in India. Today, the evidence of Mauryan rule is visible outside Peshawar, including ruins of Mauryan pillars, the symbol of the modern Indian state. In a field near our family house in Mardan, the flotsam and jetsam of Buddhist rubble lie amidst cow and peasant dung, and the rockface of the hills beyond still bear the edicts of Asoka.
But the first empire to be actually based in Peshawar itself was the Kushans. Under these flourished the so-called Graeco-Buddhist or Gandharan style of art. At this time the centre of Mahayana Buddhism, Peshawar may have also been the birthplace of Tantric or Tibetan Buddhism.
This enlightened empire was destroyed by a succession of Graeco-Bactrian, Ephthalite, Hindu, Iranian and Turkic invasions. One of them, the Parthians of Iran, the only empire that ever gave the late Roman empire any trouble, was briefly based in Taxila, a town still in use, located half-way between Peshawar and Islamabad.
But the most significant invasion in Pathan history before the Soviet invasion of 1979 was that of Islam arriving at the head of Arab armies in the early 8th century. Pathans boast to this day that although the "whole world" had fallen to the lightning strike from Arabia in a matter of two decades, their fathers resisted conquest and conversion for two centuries. In the end, however, the Pathans, most of whom had been Buddhists or Zoroastrians, submitted to Islam and became the most fervent partisans of the faith.
933. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:54:31 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
The Pathan made his first appearance as a force in world affairs with his conversion to Islam. Only thereafter did he venture beyond the land of Roh. Although Sindh was the very first part of India to succumb to the (Arab) Islamic armies, it was not to be the beachhead for the expansion of Islamic power into the subcontinent. For after Sindh every single Islamic invasion of India came by way of the Khyber Pass and brought with them a swarm of Pathans lusting for battle and booty.
Beginning in the late 10th century, the Muslim penetration of India was spearheaded primarily by Turkic warlords exploding out of the Central Asian steppe. But without exception they first invaded Afghanistan to collect eager volunteers and mercenaries from among the Pathans and other peoples along the way. These armies of the Turkic warlords must have gotten larger and larger as they approached the fertile valleys of the Indus River in Punjab. The fact that Indian languages have borrowed so much from the Iranian/Arabic lexicon yet relatively little from the Turkic, strongly suggests that by the time these armies reached India, they were composed primarily of speakers of Afghan and Iranian languages.
These bloodthirsty maurauders wrought upon India the most profound changes. Stretching from Punjab in the west to Bengal in the east, the six centuries of Turko-Afghan invasions of northern India deposited millions of foreign settlers; virtually extinguished Buddhism in India; gave birth to Urdu and Hindi; carried the vast store of Arabic and Persian loanwords found in all Indian languages (ranging from 25% to 50% of the total lexicon); and, of course, account for the faith of the nearly 400 million Muslims who live in South Asia today.
934. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 12:59:31 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
Shockingly, Pathans do not take all the credit for these things. On the contrary, the poetry sung fireside and mealside celebrates the glories of the Pathan soldiery in the service of others -- and that's just about everybody. One of the many historical epic poems in Pashto begins with a prologue which, reminiscent of the famous "begat" passage in Genesis, monotonously catalogues the endless succession of warlord armies the Pathans joined in the conquest of India: the Ghaznivids, the Ghurids, the Khajlis, the Tughlaks, the Timurids (the armies of Tamurlane), Sayyids, the Mughals, etc. Of course, the same poem has lots of exciting references to pagan temples burnt and idols smashed and Rajputs slain in battle and "towers built high of heads and bodies" of Hindus in the middle of Delhi.
But the Pathans weren't all destruction, for their many artisans and craftsmen produced enough fine work that they've got an architectural style named after them. One of several Indo-Islamic styles, the so-called "Pathan style"" can be discerned in such landmarks of Old Delhi as the Qutb Minar, Tughlaqabad, and the Lodi Gardens (1, 2).
935. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 1:03:57 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
Occasionally, the Pathans founded dynasties of their own in India. In what is today the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, a Pathan goat herder from Kandahar with noble pretensions by the name of Dilavar Khan, declared himself the Sultan of Malwa. He had a pretty respectable run of it and left behind a bunch of fine structures at Mandu (1, 2).
But the most successful of the Pathan dynasties in India, the precursors to the Mughals in the seizure of the coveted Sultanate of Delhi, were the Lodi (1451-1526) and the Sur (1540-1556). Although the Lodi sultans were a forgettable lot, they ruled the entire Himalayan belt of northern India stretching from Punjab to Bihar. They even founded the city of Agra. But their only important legacy was the active policy of settling their countrymen in northern India. Tens of thousands of Pathans flocked to Hindustan to take over lands confiscated by the Lodis from Hindu landlords.
The Pathan Lodi dynasty was overthrown by the Turk and Pathan soldiers of Babur, the first of the Mughals to invade India. But a few years later the Mughals were temporarily expelled from India and the Lodi revived in the form of the Sur dynasty, whose apotheosis was Sher Shah Sur.
936. pseudoerasmus - 11/18/1999 1:07:08 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
The name of this most famous Pathan Sultan of Delhi veritably reverberates in Pashto poetry, the pride of every tribal who takes inspiration from Sher Shah's exploits in overwhelming the forces of the Mughal Emperor Humayun. One short poem about getting drunk and raping women (more my characterisation than the stated words of the poem) has this gratuitous stanza about the Suri sultan:
I hear the story of Bahlol and Sher Shah.
That in days gone by Pathans were kings in Hind;
For six or seven generations theirs was the kingdom,
And all the world wondered at them.
949. pseudoerasmus - 11/19/1999 3:40:00 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
In 1581, Akbar dispatched a punitive expedition to Peshawar and Kabul, but before his army could cross the Indus, the Pathans themselves poured out of the Khyber and Malakand Passes and joined their fellow tribes in the Peshawar valley to meet the Mughal army at what is today Buner. (Located not more than 50km north of my great-uncle's country house in Abbottabad). Although the Emperor himself commanded the armies from Attock (near present-day Islamabad), they were slaughtered by the Pathan tribesmen in a short campaign.
One Mughal army was lured into the Karakar Pass and buried in an avalanche of rocks. Another Mughal army, "burdened by elephants and soft Hindus" (a favourite anti-Mughal refrain), was chased through a gorge which led up to a precipice, from where some 8000 of Akbar's soldiers and dozens of elephants fell to their deaths. This was the last attempt to subjugate the Pathan tribes of the Peshawar Valley until 1897. And, yes, these events are also much sung by the Pathans.
Eventually, Akbar's forces retook the cities of Roh -- Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and Peshawar. But under his successors the 17th century saw one disaster after another for them in Central Asia and Afghanistan. Jahangir lost Kandahar to the Safavids of Persia, a major blow to Mughal prestige; and Shah Jahan (the builder of Taj Mahal) could do nothing as Uzbekhs and other Turkic groups in Central Asia snatched the Mughal heartland away. By the reign of Aurangzeb the great continental realm extending from the Caspian to Bengal that had been the work of Babur and Humayun, would dwindle to merely the Indian Empire with which the name Mughal is today associated.
952. pseudoerasmus - 11/19/1999 4:03:29 AM
By the way, in focusing on the Vale of Peshawar, I'd forgotten to remark on the geographical terms used to denote other places Afghans/Pathans have lived. For Afghanistan was a name never used until the 19th century, so various parts of the modern country had different names. Here is a map for perspective. 
As I've already said, the Vale of Peshawar was called Gandhara. Still the Persian Achaemenid satrapy of Gadara included not only the Vale, but also Kabul and Jalalabad. The area encompassing Kandahar and Quetta (today in Baluchistan) was Arachosia. Herat, the westernmost outpost of the Pathan, takes its name from the ancient kingdom of Aria (supposedly after Aryan), which in medieval times took the name Khurasan.
The non-Pathan areas of Balkh and Mazar-i-Sharif fell under the kingdom of Bactria.
953. pseudoerasmus - 11/19/1999 5:43:32 AM
The ethnic map of Afghanistan, just for reference. 
964. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 5:49:15 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
[continued from Message # 949]
The man most responsible for the ejection of the Mughals from Afghanistan is Kushal Khan Khattak, the Pashto national poet. His name and words fall from the lips of even illiterate Pathans, who know they speak the language of Kushal Khan, who know that he drove the Mughal from Roh. Though formally sophisticated, his poetry doesn't traffic in doubts or introspections but glorifies manliness, certitude, valour, defiance (plus wine and women), qualities which apparently appealed to the Victorians. When one of the many British officers to fall in love with the Pathan named Raverty published a translation of Kushal's poetry in rhymed heroic couplets, it went through fifteen printings. So exalted is Kushal Khan's place among the Pathans that in the Soviet war, many mujahiddeen went into battle reciting his words rather than verses from the Koran. (My first poem in Latin class at school, where we were required to write short poems and sketches, was a translation of a Kushal ode to wine, though I translated into Latin from Raverty's translation from Pashto.)
Besides the rise of the Sikh Empire and the inroads of the British, the most significant consequence of the Mughal eclipse was the founding of the Afghan state by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. This third member of the triumvirate of Pathan national heroes (after Sher Shah and Kushal Khan) united the Pathan tribes from Herat to Peshawar for the first time ever. The Durrani Empire lay astride all the the major overland trade routes that passed from India to Central and western Asia, which had been the foundation of Mughal wealth and power. 
965. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 5:50:36 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
Unlike previous Pathan invaders, however, Ahmed Shah Durrani could not make inroads into northern India beyond the Punjab. For the very weakening of the Mughals that they had contributed to, unleashed new forces in northern India that barred their progress. The Durrani expansion into India was balked by the rare of alliance of Mughals, Sikhs and Marathas. Ahmed Shah brushed off his inability to conquer Delhi before a gathering of his Pathan army: "Whatever countries I conquer in the world, I would never forget your beautiful gardens. When I remember the summits of your beautiful mountains, I forget the greatness of the Delhi throne".
Once the momentum of expansion had gone, the allegiance of the tribes waned and the Durrani empire became little more than the Emirate of Kandahar spending most of its time quelling tribal uprisings all over its nominal domains.
During the period of decadence and dissension emerged the Sikh power. At the end of the 18th century, the guru and warlord Ranjit Singh forced Ahmed Shah Durrani's son Timur to cede the governorship of Lahore. The Sikh had thus cut off all lines of communication between the Muslim states of Central Asia and those of northern India, bringing to an end forever the dream of reuniting these lands under one sultan. When the British began making inroads into Muslim territories in Bengal and Oudh, the Turko-Afghan reinforcements Muslim Indian dynasties had come to depend on could no longer offer any assistance.
966. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 5:51:43 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
To add humiliation to insult, the Sikhs sacked Kabul in 1803, turning to rubble the Mughal emperor Babur's tomb, and then in 1809 despite the fierce opposition of the local tribesmen took Peshawar. Within a few years, all of what is today the Northwest Frontier Province, the Northern Areas, the Indian and Pakistani sides of Kashmir and Punjab fell to Ranjit Singh. It was as part of Punjab that the Vale of Peshawar eventually became part of British India.
It's also during this period of defeats and humiliation at the hands of the Sikhs that the grudging admiration of the Pathan for the Sikh originates. Though contemptuous of the "soft Hindu", even warrior Rajputs, the Pathan holds the martial Sikh as his equal, a figure worthy of both hatred and admiration.
967. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 5:57:57 AM
In the fall of 1837, on the far side of Afghanistan, the ancient city of Herat was being besieged by the army of the Persian Mohammed Shah. There was nothing extraordinary about this, except for the Western advisers who served on opposite sides: Russian officers manning Persian artillery, and British officers Afghan artillery. The Russians had made Persia a virtual satellite twenty years earlier by inflicting a succession of humiliating defeats on the Persians, the most consequential result of which was the elimination of Persia from the Caucasus and establishment of Russian hegemony. And in order to quell any thoughts of revenge and restoration, the Persians were being prodded to make up for their losses in the West through gains in the East.
