A Short Walk

Hot Pakistani Nights

I am in Peshawar now after about thirty grueling hours on airplanes and in airports. I tried to shift my sleep schedule while flying, so I am pretty much on my "local" schedule now. I am completely exhausted and stink for want of a shower.

The flights were pretty uneventful but Peshawar is a real head trip. The heat here is incredible. Forming a meaningful line has not really caught on here yet and so, due to my reticence at elbowing burqa-clad women, the customs queue at Peshawar International Airport -- all one runway and an 80 by 120 foot building of it -- took about an hour and a half. After about ten minutes in this heat, I could feel beads of sweat forming on my unmoving legs and then rolling down them toward my socks. Some of that time was spent talking shop with an Afghan guy who is a physician in LA and talking with a guy from Dubai, Jon Saddiqi, who has family here in Peshawar and works for Marriott Int'l in Dubai.

As we landed, Jon told me a bit about the history of the airport. He pointed out that off in the bushes near the runway you could see concrete entrances to underground bunkers, the wreckage of fighter planes, etc. He said that every time Pakistan and India have gone to war, India has bombed the airport here in Peshawar but they have never really succeeded in taking it out of commission because of the aforementioned bunkers. We talked about how the population of Peshawar swelled during the Soviet War in Afghanistan and how the old culture, with Peshawar in the mid 70s as a sleepy frontier town reminiscent of Kipling, had been completely replaced.

Once through customs I "looked confident" and casually strolled right past all of the eager vultures -- "Taxi? Taxi?" "Change money?" "Porter? Porter?" I had changed a few dollars into Pakistani Rupees during my seven hour layover at LHR and I was good to go. I caught a taxi out on the road beyond the airport and paid Pr 200 for a ride across town to the Khyber Bazaar. Traffic here seems to have no real rules, up to and including which side of the road is for which direction. That's usually honored, but if it's convenient, drivers swerve across medians into oncoming traffic. After a few minutes of silence as he deftly maneuvered his old Corolla, the driver asked me, in Pashtu, if I spoke Pashtu or Urdu and I shook my head no, saying (in Farsi), "...but I understand a little Farsi and I speak English." Nada. My miniscule Persian will not come in handy until Afghanistan.

After very narrowly missing a number of pedestrians, a handful of motorized rickshaws, the donkey and horse-drawn carts that mingle with the "steel" traffic, and at least three busses, I got dropped off in what he claimed was the Khyber Bazaar area. Sure enough, I soon found the hotel I was looking for. I've booked a room at the Rose Hotel, Shoda Chowk, Khyber Bazaar. No hot water, but since this place feels like a blast furnace, I certainly don't mind. I left my backpack there and eased out into the hustle and bustle of the city to get some errands done. In a few hours, I had looked at pakools and other local-style hats, bargained with a fabric seller to have a tailor make me two shalwar kameezs, checked out the bead market, and discovered a fabulous secret roof spot looking down into the courtyard of a mosque. The last was thanks to a Turkman named Zahir who took a liking to me, dragging me around for an hour, showing me where to buy water, where to buy beads, and where to buy carpets (from him, of course) should I find myself in need.

I have to return to the fabric-seller at 3p to pick up my two "suits." I overpaid very slightly, in the end, but I enjoyed spending about 15 minutes haggling, making counter-offers, drinking tea, joking with the old men who came to watch, etc. Everything is going smoothly, with the biggest hiccup so far in realizing that a pakool will trap too much heat on my head, so I will have to find another style of hat to pick up. Maybe a chopi/topi instead? That the "worst thing so far" is so pitiful is a testament to how smoothly things have been going.

Hmm. That all feels pretty dry. I went here, then I did this, then I did that. I would really rather capture the energy of this place if I'm
able. Let me give that a shot:

The most ubiquitous feature here is the heat. Indoor areas hum with overworked fans; outdoors, the heat sharpens the smell of the shit flowing through the open sewers which appear under your feet seemingly from nowhere. It dries out the roads, making the rickshaws and motorbikes kick up so much dust that merchants selling cloth and rugs splash bottles of water out onto the street in front of their shops every few minutes to wet the ground. The sewage smell permeates everything but every few yards there is a street seller hawking kebabs or nan or stew and the delicious and powerful smells momentarily blot out the sewage as you walk past. These smells in turn mix with the exhaust of the motorickshaws, all of which are started by a hand lever on the floor, not a key, and which spew trails of blue smoke as they buzz past you.

All the smells together assault one sense, but the other senses are equally engaged. The most pervasive sound is that of the lawnmower-like motorickshaws. From any street corner, you can instantly spot and hear at least twenty of them at a given moment. Each has a horn which is used liberally. The fabulously painted busses, always full to the brim with smiling, thick-browed men in dirty white shalwar kameezs, have small chains with bells hanging from every edge. They too have horns but they're less necessary since their girth gives them some right of way privelidge. The car horns here have a distinctive sound, unlike either the motorickshaws or the busses. They produce a sharp, rapid staccato, "beepBeepbeepBeepbeepBeep!" The joke among Westerners in Kabul is that you have to look left, right, up, and down, before crossing the street. The same applies to crossing the street here, as all the horns -- coupled with screeching tires, shouts, and the sharp squeal of overworked brakes -- produce a cacophonous symphony of transit sounds so overwhelming that your ears become useless and you must spin around, eyes constantly darting, to avoid becoming roadkill. The rules of the road in Central Asia may be more "relaxed," but the laws of physics during the inevitable collision are not.