[For the background on the British interest in Afghanistan, see the brief comments on the Great Game starting in message #750.] The British began taking a keen interest in Afghan affairs ever since one of its spies brought back news that Napoleon and Alexander I of Russia were contemplating a joint Franco-Russian-Persian invasion of India. Alarmed, the British immediately concluded several treaties of friendship with Afghanistan.
With British prestige among the Afghans high after the repulsion of the Persians, Dost Muhammed agreed he would not receive any Russian embassies. But the Afghan king, offended by the British refusal to help him regain Peshawar from the Sikhs, chose to play both sides and invited a Russian emissary for talks. This the paranoid British took as a casus belli and declared war on Afghanistan, with the putative object of restoring to the throne Shah Shuja, who had been overthrown by Dost Muhammed some years earlier. Now the British would do like the Mughals and all previous sultans of Delhi, who had regarded Afghanistan as belonging to the Delhi Sultanate; and would set up in Kabul just another puppet princely state.
968. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 5:59:14 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
Numbering 15,000 British and Indian troops, the grandiloquent "Army of the Indus" set off in the spring of 1839 into the sunset, only to be worn down by bandits, privations and hardships in the mountain passes of Afghanistan. Nonetheless, they eventually managed to occupy Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Ghazni and proclaimed Shah Shujah, back from exile in Delhi, Shah of Afghanistan. The British occupation of Afghanistan would last two years, during which Kabul became just another social scene for British officers and their wives, complete with afternoon teas, polo games and amateur theatricals. But just like during the Soviet War of 1979-88, the British army spent all their time trying to pacify the countryside. Guerrilla warfare, assassinations, local uprisings and looting were everyday occurrences outside the cities, and the British simply could not master them.
The actual ejection of the British forces from Afghanistan began as a small but highly auspicious affair for the Afghans: in Kabul a couple of British officers and dozens of Indian sepoys were lynched by an angry mob. Although the British garrison in Kabul numbered 4500 and were but an hour's march away from the scene of the rabble, they mysteriously failed to act. By the time the army realised something was afoot, it was too late, for some 30,000 tribal partisans of Dost Muhammed had begun a long siege of the city.
969. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 6:00:37 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
In January 1842, after a series of bloody sorties had failed to break through the Afghan positions, the Afghans pleasantly surprised the British with an offer of a truce. The besiegers agreed to give safe passage to the army down to Peshawar (then in friendly Sikh hands) in exchange for the British surrendering most of their artillery pieces. The hemmed-in British had little choice but to accept this offer, and the ignominious exodus began. Thus the Army of the Indus marched ingloriously out of Kabul and headed off for the Khyber Pass, carrying with them a total of 12,000 civilians, including Afghan collaborators, Indian camp followers and British family members fresh from schools and balls. (The garrisons in other cities also withdrew in a similar state.) Naturally the Afghans did not keep their word and sniped and strafed at the straggling columns in retreat. Tribesmen snatched the army's livestock. British women and children were kidnapped. Cavalry were lured into crevasses over the snow.
Five days after the retreat from Kabul began, a medical officer by the name of Bryden who was hanging half dead from his horse showed up at the British checkpoint at the Khyber Pass and uttered another one of those semi-apocrphyal British one-liners from the glory days of Empire: "I am the Army of the Indus".
970. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 6:01:13 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
In 1849, after a series of wars with the British whose causes are irrelevant to our story, the Sikh Empire was annexed by the British and thus the Vale of Peshawar including both ends of the Khyber Pass fell into British hands for the first time. The accession of the British regime in the Peshawar Valley was all the easier for the contempt its tribes now held for the Afghan state, which had been so humiliated by the Sikh power. Moreover, the arrival of the British army was hailed with enthusiasm by the Pathans as a deliverance from the hated Sikhashahi. Many of the Peshawaris (including many of my ancestors) even swore allegiance to the British Crown in mass ceremonies.
Impressed by this, the British governor of Punjab (the NWFP was not yet to be detached from Punjab until the 20th century) raised an irregular corps to which was given the name of the Guides. The force was to consist of both horsemen and footmen from the Pathans who had sworn loyalty to the British Crown, to be dressed up for rough service and to act as the eyes and ears of regular troops in the field. The time-honoured scarlet of the British Army was laid aside for the dust-coloured loose uniform which later, as khaki, became the fighting dress of the whole British Empire. Headquartered in Mardan, the Guides would soon prove their mettle and their loyalty in the hour of Britain's greatest crisis in India.
971. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 6:01:35 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
We needn't get into the profound whys and hows of the Indian Mutiny, but suffice it to say that the British sowed great resentment in the 1840s and 1850s by a combination of things: riding roughshod over treaties solemnly signed with Indian princely states guaranteeing their independence; outlawing many traditional Hindu practises (allowing Hindu widows to remarry, banning sati); fears of Christian missionary activity; etc. But the immediate cause of the Mutiny was an act of cultural insensitivity so basic, so stupid, so stubbornly blind to their own enlightened self-interest that one must feel the British only got what they asked for. The unexpected trigger was the new breechloading Enfield rifle, whose cartridges were coated with lard and cow grease. Sepoys were instructed to bite the tip off the cartridges before loading them into the open breech. Naturally, regiment after regiment in the Bengal Army (as the Indian Army was then called) refused to follow orders, and regiment after regiment of once proud Indian soldiers were stripped of their insignia and sent down in disgrace.
The Mutiny began as a spontaneous riot of rage among these embittered sepoys in Calcutta and Meerut. Indian soldiers turned on their trusting British officers; and British civilians inside cantonments, including women and children, were murdered in cold blood, an act which would later inspire the most savage retribution from the British. But the Mutiny soon became a full-fledged Anglo-Indian War as the revolution spread to those centres of former Muslim and Maratha power -- Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpor -- that had only recently had their native rulers dispossessed by the British. By the middle of 1857, the British had basically lost control of the entire north from the Punjab to the Bengal. In Delhi, without the consent of the pretender, the Mughal restoration was proclaimed.
972. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 6:01:49 AM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
Today, Pathans are no different from others colonised by the British: they have a love/hate relationship with the imperialists. But about the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Pathans of the Peshawar Valley boast they stayed loyal to the British. Joining the Sikhs who also stayed loyal, the Guides marched from Mardan to Delhi (600 miles) in three weeks, including a week's campaigning along the way, at the height of the hot weather. Major John Nicholson, who spoke of "flaying alive the mutineers", wrote: "As the Guides strode manfully into the Delhi camp on the morning of 9 June, their stately height and martial bearing made all who saw them proud to have such aid. They came in as firm and light as if they had marched but a single mile. And in half an hour they were in action and remained in the front line until Delhi fell three months later". I suspect that jumping at the chance to sack Delhi once again was as much a motivation as was the show of loyalty...
Like so much in the Pathan past, 1857 is recalled with pride and relish by many Pathan elders. My grandfather too, who loved England to the day he died, often spoke proudly how his ancestors, members of our tribe, served in the Guides and marched on Delhi to restore British rule. And I guess my grandfather thought in terms of continuing the Guides tradition. After he left India in 1947 out of disgust at partition, never to return, he spent the rest of his life in the British army and saw action in Malaya, Korea, Suez, Kenya and Oman.
to be continued
973. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 6:02:21 AM
Actually, I'm not sure what this has to do with my travels, but since I've started it I guess I'll finish it.
984. marjoribanks - 11/22/1999 1:35:08 PM
The Pathan idea of marriage:
Two men in a speeding jeep, armed with modern weaponry, speed by a hamlet and kidnap a 13-yr old girl while she gathers firewood.
986. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 1:42:28 PM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
continued from Message # 972
A legacy of the Anglo-Indian War which is felt even today is the British theory of the "martial races" and the "nonmartial races". Some such as Pathans and Sikhs were deemed by the British naturally warlike and "thus" loyal, whereas other natives were effeminate and thus suspect. Under the influence of such theories the entire Indian Army was reorganised under an ethnic preference system. Henceforth, native regiments were to be recruited primarily from those favoured ethnic groups whose loyalty had been tested in the war's flames. Thus, the Sikhs, the Gurkhas, the Rajputs and the Pathans were given preference, while such ethnic groups as the Bengalis, the Biharis, the Marathas and non-Sikh Punjabis were made ineligible altogether. Given this development, it's not surprising that the British-trained Pakistani army in 1947 was officered almost completely by Pathans. Even today, Pathans make up about a third of the Parkistani army officer corps, and possibly half of the junior officers, even though they constitute no more than 10% of the population.
But not all Pathans had sworn fealty to the British Crown; on the contrary, only a few of the tribes, particularly those living in and around Peshawar had. In the plains of what is today the NWFP, the Pathans had intermittently submtted to outside rule, now by the Mughals, now by the Durranis, now by the Sikhs, now by the British. But the Pathans of the highland tribes, who were armed to the teeth and had been the most notorious raiders and plunderers, had never submitted to anybody. And they weren't going to start just because the British regimental units looked nice in scarlet.
988. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 1:44:45 PM
An Extremely Concise History of the Pathans
While it was merely customary for a civilian administration to disarm such people, it was also made necessary by the juxtaposition of the two Pathan societies, the settled and the tribal, the governed and the ungoverned. The juxtaposition made it impossible for the British maintain law & order. For criminals from the settled areas, knowing he could expect hospitality and sanctuary in the highlands, would flee there from the British authorities. Even non-Pathans could expect such treatment from the tribals. Far more urgently, however, the British feared that these highland tribals, these loose cannons, could easily form the vanguard of future Afghan raids into northern India. Why not? After all, they'd done it for centuries, so why stop now? It was only thanks to luck and disunity that the Afghans were unable to march on India during the Mutiny.
Thus, in what is known as the "Close Border Policy", the British spent the forty years after the Indian Mutiny trying to subjugate the highland tribals and undertaking no less than 50 major military operations. In anticipation of what was to come in the guerrilla tactics of the Boer Wars, the British Army formed irregular units (in this case pointedly excluding even the Pathans who had sworn loyalty) which tried to match the Pathan tribals in their mobility. By the 1870s, some 60,000 British and Indian troops were permanently stationed outside Peshawar.
Among British soldiers, service on the Frontier soon became the byword for appalling hardhips and low life expectancy. It was a place of exile for a soldier who had offended the gods and was banished far from the playing fields and idylls of Delhi and Calcutta. On the other hand, for ambitious officers, the Frontier was the place to be, where the job of empire was now found.
998. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 3:11:26 PM
The various installments of this travelogue can now be accessed thus.
1004. alistairconnor - 11/22/1999 9:51:22 PM
...riding roughshod over treaties solemnly signed with Indian princely states guaranteeing their independence...
Who could have imagined the British capable of such baseness!?
... a mix of pig and cow grease! What an extraordinarily potent blunder! Uniting Hindus and Muslims in revolt, rather than the usual divide-and-rule. And the Hindus acquiesced to the re-establishment of the Mughals in Delhi?
1005. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 10:07:21 PM
The sepoys in Delhi, Muslim and Hindu alike, proclaimed the Mughal restoration. I'm not sure why you find that so incredible or implausible.
In many ways, the rebellion was a conservative and anti-progressive one, for the discontent with British rule was most strongly felt among the princely and aristocratic elements of Indian society. And the objects of native disaffection included such things as the British ban on sati (whereby the Hindu wife threw herself into her husband's funeral pyre); the enactment of the Marriage Act, which gave the right to Hindu windows to remarry; and the Caste Disabilities Act, which permitted untouchables to inherit property.
1006. alistairconnor - 11/22/1999 10:35:41 PM
No, I don't find that incredible or implausible. I was just musing that a violent revolt against the British after world war II might have saved a lot of bloodshed. No disrespect to Gandhi intended.
1007. pseudoerasmus - 11/22/1999 10:56:23 PM
I was just musing that a violent revolt against the British after world war II might have saved a lot of bloodshed.
Why? Sounds like it would have made things even worse, if that's imaginable.
1008. RickNelson - 11/23/1999 7:59:37 AM
PE,
Nice travelogue page.
1009. marjoribanks - 11/23/1999 10:51:41 AM
AC,
The violent rebellion should have occurred in the 30's. And in fact, there were the underpinnings for such a movement before the Quit India movement under Gandhi steamrollered all other Independence forces.
1010. marjoribanks - 11/23/1999 11:13:53 AM
Pseuder,
Sometime, if you get the chance, you should check out the fairly entertaining Hindi movie, Junoon. It's quite decently shot, and features the plot line of a Pathan who kidnaps a British girl during the Mutiny, and how they then fall in love. I'd have imagined it would have been a hit with the Mardan set.
1011. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 12:57:14 PM
Hahahahaha! I must go find it now.
The "Mardan set". Well, Mardan is our family seat, so that's us.
My father who was born in London and not Mardan, nonetheless gets letters from Mardanis (in Pashto) berating him for failing to lend him money and to perform other such kindnesses. They say things like, "did not our [great-great-great] grandparents fight alongside each other in Delhi?"
1012. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 8:56:05 PM
To the readers of this thread, a question.
I have exactly 17 days before I'm off on a trip again -- for about 12 weeks -- and I'm running out of time to finish up this thead. Moreover, I'll have less and less time to do it as the departure date approaches. So, the question is,
(1) should I continue this travelogue in chronological order, as I have been doing, complete with country introductions, historical sketches, social & linguistic notes, as well as incident & ancedotes? If I do things as I have been doing, I fear I will be in the middle of Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan) when it's time to leave. And I want to do Xinjiang properly, as I think I've done with Iran and have been doing with Pakistan.
I want to do my month in Moscow properly also. There are lots of things I want to say about Moscow: grocery shopping in the city, a portrait of the Russian yellow press, the inadvertent drolleries of Russian television, the wild political rumours, the burgeoning anti-Caucasian hysteria, the Afro-Russian mini-community, the absurd lengths to which I went to hunt down ingredients in order to make daal, Chechen restaurant hangouts, the (riverside) beach scene, the night scene, the Fourth of July at the US Embassy (where "Waiting for Yeltsin" was staged), Bastille Day at the French Embassy (where "Waiting for Yeltsin II: Good, He didn't go to the American thing") was staged; etc. But all of these require some thought, and if I did them I'd get bogged down.
(2) Or should I skip my essay-length musings for now and stick with the "exciting, absurd and adventurous" stories? I could do the rest properly when I return from the trip, if the interest is still there.
1013. alistairConnor - 11/23/1999 9:00:01 PM
Well you'd better hope they don't get hold of your e-mail.
1014. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 9:01:11 PM
If I did #2, I'm pretty sure I will have time for the following:
1016. PincherMartin - 11/23/1999 9:03:52 PM
Go with #2.
1017. marshame - 11/23/1999 9:06:13 PM
Wow, PE. Just the spelling is amazing enough for me!
So I guess now is not the time to try and sound worldly by saying I'm off to London for a visit to Jenerator.
1018. alistairConnor - 11/23/1999 9:34:59 PM
(sorry, 1013 refers to 1011)
It seems a shame to pick the eyes out of the chronology. You can do a "greatest hits" later, personally I prefer a depth-first algorythm.
1019. pseudoerasmus - 11/23/1999 9:42:27 PM
Well, AC, #2 wouldn't be a "greatest hits" option, it's basically all of the travelogue minus Xinjiang and Moscow, which would be self-contained. Besides, when I return I'll have another month of Moscow to add to the July 1999 stories, plus three weeks at least of India. And you will get some depth in my Russia/nationalities essay.
1020. proudnerd - 11/24/1999 2:50:23 AM
Busting the chronology seems like a bad idea. Do you really have to post all the episodes before you go on vacation ? I have probably prodded you in the past for more installments of the travelogue, but I sure can forgive you for taking a vacation.
1021. PelleNilsson - 11/24/1999 3:08:48 AM
I suggest #2.
1022. stostosto - 11/24/1999 9:39:36 AM
Me, I am with #2 too. But, I predict you'd probably have to scale down your "extreme conciseness", in order to do even that list of stories. (And that is not a suggestion!)
Btw, where are you located in the world now? USA?
1023. theDiva - 11/24/1999 10:26:09 AM
PE
You should adopt whichever approach fits into your schedule, and which you will find most enjoyable. I'm sure it will be wonderful either way.
1024. ElliottRW - 11/24/1999 3:26:20 PM
I'd prefer #1, though not necessarily in chronological order.
1025. Raskolnikov - 11/24/1999 3:34:15 PM
I don't think the chronology has been vital to the thread, but my only concern is that if you only do the highlights now, you will never get around to the not-so highlights.
1026. pseudoerasmus - 11/26/1999 8:04:41 AM
Last week I finally got a bloody scanner, so now I don't have to get my photos scanned at usurious rates by the homosexual downstairs at the print shop. However, I can't say I find scanning a particularly enlivening or convenient pastime. It's a downright nuisance.
Also, about two weeks I got some of the photos my fiancée took during our Siberia and Russian Far East trip in August and early September. Before I threw up my hands in disgust at the scanner, I had started on a Kamchatka photo page. Actually, I took some of the photos using her camera; suffice it to say, the good ones are hers and the bad ones are mine.
1027. PelleNilsson - 11/26/1999 8:22:34 AM
Nice pictures PE. And your website is sooo much better that I've honoured it with a bookmark
1028. jexster - 11/26/1999 10:53:36 PM
Ilya's Kharkov travelogue is absolutely *fascinating*!!!!
1029. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 4:42:30 AM
OK, for lack of time I've decided to do option #2. That is, I will do a travelogue of everything but Moscow and Xinjiang. These two I will postpone until March, when I return from my trip and I can do them fully and properly. Also, by then I'll have had another month of Moscow behind me which I could include in the resumed travelogue, plus three weeks in India.
I'll also intermittently continue the history of the Pathans.
1030. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 4:50:23 AM
The Karakorum Highway & the Khunjerab Pass
Although it starts at Rawalpindi in Pakistani Punjab and ends at Kashgar in China's Xinjiang Province, the territory the Karakorum Highway traverses principally is the Northern Areas. On the map below, 
the knob that bends around India is the NA.
Comprised of the remote ancient kingdoms of Hunza, Baltistan and Gilgit, what are today the Northern Areas became part of the Sikh Empire in the 18th century, along with Kashmir and Ladakh. These the British annexed and repackaged as the State of Jammu & Kashmir in the 1840s and then sold off to some Hindu prince. In 1947, at the time of Partition, the Maharaja of Kashmir gave Kashmir to India, but the local rulers of the NA revolted and the area devolved to Pakistan. To this day, the Northern Areas remain officially part of the disputed Kashmir state.
Though under Pakistani administration, the Northern Areas exist in administrative limbo, neither a province nor an independent entity. Its people aren't even represented in the National Assembly. This is because according to the phony official Pakistani policy the NA don't belong to any country until the Kashmir issue is formally resolved by the two countries and a referendum decides its fate. That didn't stop the Pakistanis from building the Karakorum Highway, though.
1031. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 4:50:47 AM
The Karakorum Highway & the Khunjerab Pass
Although the rest of Pakistan isn't exactly a mass of linguistic uniformity, nonetheless there are more languages spoken in the Northern Areas than elsewhere in the country. One curiosity is Burushaski, a language isolate, totally unrelated to any other language in South & Central Asia. Its presence is as mysterious as Basque. Also, unlike most of Pakistan which is Sunni, the NA have got lots of Shiite Muslims as well as most of Pakistan's Ismaili Muslims who revere the Aga Khan.
1032. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 4:58:06 AM
The Karakorum Highway & the Khunjerab Pass
Earlier, in my comments about the Bolan Pass, I tried to make people appreciate the incredible barriers that separate the Indian subcontinent from the lands up north. But I didn't really make clear how enormous and extensive those barriers are. The inhospitable terrain that separates India from the Russian Federation is probably nearly as large as the continental United States. Consider this map.
We all know about the Himalayas that extend from Burma to northern Pakistan, but this forest of mountains exceeding 7000 metres is actually a relatively small component of this sheer impenetrability. Like the outline of a hand holding a cloud, the Himalayan range marks the southern border of Tibet, a country which is wholly located on a plateau whose average elevation is 4500 metres! And as if that weren't enough, Tibet is protected in the north by the Kunlun Shan, a mountain range which rivals the Himalayas in extent and elevations.
1033. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:01:43 AM
The Karakorum Highway & the Khunjerab Pass
If you continue westward along the Himalayas, you eventually hit a point where three mountain ranges clash and converge into a jumble of glacial peaks: the Hindu Kush, the Karakorum and the Pamirs. In these ranges are hundreds of mountains exceeding 6000 metres, including four of the ten tallest in the world. To the south of this mountainous convergence is another plateau called Afghanistan. To the north, the Pamirs blend into the High Tien Shan mountains that form the border between China and the former Soviet Central Asian republics. The Tian Shan curls around what is allegedly the world's driest desert, the Taklamakan, and eventually merges with the Altai mountains of Russia and Mongolia, home to the highest peaks in the former Soviet Union. Mongolia, by the way, is yet another country lying wholly on a plateau.
Well, back in the 1960s, Pakistan and China agreed to construct a modern road through a part of this beautiful mess of mountains. A route of sorts had already existed since antiquity loosely following the course of the Indus River and passing through the Khunjerab Pass to the Pamir highlands. This section of the southern Silk Route connected the Mediterranean ports with Genghis Khan's capital at Karakorum. It was therefore a matter of blasting through mountains and paving over dirt and stones in order to make the route navigable for serious traffic. The monstrous undertaking called the Karakorum Highway, the pencil line of a road drawn through sheer rockface, was finally completed in 1984 after one worker had died for each kilometre of road. 
1034. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:02:59 AM
The Karakorum Highway & the Khunjerab Pass
Here are links to two excellent photo galleries of the Karakorum Highway (both Pakistani and Chinese sides): Robert Matzinger's Cycling the KKH; and some other German's miscellaney of photos, the first few of which are from the KKH. Robert Matzinger's photos from the first link have been published as a book in Germany.
I have interspersed a couple of my own miserable photos within my narrative itself.
1035. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:05:49 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
I set off on the Karakorum Highway from Abbottabad, a British hill station founded by the British and named after one of its district commissioners James Abbott. About 75km north of Islamabad and 75km west of the Indo-Pak Line of Control, this is where my great-uncle keeps a country house and stays when he's not in Peshawar or Islamabad. He was kind enough to lend me his Chitrali driver to drive me part of the way on the KKH, but I intended to finish the last stretch on foot. The reason I wanted to walk to China, besides being able to say that I walked to China, was that taking a car or a bus across the border would mean an ascent from 3000 metres to 5000 metres within the day. This was precisely what I wanted to avoid lest I failed to acclimatise to the altitude.
So Hasan the Chitrali drove me up to the Alpine town of Gulmit. From there, over the next several days, I walked the approximately 50km stretch of the KKH that passes through the Gojal Valley and the Khunjerab National Park, all the way to the town of Sost, the scene of Pak frontier controls and the beginning of the no-man's-land between Pakistan and China.
1036. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:06:58 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
The KKH does not simply offer spectacular landscapes, but also a spectacular variation of spectacular landscapes. There are valleys where a series of black granite hills tower into the sky like arrowhead spires; eerie mountain-top lochs peeking out of the quasi-Caledonian mist and fog; and one switchback after another winding around barren, dun-coloured mountains, where the path had often only recently been cleared of a rock avalanche. Other switchbacks wound around tributaries of the Indus, such as the one around the Hunza River. The constant element in all this variation, the stubborn accompaniments to one's voyage on the KKH, were the glacial peaks of the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush or the Karakorums in the distance. You could never get away from them.
By the way, on the KKH, the closer one gets to China, the more distant the road becomes from the Indo-Pak Line of Control. I could hear the mutual shelling much better from the verandah of the house at Abbottabad. Still, in Chilas, a town off the KKH with a striking view of Nanga Parbat, I could hear what I thought must be the booms of Pak and Hindooo artillery faintly resonating through the echo chambers of the Karakorum and the western Himalaya mountains. Earlier I had read in the IHT that the Pak and the Hindustan armies were banging each other only a couple of times a day, but I thought I could hear them doing the deed every five minutes.
1037. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:12:01 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
Some necessary background to the coming story. Until I left my great- uncle's house, I was dressed in pretty much what I normally wear -- button-down shirt and trousers. But whenever I wander outside civilisation, I like to put on the local garb as much as possible, though I would definitely balk at penis gourds in New Guinea.
In northern Pakistan, I generally favour the Pathan suit, or toman penard in Pashto, a variation on the Indo-Pakistani shalwaar qamiis. The cotton outfit consists of very baggy trousers which allow maximum ventilation and a shirt with a long tail falling just past the knees. (The tail is usually cut to indicate tribal affiliation.) On top of this I wore the usual canvas vest (which the Pathans in Pakistan call "waistcoat" after the British fashion but is pronounced "vestcot") and the patou, basically a sheet large enough for a single bed, which is worn like a shawl over the shoulder. And, of course, the pakol, a woollen cap which looks like a beret nestling on a thick coil. If you've seen the Afghan mujahiddeen or the Taliban on the news, then you know what the outfit looks like -- vest and blanket over pyjamas.
Moreover, by the time I was near the Chinese frontier, my face had been heavily tanned by a month of travelling in Iran and Pakistan plus nearly a week of exposure to the sun at elevations ranging from 3000 metres to 5000 metres above sea level. I was also more than a month without a shave (when in Rome, do as the Romans), and my reddish-blond facial hair contrasted surreally with the black head of hair. Finally, I hadn't bathed in about four days so my face was covered in dust and the grease in my hair could have fuelled a lantern.
1038. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:15:31 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
In short, to a T I looked like a bloody Pathan tribesman who rared to descend on India's Gangetic plains to loot their cities, snatch their women, burn their heathen temples and otherwise gleefully visit wanton destruction in the Hindooooo midst. The only things I was missing were an AK-47, a bandoleer and a praying carpet.
On the third day of the walk to China, I saw in the distance a trio of overburdened hikers immediately perceptible as Japanese, prim in their pricey outfits, who were apparently having some problems communicating with a Pak policeman. Being reasonably sure that I was the only Anglo-Pak-Jap within the 5,000 mile radius, I rushed to their assistance. (For Hashke: I am an angel's pack job.)
Sometimes the Japanese give the impression of believing that, no matter how you were formed as a child, competence in their language is a matter of genes. So the more provincial among them (i.e., 99.9% of Japan's population) are invariably shocked when a Westerner -- or in reality anyone other than a purebred racial Japanese -- speaks their language. Mongrelised as my Japanitas is by the three-quarters of me that are not Japanese, I have always managed to shock by launching into my mother's language. So imagine this backpacking Pathan tribesman walking up to a bunch of timid Japanese not far from the highest border post in the world and soft-spokenly offers to act as interpretor between them and the policeman.
1039. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:17:33 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
The Japanese hikers did not fail me: mouths wide open, they could not have been more shocked, had Mothra been fluttering above Tokyo.
"May I help you? What is the problem?", I asked one of the Japanese designated to deal with the policeman. He at first hesitated to answer.
"Ehhhhhhhhhh?" [a Japanese utterance denoting puzzlement.]
"What is the problem? Let me help you."
"Ehhh? We are trying to pitch a tent here, but the policeman seems to be objecting."
It turned out that the area where they were pitching their tent was not a designated campsite. But this was Pakistan, so naturally I had seen no such designations anywhere in the reserve. The policeman pointed to another spot, perhaps 100 metres away, which looked exactly like the spot the Japanese had chosen. With not so delicate a euphemism, he casually mentioned in Urdu, "I want to take some tea".
The Japanese had chosen a truly striking spot: a hilly pasture carpeted by low-lying alpine bloomlets of yellow, purple and pink, extending for miles & miles. The scene was watched over by peaks which were not glaciated but sprinkled with a thin coating of snow like powdered sugar. I could imagine Julie Andrews whirling about in the meadow, although in her oblivious musical delirium she would certainly have been rudely knocked over by grazing yaks. Or fallen off the cliff, for this Arcadian wonderland was abruptly and ominously gashed by a huge black chasm revealing a gentle rivulet.
1040. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:19:00 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
Within five minutes, the Japanese threw themselves to pitching a tent so huge and impractical that they could have headquartered NATO's Kosovo operations within its confines. In gratitude for my minor assistance, they invited me to stay a night in the tent and share their reconstituted Japanese "astronaut food". I was simply amazed at their packing. They had brought with them rice and a thermos-sized, chemically heated rice cooker, along with dehydrated foodstuffs including umeboshi (pickled plums) and shiozhake (flakes of salted salmon). After boiling some water, they made green tea and poured it into the dehydrated food packages. And voilà: the next thing you know, I and my companions were dining in the Japanese slop style, with the little plastic rice bowl held in the left hand close to the face, chopsticks
on the right, slurping up our meal. As we sat on the grass, this spectacle in the mountainous pasture land was eagerly observed by Tajik children and their livestock.
(The area straddling the frontier between Pakistan and China is inhabited by the so-called Wakhi Tajiks, a people speaking a country bumpkin dialect of Persian. I was curious about these Wakhis, but I was in a rush to leave Pakistan and I knew there were more specimens to be seen on the Chinese side of the border. At Lake Karakul, outside Kashgar, I stayed overnight in a Wahki Tajik yurt.)
In the morning I parted company with the Japanese after an exchange of the obligatory mutual exaggerated declarations of gratitude. Their parting words to me, as we shall see, were almost prophetic: "The Chinese guards at the border are really nasty".
1041. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:22:03 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
Later that day at the town of Sost, I stayed at the Khunjerab Hotel -- little more than a field of grass enclosed by a metal mesh, where stood a number of plasticated "yurts" which looked like they must have been made by those famous Tajiks of Taiwan. On the far western side of the "hotel" was a another rivulet, one of the hundreds of offshoots of the Indus River. There, I found one of the fellow guests, a Swiss tourist, performing some kind of yoga-like exercise. Apparently he could not bear the thought of refraining from the display of spirituality when he learnt these waters were part of the Indus. He was, therefore, the very kind of tourist I hate: the earnest shithead. "You do realise that this is the Indus, not the Ganges? Please take your reincarnations and purifications and transmigrations to that other river", I wanted to say, but, this not being the Mote, I didn't.
In the morning, I asked the hotel keeper, a jolly Pathan by the name of Rafiq, "Ror [brother], can you walk all the way to China?" The reply came: "Ror, no, you cannot. You must take a bus. You leave Sost on foot and you will be turned back at the checkpoint at Deh".
An hour later I passed the Pakistani frontier controls at Sost without a hitch and proceeded to China on foot. Hours later, I arrived at the checkpoint at Deh, where I tried to talk past the guards into letting me walk to China. These useless Punjabis wouldn't let me go, so I had to flag down a car returning toward Sost.
The next morning, I boarded a NATCO bus, a brand new Hyundai contraption looking like it had just rolled off the assembly line and then gotten immediately coated in a fine film of dust.
1042. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:23:22 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
Within a few miles outside Sost, the verdant landscape that I had become so used to during the last few days reverted to the rocky brown of the lower valleys. The KKH was now passing through one narrow gorge after another, with cliffs whose minatory heights appeared eager to waylay passers-by with avalanche. For all along the road our bus had to negotiate boulders and rough monoliths strewn about like giant leggo pieces abandoned by bored children in search of the next diversion.
As we were approaching the entrance to yet another gorge, out of the window I could hear sheep baying from within the rock passage. One couldn't see them because the view was obstructed by the winding passage formed by the cliffsides. The driver, instinctively I suppose, brought the bus to a stop right at the mouth of the gorge. The baying grew ever louder and resonant, and, within minutes, several hundred sheep and goats exploded out of the gorge like confetti. I think our bus was surrounded and immobilised by these animals for a good half an hour. And the Pak government apparently considers this road a "strategic route".
1043. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:24:52 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
The actual physical border between Pakistan and China -- the Khunjerab Top, at about 5000 metres supposed to be the highest international border post in the world -- was something of an anti-climax after all I had already seen on the KKH. In my nausea I would not have even taken notice of it had the bus not stopped, switched the side of the road to drive on, and paused to allow the passengers to get out and "see" the border. There were only two interesting things about the scenery: clouds were almost within distance of a sprightly human jump, which few could manage at that altitude; and a sign read "IN CHINA DRIVE RIGHT, IN PAKISTAN DRIVE LEFT". A similar sign had been posted on the Iran/Pakistan border. How many land borders in the world required such reminders, I wondered.
Our bus also got boarded by two Chinese soldiers who conducted a cursory inspection of the passports to make sure everyone had visas to China and then rode with us to the actual frontier control. One of the pair sat in the empty seat next to me, with the long nose of his rifle slightly tilted in my direction. I looked at it warily, aware despite my nausea of the many bumps on the road. As the bus proceeded, I felt like asking the soldier to correct the tilt, but he looked really mean.
When we arrived at the Chinese frontier controls just outside Tashkurgan, which was many miles already inside China, I could tell from the way I felt that the elevation was lower but my head still demanded to be detonated, my gut lobbied for some strenuous retching, and my innards ached to explode out of every orifice. So naturally I was eager to pass through the controls and begin my 18-hour sleep in Tashkurgan as quickly as possible.
1044. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:27:27 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
At the shack that passed for the frontier controls of the Middle Kingdom just outside Tashkurgan, I approached the two smartly uniformed representatives of what I took to be the People's Liberation Army, who were doing a very passable imitation of loitering. Now, I was filled with trepidation because they were both smoking. Before I quit smoking in 1996, I had previously had the dubious experience of smoking a cigarette at a relatively high altitude (10,000 ft) in Peru: believe me, it feels like your lungs are collapsing. In the current environment -- somewhere between 4000 and 5000 metres, thin dry air, maybe 5 degrees centigrade, dust everywhere -- I was not expecting pleasant things to happen while in contact with clouds of secondary smoke.
Despite these conditions the two Chinese border guards smoked with a sangfroid which intimated that their tiny chests must have harboured lungs of oxen. The cigarette smoke emanating from these Chinese chimneys was lit up by the late afternoon sun piercing its rays through the Pamir (or Hindu Kush?) mountains. I couldn't decide whether the scene was ominous or picturesque.
I handed my UK passport to one of the guards. The Chinese border guard took a look at the clean-shaven, callow-looking pale fellow in the passport photo. He then raised his head in an abrupt jerky motion, furrowed his brows and stared up at the face of this dark dirty dusty stinking bearded backpacking barbarian tribesman in pyjamas. He said, "No".
"No? No what?" I asked with an irritation thankfully diluted by my physical enfeeblement.
"No you", replied the guard, pointing to the passport photo.
"Of course it's me."
"No. No you."
"Look, here's my driver's licence". He glowered at the card.
"No, this man European, you Afghanistan".
1045. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:30:04 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
This licence may very well have convinced the Chinese guard that I must have been a bandit who had ambushed some poor naive tourist and stolen his passport, wallet and belongings. I was expecting any minute to be asked what I had done with the body.
"No you", he repeated without change in tone. Then he exhaled the largest waft of cigarette smoke I had ever seen, prompting me to cough violently. In seeming response to the hack, he and the other border guard emitted that callous snicker so uniquely the province of Chinese petty officialdom. Then they began jabbering to each other in Mandarin, a language, with its mousey mewling, I can never hear without developing a splitting headache. I imagined them saying, what a wimp this bandit was, bothered by a little smoke. I wished I could retch at that very moment, in cascade formation onto their boots.
So the only way to convince these two, I thought, was to shave, wash off the accumulated dust off my face, and get out of these Pathan clothes. But where? I thought of getting back on the bus, but the entrance was blocked: I could not reboard without first completing the passport control formalities. There were no trees or shrubbery nearby behind which I could change clothes. In both directions, the road was empty of such structures as far as the eye could see. Then I noticed what looked like a resthouse a couple of hundred feet past this border checkpoint.
"Is there a lavatory or a resthouse in the area?", I asked the Chinese guard naively. He didn't understand.
"Toilet?"
"Toilet in China", replied the guard without emotion.
"Can I go there?"
"You need passport".
"My passport is in your hands!"
"No you".
1046. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:33:14 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
Fuck, I said to myself, I will shave and change clothes before their eyes, despite the cold. I retreated a few yards from the guards, ransacked my bag and, somewhat to the surprise of the Chinese guards, pulled out my razor, shaving cream and a hand-held mirror.
When a gawker whom I took to be a Tajik saw me struggling to juggle razor, cream, and mirror, he kindly offered to hold the mirror for me. "Motashakkerram, baradar, Tajikiha va Pakhtuniha hamoon hastand!" ["Thanks, brother, Tajiks and Pathans are one!" in Farsi, which is close enough to the Wakhi dialect.] The Tajik beamed at my slight Persian, but the Chinese guard signalled through a squinting skeptical look on his face that he was redoubling his suspicion that I was some bandit impostor.
In the picturesque limbo zone between Pakistan and China, located on a paved road sandwiched on the one side by rocky mouse-grey hills and on the other by a luxurious verdure dotted with yaks, Bactrian camels and Tajiks; and hedged in by the monumental glaciers of the distant Pamirs; there stood your humble narrator with his temporary Tajik mirror wallah at his service, shaving precipitately and bloodying his face in front of an $8 Wal-Mart mirror.
Other Tajiks came to watch. Soon, the two Chinese guards, a dozen or so of the local Tajiks and several of the bus passengers (foreigners and Paks) formed a wide, loose circle around me, spectators to my indignity. The shaving finished, I splashed some of my bottled water on my face.
1047. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:35:15 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
Then I cast off my Pathan clothing and stripped to my boxers. Before any of the hirsute Tajiks, Pathans and Pakistanis could generate cruel laughter at my sorry scrawny hairless chest, I quickly put on a pair of jeans and a turtleneck and presented myself once again before the Chinese guards. (Jeans, an item of clothing impossible to wear in Iran and Pakistan.) A facetious bus-borne voice in English with an unrecognisable accent called out: "A body search? What are they looking for?" I wish they had found some coca leaves.
"It's bloody me", pointing to the passport photo. The Chinese guards examined my face closely and skeptically, and without even a grudging acknowledgement of my transformation, the second of the guards began to flip blithely through the pages of my passport. He asked, "Where is Pakistan visa? Where is exit stamp?" My UK passport contained no visa for Pakistan quite simply because I had entered Pakistan with my Pak passport, which also played host to my exit stamp. I was hoping to avoid this, but I produced the Pak passport. The Chinese guards were perplexed. Utterly perplexed.
I didn't mean to do this, but I had no choice. I had only a short period of time to get my visas for Iran and China. So I submitted different passports for Iranian and Chinese visas.
"Which one you?", asked guard #1.
"Both". Guard #2 took the Pak passport, guard #1 kept the UK passport, each guard scrutinising each passport with a care reserved for detailing ivory figurines.
"Why two passport?", asked guard #1
"I am a citizen of more than one country". They seemed to grow more baffled.
1048. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 5:36:50 AM
Incidents on the Karakorum Highway
The bafflement was compounded by the fact that in the Pak passport my full name reads a bit different from the one in my UK passport. One guard disappeared into his little shack-office with both my docments, and I could see through the window that he was lifting the telephone. Perhaps in their minds I was transformed from a mere bandit to a spy with a talent for disguises.
There wasn't much suspense. The guard got off the telephone and made me wait another hour (delaying everybody on the bus in the process), but soon enough he told me I could pass. So, after an unusually thorough and tedious search of my belongings, I arrived in Tashkurgan. I checked into a seedy hotel and, both in resentment of the Chinese guards and out of a jejune romanticism, I crashed into the bed vowing to champion the cause of Turkestan, to be the Richard Gere of the Uighurs...
[the end]
1049. bloodnfire - 11/28/1999 7:50:43 AM
Don't mean to 'gush' Pseudo, but for some idiotic reason, this is the first time I have ever visited your thread. My hearty congratulations. Gorgeous pictures!! Hilarious commentary...fascinating journeys...I look forward to going back to post #1 later today and following through all of it...
Thanks for all your effort...
What do you do for a living ? If writing travel books isn't part of it, it certainly ought to be...When are you getting married, or haven't you set a date yet ?
Incidently I was able to 'link' to the pictures of the Helicopter flight, but none of your links regarding the Karakorum Highway worked for me...
1050. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 7:52:41 AM
Thanks, bloodnfire. But you don't have to go back all the way to post #1 (which no longer exists anyway...)
I have organised the whole thread here, with a table of contents and everything.
1051. bloodnfire - 11/28/1999 7:55:30 AM
ignore what I said about none of the Highway links not working for me. The moment I said they didn't, they suddenly did !! Great pictures!!
1052. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 8:08:18 AM
Oh, i forgot to answer your other question: we're getting married in September of 2000.
1053. bloodnfire - 11/28/1999 8:13:18 AM
Thanks Pseudo, and the other question, without meaning to 'pry', what do you do for a living ?
1054. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 8:16:52 AM
i'm a graduate student in economics.
1055. marjoribanks - 11/28/1999 9:44:10 AM
Outstanding segment, Pseuder. Really unique and well-told. Why not keep up this pace and tone and dash off another few segments immediately.
Anyway, I'm riven by jealousy at your exploits, so will take the opportunity to point out that subcontinentals in general usually scoff at ABCD's (read you) wearing local garb ceremoniously on their brief visits "home." It's a kind of drag, donned more for their own benefit than anything else, and nobody is fooled.
So there.
1056. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 9:49:09 AM
I only wear the local garb among Pathans in the NWFP and the NA, nowhere else.
1057. marjoribanks - 11/28/1999 9:52:54 AM
And doubtless, many many of your humbler brethren think to themselves when they see you "what the shit is that firangi doing wearing a carefully ironed Pathan suit"?
So there, again.
1058. hashke - 11/28/1999 10:45:26 AM
Didn't at least one of the Japanese have a camera with which he might have snapped pseuder spilling saki on that 'miserable, skinny' erasmian chest -- or somesuch pic which you might pass on to yr humble readers?
1059. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 11:01:19 AM
Oh God, yes, those Japanese took picture after picture. But they haven't sent any of them to me, however.
I wouldn't make my mug available over the internet anyway. In the past, I've sent a photo of me to several Fray/Mote people.
1060. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 11:04:02 AM
Why not keep up this pace and tone and dash off another few segments immediately.
Tomorrow I'll post another tale of drollery & absurdity, though it's more absurd than droll.
1061. Schehezarade - 11/28/1999 12:14:00 PM
Forget economics, you should go into writing. Start up your own series of travel books and memoirs.
1062. PelleNilsson - 11/28/1999 1:50:20 PM
You are surpassing youself, PE. I like your decision to walk over. I think I'd done it myself. Not for any practical reason, just for the hell of it.
But I do wonder
if that scene of you shaving and changing at the Chinese frontier post could possibly be an ..er.. embellishment?
1063. pseudoerasmus - 11/28/1999 1:55:34 PM
I would have walked over, but, as related in the story, I was stopped from doing so.
So in your reckoning, I might have enclosed myself in a wall of yaks and then changed clothes?
1064. EricCartman - 11/29/1999 3:27:32 AM
Wonderful stories, Pseudo. Of the two "options" you listed earlier (just now caught up on this thread, sorry), I'd prefer #1. I find the background of all these territories quite fascinating, as well as your adventures in these places. But with your time obviously at a premium, #2 will suffice until your return.
And I agree with the others who have advised you to find a way to publish all of this. Very informative and entertaining.
BTW, have you checked your e-mail lately?
1065. stostosto - 11/29/1999 6:37:53 AM
Pseuder
Did you take a good roll in the snow, Scandi fashion, now that you had the chance? If only to check on the rudimentary gender conundrum.
1066. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 9:53:40 AM
Stosto: you will get a sort of answer with the Mongolia segment.
Cartman: I will be writing a "background" for everything. The difference between #1 and #2 is ONLY that the latter postones Xinjiang and Moscow until when I get back from my next trip, because these two will require more time and thought than the others. And given the pace I've set myself here, if I simply continued as I have been in this thread, Xinjiang would be left unfinished when it came time to leave (11 December).
1067. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 9:58:57 AM
"these two will require more time and thought than the others"
rather, Xinjiang and Moscow deserve as much time and thought as I have already given Iran and Pakistan, and certainly more than Buryatia or the Dolgans merit.
1068. marjoribanks - 11/29/1999 10:00:09 AM
Pseuder,
Made your plans for India? What are they? Spill your itinerary, and I'll give you some tips.
1069. pseudoerasmus - 11/29/1999 12:09:48 PM
No "tips", please.
The plans are:
London, 1 week
Moscow, 5 weeks
India/Delhi, 1 week
India/Trivandrum, 2 weeks
Hong Kong, 1 week
Japan, 2 weeks
Except for Moscow, it's mostly quasi-work, not pleasure. And I'm paying NOTHING for the airfare.
1070. joezan - 11/30/1999 7:24:45 AM
...
"...take your reincarnations and purifications and transmigrations to that other river", I wanted to say, but, this not being the Mote, I didn't."
Don't tell me I was the only one who thought pseudo was about to launch into a verse from F. Zappa's Cosmic Debris here...
1071. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:35:31 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
This segment recounts events which took place two weeks after the previous segment, "Incidents on the Karakorum Highway". The story is about my attempt to reach Moscow from Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Province, with a major unanticipated detour to Almaty, Kazakstan's former capital and still largest city. Here is a map which traces my steps: 
The blue indicates travel by rail, and the red, by plane. A quick note: Xinjiang Province is home to the Uighurs, a semi-Caucasoid Muslim people whose native language is Turkic, not Chinese.
1072. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:37:45 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
With those who proclaim that the journey itself is the destination, my passage from Urumqi to Moscow has a painfully blatant way of disagreeing. The experience was such as one is glad to have had in the past because it makes for a good anecdote, but it was sheer hell while it was happening.
At around six in the morning of 26 June, I arrived at Urumqi International Airport. Although my flight was at noon, I was told to arrive this early for security reasons. There had been a series of riots in the city incited by Uighur separatists. So Chinese soldiers, those impassive little things with fierce faces and AK-47s, were positioned everywhere, quick to stop anybody they felt like. Twice I was accosted by one of them and my passport & effects searched. It was like Tel Aviv Airport.
Such trifles didn't bother me. But I had slept well, I had taken a nice long bath, I was refreshed, I would be reunited with my fiancée in Moscow in less than twelve hours.
After I wasted nearly two hours in the queue at the Siberian Airlines ticket window, a bored Chinese woman told me in a barely comprehensible Russian that that day's weekly flight to Moscow had been cancelled -- for reasons she would not go into. "But I have a reservation!" That was apparently not a relevant piece of information. So when was the next flight? A week later. That was too late: I had promised my increasingly impatient fiancée that I would indisputably arrive in Moscow no later than 28 June. Were there any other options? There was a flight to Moscow from Almaty with plenty of seats. I could take that. Was there a flight to Almaty? No seats.
1073. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:39:04 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
Xinjiang Airlines had a scheduled flight to Moscow the following day, but all the seats were booked. No seats to Almaty either. Kazakstan Airlines flies from Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty, but -- you guessed it -- it was all booked. Urumqi isn't exactly a bustling hub of transport activity. So what else to do? The Kazak woman at the Kazakstan Airlines office suggested in consolation that I could take a train to Almaty or a bus to Bishkek and then fly out to Moscow.
The Bishkek option was attractive. Politically and economically the most liberal country in the former Soviet Union (other than the Baltics), Kyrgyzstan is easy to enter, the people are frantically nice to visitors, and the Kyrgyz officialdom actually welcome you with open arms, a novelty in the former Soviet Union (which I will henceforth refer to as the CIS). Moreover, the road to Bishkek from China traverses the Torugart Pass through the Pamir mountains, a route I've long wanted to add to my medium-sized list of mountain passes I'd already done. But that trip would have to wait, it takes too long.
Train to Almaty? I had heard it was one of the worst rail journeys in all of Eurasia. But my real concern was the visa to Kazakstan, which, I knew from a previous trip there, required a preposterous amount of effort and nonsense for a country which reeled from an economic crisis and should be welcoming as many visitors with hard currency as it could get.
1074. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:41:04 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
"But I have no visa to Kazakstan", I told the sympathetic Kazak woman with a most beatific smile.
"You have a visa to Russia?"
"Of course I do. A one-year multiple-entry".
"The Russian visa is valid for three days through Kazakstan".
"Are you sure?" Never immediately believe anything you hear in the CIS. It's usually just an urban legend.
"Yes. There is a reciprocal transit visa agreement among CIS countries".
"Are you sure?"
[The initial niceness on the verge of turning to irritation] "How many times must I repeat?"
"Can I book a flight on Kazakstan Airlines, then?"
"I'm sorry, no seats. Try Siberian Airlines".
I rushed back to the Siberian Airlines ticket counter, spent another two hours and bought the Almaty-Moscow plane ticket. By now I had already spent six hours at the airport -- it was noon and the overnight train to Almaty was leaving at three. So after sending an e-mail to my fiancée (the airport has a well-appointed internet café) I got in a taxi and sped off to the Urumqi Railway Station.
The massive station was new, still in various stages of construction. The hurly burly of Uighurs hawking fruits and vegetables, the army of all-Chinese construction crew banging and sawing away at their toil, passengers gadding about anxious for their trains, and the constant Mandarin caterwauling over the loudspeaker, produced more noise than was healthy to be subjected to for more than ten minutes. The security was tighter at the station than at the airport: it seemed as though every third person was a policeman. This sort of made sense. Uighurs ride trains more often than fly.
1075. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:43:10 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
No one had seen fit to make signs the first order of business, not even those in Chinese, let alone in English or Uighur. During my two weeks in Xinjiang I had already made a habit of asking Uighurs and not Chinese for directions, not because of any feelings against the Chinese but because I preferred phrasebook Uighur to phrasebook Mandarin. Moreover, the face of a Uighur incandesces with delight when he is greeted, especially by a foreigner, with salaam aleikum, the universal Muslim greeting.
In response to my inquiry, a kindly Uighur took me by the hand and led me down to the basement. It was a poorly lit, dank, swampy sort of locale whose concrete walls and cracked linoleum floor were stained with curiously brown splatters, making it look less like any wing of a railway station than a den of tortures and executions. There, above a window, was a sign which read in English, Chinese and Uighur: "Foreigners and Compatriots from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao Ticket Office". But that was closed.
The only open window, presumably meant for locals, was actually no more than a vent about 3 inches by 6 inches, about a metre off the ground, through which one shouted a request, fed the money, and received the ticket. Furthermore this window was surrounded by a dozen frantic locals, all pushing and shoving and trying desperately to get their mouths close enough to this crack to bark their order. It was clear I'd never be able to even approach that window without my clothing being torn to shreds. So the Uighur volunteered to display the local's savoir-faire and do all the talking.
1076. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:45:04 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
Thanks to the good offices of my benefactor, I got the hardsleeper ticket at the price for locals. Grateful and overjoyed, I decided to finish the one roll of film I had been nursing since I left Munich nearly six weeks earlier. The object of my interest was as much the funny trilingual sign as the Uighur. But as soon as I took out the camera, the Uighur grew alarmed and began sputtering "kamra yak kamra yak kamra yak!"; and within seconds there appeared from behind the window a policeman with the usual high-pitch emission of Mandarin palaver. Apparently taking photos in the train station was forbidden. After babbling something to me he realised the futility of this parley and decided to start yelling at the poor Uighur, who though much bigger than the Chinese fellow began cowering. I have no idea what was said, but five minutes later, grasped at the arm, I was taken back upstairs by the policeman.
In the bright light of the central hall of the station, we were joined by another officer. Except for the presence of two officers, it appeared to be a routine check of passport and bags, no more or less than any other previous harassment of the same kind. Without even being prompted I opened my bag and presented my passport for inspection. But this time it was apparently a bit different. They didn't seem too interested in the passport, but the scrutiny of the bag was more thorough, more intense, than usual. One of them even frisked me and then shoved his hand inside my pockets without any warning. Perhaps it was my coziness with the Uighur samaritan that made them so suspicious.
1077. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:49:03 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
Then THAT THING came up again: rifling through my things, the second policeman found the second passport, the Pakistani one. Just like two weeks earlier, the policemen were utterly and completely baffled. Naturally I had to weather yet another sustained barrage of Mandarin, presumably inquiries about the mysterious second document. When the one from the basement grabbed my arm again, I thought I might get hauled off to some office for further searches and questioning, where things could only worsen, not improve. I might even miss my train! So I resorted to the trusty method of communication in the People's Republic of China, one which had worked moderately well during this trip and the one many years earlier: communicate rudimentary meanings by way of kanji scribbled on a notepad.
Please bear in mind that Japanese and Chinese, though totally unrelated languages, share a writing system often just called "Chinese characters". Whereas French and English use a common alphabet to convey mutually unintelligible meanings, individual characters in Chinese and Japanese carry exactly the same meaning despite having completely different sound values. This means that both the Japanese word for "China" chugoku and the Mandarin word jungwo (or whatever) would be represented by precisely the same pair of characters.
So I took out my notebook and began scribbling away the Japanese word for "dual citizenship", which is nijyu kokuseki, or 
. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten the stroke order for the last character, a 20-stroke mesh of scratches. Then I really wished I hadn't been such a truant at the school in Tokyo that my mother used to send me to during summers when I was a child. Nonetheless, improvising on the stroke order, I generated what looked like tarantula roadkill.
1078. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:52:03 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
Curious about my labours, both policemen took one look at my notepad, and, pointing to the last character, burst into laughter. Almost a guffaw. But apparently it saved the day, for they kept at it with their laughter and eventually let me go.
Not much afterward, the train arrived surprisingly on time, and I got on board and into my "compartment" -- in reality an open hollow with cots stacked three high on each side. Clean but cramped. My compartment mates were all Chinese who were, unsurprisingly, engaged in a riot of Mandarin conversation. Thinking that I might as well spend the time boozing, I took refuge in the dining car hoping to run into Kazaks or Uighurs, or at least people who spoke anything other than a tone language.
No such luck. Some kind of music-video machine displayed images of men and women singing Chinese songs, modern and classical, against the background of the Grand Canyon and other natural scenery.
Just why could I find no Kazaks? The whole dining car appeared to contain none but Chinese, and I shared a table with an old couple. Now, as long as they are not police, the Chinese are embarassingly nice. This couple offered some of their food and showed me every single picture in their family photo album. We also tried to start some kind of conversation, but they didn't even have pidgin English, and I had nothing more than phrasebook Mandarin. So after half an hour of gesticulations, botched Chinese phrases and attempted scribbling of kanji on notebooks -- try writing Chinese characters in a small notebook in a train which rattled during its entire course over the Uighur/Kazak steppe -- we were all exhausted and understood tacitly that we would henceforth simply smile at each other. I read most of the rest of the evening.
1079. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:53:32 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
The Chinese cannot abide silence. They live in a noisy world and by God they will contribute their share. Virtually half that night I was kept awake by the seven (?) Chinese men in my compartment chattering and cackling. I would occasionally turn from my bed (I was on the top one) and glower at one of the assailants. Then the volume would dwindle out of consideration for me, but soon enough it would rise again naturally of its own momentum. I think I slept at most two hours.
Otherwise, the train ride was uneventful. But the early morning border crossing was anything but.
Certainly before seven the next morning, our train came to a halt at the China/Kazakstan border, which made itself glaringly obvious by the indecorous combination of barbed wire, soldiery armed to the teeth, watch towers, and the usual loitering predators sprawled across the yellow-green hills of the Uighur/Kazak steppe.
Perhaps fifteen minutes after the halt, Chinese border guards began piercing their way through the train carriages and ordered everyone to get out. (Or so I inferred from the violent arm gestures accompanying their Mandarin.) The only element missing in the commotion with which we were thrown out of the train was German shephards. I wondered, why didn't the Kazak guards just enter the train and collect the passports, just as happens in every other frontier crossing by train? The reason was made clear enough: although the Urumqi-Almaty "express" had opened a few years earlier and was touted as a quick direct service, in this particular case we were being made to switch to a Kazak train.
1080. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:56:15 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
The Chinese exit formalities were conducted appallingly. Only a few of the exits on the train had been flung open. In front of each open one, a border guard stood no more than a couple of feet away and met the coming passengers to inspect their passports. Naturally this caused a massive bottleneck in all the train cars. But if the Chinese guards weren't much more than inconsiderate louts, the Kazak ones were absolutely predatory.
After being freed at last by the Chinese border guards, each passenger walked out perhaps twenty metres into the no-man's-land carved out of the grassland we were in the middle of and queued up before a duo of Kazak border officials seated at dainty little picnic tables. Behind us was the Chinese train, in front the connecting Kazak train, and beyond both the vast open steppe of Central Asia and the Tian Shan mountains.
Because the border guards were only two catering to the hundreds and spent twice as much time causing us grief as the Chinese, the stream of travellers straggling through the Chinese gauntlet accumulated into a higgledy-piggledy throng. The "queues" were no such thing. They were more like two fully open Japanese fans which were stuck together at the lower angle. Every now and then a Kazak officer with tattered epaulettes and a sweat-stained green uniform, would come over and order us into proper formation, sometimes even shoving people in the back.
I don't want to cause offence to anybody, but if this scene had been taking place at night and there'd been blinding beams suspended from watch towers 50 metres high, it might have looked rather like a scene of Jews being herded out of the train at Auschwitz.
1081. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 12:58:41 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
My turn came only after a couple of hours of starving, thirsting, drowsing and otherwise languishing on the steppe. The Kazak highwayman compared my features minutely with the passport photo, and the following dialogue took place in Russian.
"Where's your visa?", the Kazak guard demanded.
I pointed to the Russian visa folded neatly inside my passport. This document was little more than a scrap of toilet paper with my photo fastened by a staple which weighed more than the paper itself.
"This is not valid. You need a Kazakstan visa".
"But I was told the Russian visa allows me transit through Kazakstan".
"No. You need a Kazakstan visa".
"How about the reciprocal visa agreement?"
"You don't think you can enter Kazakstan with that worthless piece of shit [govninka], do you?"
"Yes. Here is my plane ticket from Almaty to Moscow".
"How long do you plan to stay in Kazakstan?"
"I will be out of Kazakstan in less than a day".
"You don't want to stay longer?"
"I want very much to stay in your country longer, but I don't have the time".
"You might stay longer in Kazakstan? Then you need a visa".
"No, I'm leaving tomorrow!"
"You need a paid hotel reservation or an invitation by a citizen of the Republic of Kazakstan to get a visa. And you can only get one in Beijing".
"I'm only staying one night in Almaty! Please, I just want to get to Moscow".
"I can issue you a visa here".
[Naively welling with hope] "Anything, please let me through".
"You need a letter of invitation to get the visa".
[Just as suddenly deflated of hope] "Please! Could you make an exception? I already have a Russian visa!"
"I can personally invite you". Shit, I knew it would come to this.
"What is your fee?"
1082. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:01:06 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
"$200".
"¿¿¿$200???"
"Yes".
I wasn't going to pay that much. I had $100 in my wallet and the rest was ingeniously hidden away on my person.
"I only have $100 and I need to eat and sleep in Almaty".
"$200".
Then the most extraordinary thing happened. A pair of Westerners several paces behind me in the queue, whom I hadn't earlier noticed, came up to me and shoved into my hands a sheet of letter-sized paper. In English one of them whispered, "This will khelp yoo. Dhon't pay them anything. They are bloffing. They are famus for bloffing". It was a photocopy of something in Russian, and it betrayed signs of being fifteen generations removed from the original document. It read: "An Agreement on the Reciprocal Acknowledgment of State Visas of the Members of the Commonwealth of Independent States", or 
. It listed several provisions and the signatures of various dignatories.
"Where the hell did you get this?"
"We got them in Spain from our tourist office".
"Amazing! Thank you very much. Let's chat after all this nonsense".
(Later I discovered I was about the only Western traveller in the area who didn't have a copy of the treaty.)
I showed the Kazak border guard the copy of the treaty. Of course he had known about it all along: he took one look at the document and threw it back at me with a facial expression which could be interpreted as saying, "tell me something I don't know". Dashed chicanery. He still claimed there was an entry tax of $20. I paid it and he stamped my passport without further ado.
1083. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:03:35 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
But as though in seething vengeance for foiling the scheme to supplement his income, he babbled something, not in Russian, presumably in Kazak, to another border guard. His order became clear soon enough. It was the customs official.
It seems the poorer the country, the more numerous the police and Kazakstan had gone from among the most industrialised area of the former Soviet Union to one of the most deinustrialised. A shifty-looking character in plain clothes claiming to be a customs official flung a declaration form at me and proceeded to ransack my belongings. In no time he spied my remaining store of cheap gifts I brought along to curry favour with picturesque locals. I always do this when I travel in the Third World. Back home I would walk into, say, a sporting goods store and request, sounding as much as possible like someone we know in the Mote, "Pray sell me garb and headgear adorned with the strange and splendid insignia of American sporting teams which have the greatest renown far and wide abroad". (OK, so I didn't say it like that.) All the same, in my possession were horridly legible T-shirts and caps still left over after Iran, Pakistan and Xinjiang.
I had at most three of each item, but they were all identical. So the shifty official pronounced that I was trying to sell these items in Kazakstan even though I had no business visa. When I objected, he repeated his accusation and insisted I would have to apply for the business visa and then pay import duties, plus fines. Otherwise, he said, the items would be confiscated. Since some of the people before me had had their underwear examined in great detail after making objections of one kind or another, I thought I might just surrender the consumerist pelf and pay a token "fine".
1084. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:07:51 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
But things actually got worse. After being done with customs, I hurried across perhaps a hundred feet of steppe to reach the Kazak train. Since I was told now the seating arrangement specified on the Chinese ticket no longer applied, I went for whatever was convenient and eyed the car farthest away from everything, thinking that I might still beat the crowd. I did. I got aboard to find...what? The interior looked abandoned and vandalised, with the upholstery on the seats torn out, holes through wooden panels, wiring gashed out of the floor, and débris everywhere. There were no compartments or berths as one might expect in a long-distance train, just rows and rows of seats like those of commuter trains. And the windows were glassless.
Incredulous, I was inspecting the windows and the next thing I knew...bang! I was hit by something flying through the wide-open window. It was someone's bundle, a ball of belongings wrapped in a sheet. Some other object came hurling inside, and the salvo turned into a volley of baggage. Apparently the regulars of this train knew the routine: secure a place on the train by landing small projectiles onto a random seat before the others do. Just as I assumed a seat away from the window, the Kazak who took the one next to me pulled out a piece of wire, bent over to the side, and sealed shut the metal-slat shutters in order to prevent yet more passengers from throwing themselves, their baggage and their old folks through the glass-less window. He wasn't alone. Everyone at the window was doing it.
But that doesn't mean everyone got to sit down, for every seat was taken and still dozens were forced to stand for the rest of the journey.
1085. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:09:08 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
There is little to relate about the 12-hour train journey from the China/Kazakstan frontier to Almaty except to say it was pure misery. The car was so packed there was no room to move. So I had no hope of finding my Spanish samaritans in this immobility. Most people couldn't even investigate the wonders of the lavatory on the Kazak train. I swear after a while I could smell urine in the atmosphere.
No one talked much because everyone was in a foul mood, except for the periodic outbursts of frightening verbal abuse. A Kazak seated in the row in front of me somehow managed to offend one of his countrymen seated in the row behind me. Ear-splitting resonant baritones in a Turkic language must be heard to be believed. My seat often shook from the agitated motions and verbal crossfire of these two.
I could not sleep. I could not read. The only thing to do was to wait for Almaty.
The train left the border I guess around noon and it arrived in Almaty before midnight, not the most auspicious time to look for a place to stay until the flight next morning.
1086. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:10:36 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
Almaty -- the former capital of the only country in the world I can think of where there is now believe it or not an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague -- is a modern Soviet city founded in the mid-19th century by Russian settlers. To this day the Kazaks are greatly outnumbered by Russians, Uzbeks, Chinese, Turks, and other foreigners. And the thumbprints of Soviet urban planning are ubiquitous and inescapble.
But it's not like there are really any true Kazak cities in the country, for the majority of the Kazaks had been nomads roaming the steppe and the desert that filled up 90% of the old Kazakstan. After Russian colonisation the nomads were herded into cities, less in order to civilise them than to make the millions and millions of acres of the eminently arable Kazak steppe available to Russian and Ukrainian farmers. Thus, Kazakstan became a big cotton, wheat and corn/maize field in the late 19th century. Of course under the Soviets it also became a big nuclear testing ground.
But enough about Almaty. I spent two days there in 1995 and I can say there is nothing edifying about the place.
1087. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:13:00 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
I was overjoyed to discover at the Almaty II railway station a gostinitsa, a cheapish hotel. I knew it was going to be a real cesspool, but at least I didn't have to leave the station. Past midnight, I walked into the lobby and tried to register, but there was no one at the desk. Only after I had called out a dozen times did the surly receptionist materialise to pay me the courtesy of confiscating my passport. I asked whether there was anything to eat -- I hadn't eaten anything since the dining car on the Chinese train the previous night, except for a wretched sausage bun I bought from a hawker in the China-Kazakstan no-man's-land. Everything at the train station was closed. The receptionist shrugged and then scolded me for arriving so late. I had to settle for ingesting five chocolate bars from the vending machine.
The room was everything I had expected it to be: no window, hard cot, uneven concrete floors barely covered with plastic tiles, but there was a bathroom. Of course it stank and was full of little roaches. The novelty here was that a little square ceramic tile, perhaps 2 inches by 2 inches, was partly raised up like a lid or a manhole and the roaches were pouring out like sailors fleeing a submarine caught in a nuclear emergency. But who cares. I was exhausted. I crashed on the bed.
I'm not sure when the telephone started ringing, but it couldn't have been more than an hour later. I was convulsed out of that undiscovered country from whose bourn I didn't want to return. A female voice on the other end of the line posed a question in a Russian-accented English: "You want a nice girl?"
"What?"
"You want a nice girrrl?"
"No thank you". I hung up. Quite common in the CIS, actually. Receptionists act as pimps who alert the girls on duty.
1088. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:14:27 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
The veins in my eyes felt like bursting. But just as soon as I staggered back to bed, the telephone rang again. It was the same woman with the same question in the same English, as though rehearsed hundreds of times. "You want a nice girrrl?" I tried replying in Russian, "nyet! yobanyy v rot!" [Something like "no, no fucking way".] I guess the swearing wasn't authoritative or authentic enough, because after that she called again and asked the same question now in Russian. She stopped after the fourth rejection. By this point I had fallen asleep and had been roused so many times that I couldn't return to sleeping soundly anymore.
The next morning I discovered there was no water in the bathroom. So I could only stagger out of the room, exhausted, zombified, bedraggled and filthy, and check out meekly from the hotel. The first thing I did in the railway station was eat: I ate a bowl of laghman (wide fettucine-like noodles common in Central Asia) and a pirozhki.
1089. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:17:37 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
The Almaty International Airport is basically a concrete rectangle no larger than a New York city bloc, with a massive glass façade. The ingenious Soviet designer had obviously gone for the solar-powered-toaster-oven look, and he made sure functionality and aesthetics were in perfect harmony: the interior was hot as hell, hotter inside than the outside. It must have been about 35 in Almaty, but at least 40 in the airport. No air conditioning, naturally.
I rushed to the ticketing counter of Siberian Airlines. There were three windows, all panelled in grimy wood. At the first window, one bought the airline tickets (which I had already bought in Urumqi). At the second, a dour woman weighed your check-in and carry-on luggage, snatched ticket and passport from your hands, and passed these on like a baton to the woman in the third window, who, after some mysterious scribbling in a notebook, returned your passport and flung the boarding permits at you.
But this neat division of labour was completely vitiated by the behaviour of the clientele, mostly Russians, but also some Kazaks and Chinese. As though bridling at the memory of long queues in the former Soviet Union, these Russians refused to file into any kind of orderly formation and remained scattered like atomic particles in a chain reaction. Ticket buyers often found themselves at the window dispensing boarding permits; and those already with tickets sidled up willy nilly to the ticket purchase window. Instead of three distinct queues there was one sprawling mob.
1090. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:19:37 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
As this crowd ebbed and flowed, everyone eyed the chance to improve his place in the mob. One Russian announced to the crowd something like "I have a quick question to ask" and brazenly rushed to the head of the mob, bought a ticket and checked in, with nary an admonishment from the airline officials. But there ensued a fury of Russians, Kazaks and Chinese heckling and cursing the artful miscreant. They might just as well have been spectators at a cockfight.
The atmosphere was quite the bazaar. Presumably black marketeers, a group of Central Asians abundant in flesh, gold jewelry and slimy hair swaggered around cutting a swath of territory unto themselves amidst the mob. They looked so menacing that the rest seemed to be keeping a prudent distance. They also stood apart from the others in what they were trying to check in -- a car door. (I'm not joking.) Some of their visible carry-on luggage included loot from China and beyond: a Korean microwave oven, held bare, without a box; and a cage with some kind of animal or bird, I couldn't tell for the draping.
When it was my turn for registration a couple of hours later, the Kazak woman claimed my bag was too heavy and too big to be carried on board, it had to be checked in, a proposition I wholly dreaded and opposed. So I decided to slim down my bag: I gave or threw away some books, including my emergency copy of the Koran carried for travel in Islamic countries, and some clothes, including the aforementioned Pathan gear. I also went looking for some string with which to compress my bag, so that it might look smaller than it was. Upon my return to the window, the grinning Russian with every third tooth in silver who had promised to save my place in the mob, was nowhere in sight. I had to start over.
1091. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:21:01 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
I finally arrived at the third window for my passport and boarding permit, but they were not there. The mêlée had claimed them. I had to literally chase down a burly Russian in a big hurry who had run off with my boarding permit and passport.
After X-rays and body searches, we were allowed to proceed by foot to the plane over a macadam surface so hot that the rubber on the sole of my shoes were leaving faint black marks. Because I was taking a Siberian Airlines flight, I could not be reproached for expecting an airplane marked "Siberian Airlines", but the Cyrllic lettering on my dilapidated Ilyushin 62 spelt "Transaero". It had a long, slender body and outsized long wings that made it look like a dragonfly. Its juxtposition with a China Airlines Airbus did not inspire confidence.
But the interior was, at first sight, a pleasant surprise. The seats were spacious, with as much leg-room as first-class seats on Western airlines. This was no doubt a result of Soviet-era inefficiency, the failure to squeeze in as many passengers into the aircraft as possible. The same aircraft in the hands of an American company would have contained three times as many passengers.
But it was downhill from there. Russian rock music blared as the passengers were boarding. There was rubbish all over the floor, including Chinese baby food containers. The carpet was graced by stains from recent drinking bouts of some kind. The stewardesses, still thin in their late 30s and early 40s, nonetheless showed signs of the onset of babushkification, that peculiarly Russian mode of going to seed, the transformation of a young maiden into Nikita Khruschev in drag.
1092. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:22:00 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
More interestingly, the food trays were not fastened securely to the seats in front, so that they flapped open with the slightest disturbance. The same with the seats -- they reclined of their own accord. My seatbelt had been adjusted for someone with several times my waist size, and it would not adjust downward. During mid-flight turbulence, the plane rattled very audibly.
After everybody got on board, the plane just sat on the tarmac under the midday sun of Kazakstan. The heat lent the view outside that molten look typical of faraway desert vistas. There was no airconditioning inside the plane. When I stood up (because I couldn't endure being seated anymore), I could feel inside my shirt and underneath my trousers droplets of sweat racing down my body like insects.
I once read somewhere a description of the noise made by an Aeroflot plane taking off: like a "coven of witches". My God, such bravura precision! As we took off, one of the stewardesses pulled out a sample life vest and began the emergency drill. The vest was a filthy, shoddy article which surely had not been stored properly. Somewhere in mid-drill she apparently grew bored and just stopped going through the motions. The stewardess reviewing the safety instructions over the intercom continued for a few more minutes but eventually succeeded in ending her spiel in mid-sentence.
Usually smoking is prohibited during takeoff and landing, that is, until the plane is well into cruising altitude. This was officially so on our flight, but given the presence of Russians, Kazaks and Chinese -- at least two of them great chimney races -- aboard the flight, the plane was invaded by a haze long before we hit the clouds.
1093. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:23:47 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
In the air, I asked one of the stewardesses what there was to drink, and she replied, "Water, Coke and vodka, and we'll get juices in Novosibirsk". Novosibirsk is the largest Russian city east of the Urals, in the middle of western Siberia, very much in the wrong direction.
"¿¿¿Novosibirsk??? I thought this was a direct flight to Moscow".
"No, we make a stop in Novosibirsk". I was puzzled, and I paused for a minute. Did I simply fail out of exhaustion to notice that this flight had a layover somewhere? Or was it something else?
"Khorosho. What kind of water do you have? Spring water? From the tap?"
"Spring water".
"In a bottle?"
"Yes".
"Russian or Kazak?"
"Russian".
"With gas?"
"Without gas".
In other words, tap water. "Just vodka, please". It struck me again, ¡¿Novosibirsk?! I turned to the passenger next to me, a blithesome Russian in a tracksuit: "Did you know we were going to Novosibirsk?"
"Yes, I'm going there. But I'm not surprised if you were not told".
"Why?"
"In Siberia there are so few passengers that sometimes several routes are combined in one flight at the last minute. I have even been to Chita on my way to Moscow from Novosibirsk".
Moscow is several thousand miles west of Novosibirsk, and Chita is at least a thousand miles east from Novosibirsk. Hell, Chita is to the northeast of Mongolia.
1094. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 1:26:12 PM
Urumqi to Moscow via Almaty
We experienced a two-hour layover in Novosibirsk. We were forced off the plane, made to walk the plank on a wobbly stairway car, and then thrown onto a bus which took us to the airport waiting lounge. The bar in the lounge had no drinks other than Fanta, that nasty carbonated orange drink from Coca-Cola which is mysteriously popular in Russia, and the only food was rotting caviar tossed onto some buttered slices of stale "French bread". There was a duty-free shop which was boarded up and dark. I learnt from some of the other passengers that the plane would also be landing in Volgograd. At least that was to the west and not the east!
The original passengers got back onto the plane first. Then there was a stream of new passengers from Novosibirsk. I counted about a dozen Russians and one Great Dane.
Later the stewardess gave me what I took for a Kazak brand of water: "Aral Water". Immediately this made me apprehensive because if there are three-eyed fish in this world, they would most likely be found in Kazakstan's Aral Sea. But I noticed the Russian print near the base of the bottle: "Bottled in Sochi". (Sochi is a Black Sea resort town in the northern Caucasus, which I had been pretty sure wasn't bottling water anymore.) Maybe they should have just changed the brand name.
Twelve hours after Almaty and almost sixty hours after Urumqi, I arrived finally at Moscow's Domodedevo Airport. As though a cloud had lifted, I was no longer sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. My fiancée had been waiting for me for hours.
While I was still mired in customs we caught the first glimpse of each other since last March. Right outside custsoms, we embraced. But her first words to me were,
"Gee, you stink".
[the end]
1095. theDiva - 11/30/1999 1:27:28 PM
Fantastic.
1096. PelleNilsson - 11/30/1999 2:21:47 PM
I've been to some shoddy places and ridden some shoddy trains and planes but this is worse by an order of magnitude. And I don't doubt for a moment that is is true. I have only limited experience from the former East Bloc countries but when there I sometimes asked myself: "how bad could it be if it was really bad?" Now we know.
Told with great gusto, PE!
A piece of useless trivia. Alma Aty was once famous up here in the north because of its ice skating stadium. It's a high-altitude place which is good for skating. Many world records were set there.
1097. PelleNilsson - 11/30/1999 3:16:24 PM
There were some scenes where I really commiserated with you. First, the noise. The endless shouted arguments which really get on one's nerves, in particular when tired. Second, the queues. How frustrating it is!
How do you manage these things without going off in a rage? You don't strike me as a very patient person.
1098. ilyavinarsky - 11/30/1999 3:43:48 PM
Another piece of useless trivia. Almaty once was included in the Manchu Empire.
1099. janjon - 11/30/1999 4:04:49 PM
Maybe she was just disappointed that you didn't have a t-shirt for her.
Great stuff. I second the recommendation that you, someday, put much of this into some travelogues.
1100. Raskolnikov - 11/30/1999 5:32:36 PM
Pseud: How the hell did you discover who had swiped your passport and boarding pass in time to chase them down? It strikes me as a potentially interesting story.
1101. pseudoerasmus - 11/30/1999 5:40:23 PM
Raskolnikov: Well, I think I was the only one at that counter with a Western passport. At any rate the woman remembered holding my passport and handing it out just a moment earlier. She pointed at the man in the distance, who didn't mean to leave with my passport at all.
1102. Raskolnikov - 11/30/1999 5:42:55 PM
Oh, I was imagining some hectic chase scene, ending in fisticuffs with a ruffian who planned on selling your passport on the black market.
I guess life is rarely like an action movie.
1103. ButterfieldSwire - 12/1/1999 8:07:30 AM
What/where/when are you studying in Hong Kong?
1104. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 8:14:30 AM
You've adopted as moniker the name of an old Hong Kong hong.
1105. ButterfieldSwire - 12/1/1999 8:36:41 AM
ScottLoar: I was inspired by Gavin Young's great "Beyond Lion Rock," a corporate history of Cathay Pacific (the chief cash cow of Swire Pacific nee Butterfield & Swire). The first half is a good airplane book as stories of guys flying over "The Hump" or battling with China pirates in the immediate post-war years are gripping and make a little turbulence seem pretty silly. The last half of the book which are stories of airplanes exploding over Viet Nam or falling off the end of the runway at Kai Tak make a little turbulence seem pretty scary and is to be avoided at 36,000 feet.
1106. Uzmakk - 12/1/1999 8:57:51 AM
I allowed myself the luxury of reading this thread for 45 minutes this morning. Thank you, Mr.Pseudo.
1107. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 9:51:01 AM
One US air crew flew over "the Hump" and landed with their cargo - Madame Chiang Kai-shek who promptly ordered the Chinese ground staff to drain the plane of fuel. The captain managed to fly the plane back to India.
1108. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 9:51:56 AM
Madame didn't get her fuel.
1109. PincherMartin - 12/1/1999 10:53:55 AM
PseudoErasmus --
Truly outstanding pieces. I'm especially curious about a couple of points:
1) What do the Muslims do for a living in Urumqi? I noticed your comment on the Chinese contruction crews, and my guess is that in any competition with Chinese shopkeepers, the Uighers would be quickly driven out of business.
2) What portion of the city was Chinese? I know that's a difficult question for a traveler to know through a quick tour of the city, but I would like your best guess. One-quarter? One-tenth? One-half
1110. PincherMartin - 12/1/1999 10:54:15 AM
Scott Loar --
Have you been to Xinjiang?
1111. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 11:02:55 AM
Hell no I haven't been to Xinjiang; no business for me there. I go to China on business as is almost all of my travel (150,000 miles so far this year and still climbing), and my simple pastimes are limited to recovering on weekends from too much entertainments, touring museums, poking into shops and places that strike my fancy and very, very rarely meeting interesting people, most of whom are shop owners - some I've known for years.
1112. PincherMartin - 12/1/1999 11:12:00 AM
Scott Loar --
I'm curious, what kind of entertainments require the weekend to recover? ;-)
1113. pseudoerasmus - 12/1/1999 11:44:00 AM
#1103
Actually I was just stopping in HK because I can, with the around-the-world ticket I got, plus I've a cousin there. I don't have anything planned at all, but I thought I might stop by at CUHK.
#1109
Depends on which Muslims you mean. Besides Uighurs, Xinjiang has got Hui, Tajiks, Kazaks and Kirghiz. The last three are mostly nomads. The Uighurs are overwhelmingly settled and agrarian, from what I saw. They seem to specialise in fruit cultivation. The Han Chinese come to Urumqi encouraged by the government in Beijing, and it's something of a boom town, i.e., everything is new, slapped together quickly and quite ugly.
Urumqi is the mirror image of Almaty: just as there are barely any Kazaks in Almaty, so there are few Uighurs in Urumqi, except on market day. I've read Urumqi is 80% Han Chinese, but the Uighurs I spoke to said it was approaching "almost all". In Xinjiang overall, it's about 50% Uighurs. I'm sure some time in the next decade the province will be majority Han.
1114. pseudoerasmus - 12/1/1999 2:36:19 PM
This is the Pamir Highlands of Xinjiang, outside Tashkurgan, Tajik country: 
1115. PincherMartin - 12/1/1999 2:51:37 PM
What are those little tent-like things on the ground?
1116. ilyavinarsky - 12/1/1999 2:53:12 PM
Yurts?
1117. ilyavinarsky - 12/1/1999 2:53:37 PM
Pseudo, I had a dream about you (and hashke) last night.
1118. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 2:54:14 PM
!?
1119. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 2:55:12 PM
My surprise was directed to the word "yurts" and not to dreams.
1120. PincherMartin - 12/1/1999 2:57:48 PM
Scott Loar --
My surprise was directed to the word "yurts" and not to dreams.
Hahahahahaha!
1121. PelleNilsson - 12/1/1999 2:59:45 PM
Main Entry: yurt
Pronunciation: 'yurt
Function: noun
Etymology: Russian dialect yurta, of Turkic origin; akin to Turkish yurt home
Date: 1883
: a circular domed tent of skins or felt stretched over a collapsible lattice framework and used by pastoral peoples of inner Asia; also : a structure that resembles a yurt usually in size and design
1122. pseudoerasmus - 12/1/1999 3:00:52 PM
Yes, yurts. What's so surprising?
1123. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 3:01:24 PM
Pellenilsson, perhaps those are hogans and someone is fobbing off a picture of New Mexico.
1124. PelleNilsson - 12/1/1999 3:01:43 PM
1125. pseudoerasmus - 12/1/1999 3:01:47 PM
In Mongolia they're called gers or ghers.
1126. PelleNilsson - 12/1/1999 3:20:48 PM
The Samis (Laps) have similar structures. The need for portability using pack animals obviously favours a certain line of design.
1127. PelleNilsson - 12/1/1999 3:22:20 PM
For "favours" read "imposes".
1128. pseudoerasmus - 12/1/1999 3:28:24 PM
Here's another photo of a New Mexico hogan: 
1129. ElliottRW - 12/1/1999 3:28:29 PM
Is it just me, or does anyone else see a giant polar bear face in post number 1114?
1130. pseudoerasmus - 12/1/1999 3:54:06 PM
The family in #1128 are Chinese Kazaks, not Tajiks.
1131. ScottLoar - 12/1/1999 5:54:11 PM
This is a wordly and learned crowd.
1132. janjon - 12/1/1999 6:17:21 PM
ElliottRW. No. It is an albino seal.
1133. pseudoerasmus - 12/11/1999 3:15:53 PM
Well, precisely an hour before my flight, the Mote comes back on.
Here are the last of the installments in the travelogue, which I will resume when I return in March:
The Taymyr Peninsula
The Bath House in Mongolia
The Story of All Stories from the Russian Far East
1134. pseudoerasmus - 12/11/1999 3:19:18 PM
I botched those links above.
The Taymyr Peninsula
The Bath House in Mongolia
The Story of All Stories from the Russian Far East
1135. joezan - 12/12/1999 12:18:34 AM
Great stories, pseudo. Amazing pictures, too.
Good luck and godspeed to you on your new journey - I hope you can post here in the meantime.
PE requested that interested parties be directed to the following link which is a cleaned up version of his original postings. It has the added bonus of offering pictures which were no longer showing up in the Archive.
Travels with Pseudoerasmus
The Mote | Mote Archive
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