Beneath that is the comparatively quiet murmur of non-mechanical life. Urgent conversations, casual joking, bargaining over sales, primarly in Urdu and Pakhto (the sharper southern variant of the slightly more mellifluous Pashto), but with occasional Arabic. Vendors do not loudly hawk their wares here, but their eyes watch, following you as they fan themselves in the heat, and if you throw a glance their way, a door for commerce -- or, failing that, chai -- has been opened. There is no music blaring and I have yet to hear a public call to prayer (adhan in Arabic or azhan in Persian) in the time that I have been here.

This entire area consists of bazaars and each has its own section. Walking around lets you see the sharp thematic shifts. There is a section for gold jewelry and a section for beads -- lapiz lazuli and jade, mostly, both from Afghanistan. Those two border each other, but there is no meaningful mingling of the bead shops with the gold shops. Rugs are in another area. The shops run by Afghans or Turkmen, many of whom seem to be from Mazar-e Sharif, have their own separate areas. Swamp coolers and large home appliances all share an area. For my clothing order earlier today, I walked about 10-15 minutes from the Khyber Bazaar area to the Qissa Khwani Bazaar area. There, I had my choice of twenty to thirty fabric sellers offering fabric for male shalwars. On the floors above the fabric merchants, or the smaller shops hidden behind them, are the tailor shops. Open areas filled with haggard looking men operating manual sewing machines. The evidence of their work is all over town. Everyone here wears a shalwar kameez and primarily in about three or four "summer" (light) colors. White, off-white, beige, and light green. A distant fifth place would go to light blue. The breast pockets of many bear a tab noting the tailor shop that made them. "Khan." "Talib." Mine, when ready, will say, "Zahir-Shah." I'm not joking about the "everyone" part. I have only seen two t-shirts here all day, both on young Pakistani men.

As an aside, I think I've only seen one foreigner and he might've just been another light-skinned (Caucasian looking) Pakistani. I can't imagine there're really that few tourists here. There're at least the handful who were on the same plane as me. I think when I picked the Khyber Bazaar area, instead of the aptly named "Tourist Inn Hotel" across town, I effectively closed myself off from all other tourists. I like it this way. I like to imagine I'm seeing, touching, inhaling, a Peshawar that's more authentic than if I'd picked the "road (more)
taken."

Most of the shops I've visited are in winding alleys, filled also with hat sellers, cooking wares, booksellers, VCDs, and more food. The main streets, where busses can fit, have more practical items. Money changers cluster together, each pod often having an armed guard nearby, sitting with his machine gun resting across his knees. Xerox service is available every few blocks from a man with a single old photocopier sitting on the sidewalk in front of him, prices by the page. Poor quality knockoffs of every style of watch imaginable. More food, usually coated with flies whether it's meat, nuts, or fruits.

My afternoon has been spent slinking through that world, slipping off down tight, dark alleyways, careful to keep a sort of "dead reckoning" image in my head so I can return to the main streets without trouble. Here, a man is carrying chickens as a bouquet, with ten of them together with their feet bound within a single five inch ring. A truck pulls up to one of the meat vending stalls, its bed filled with only the heads of cattle, all partially skinned, all blanketed with flies. A woman sits on the sidewalk with her hand outstretched, her right leg uncovered to the knee to show gross distortion of her lower leg and foot. Elephantitis, perhaps? Her foot is the size and shape of a large eggplant, with two of the toes on one aspect of it and the other three separated by three or four inches between. A child walks past me carrying used plastic bags for sale. I'm still in my Western clothes and his sales pitch is, "Hello! Hello! How are you?" The only words he knows in English. Another child torments an older beggar, hitting him with an empty plastic water bottle until his Pathan father, his beard red with henna, ends his fun with a silent glance. Women float silently past like jellyfish, wearing all colors of burkhas. Many women are completly uncovered here, though most wear a head scarf. Some cover their heads entirely, leaving only a slit for their eyes, and some wear the burkha -- that symbol of everything wrong with the Taliban picked up Mavis Leno -- Jay Leno's wife -- and transformed into a celebrity cause du jour.

Tomorrow I will go to the Khyber Agency Home Office, across town near Saddar Bazaar, to get my permit for Afghanistan and head off. I'm looking forward to the drive to the border because it will finally give me a chance to sit and observe. I haven't been able to find an opportunity to do that since arriving here. I want a one-way mirror onto a back alley bazaar so I can watch without my strange Western pants drawing stares. Once I am wearing a shalwar kameez, instead of a t-shirt and Prana pants, I think I will be nearly invisible. I had someone ask tonight if I dyed my beard red with henna, like many Pashtuns do. It took some miming and language fun to explain that it was my natural beard color. Wearing a shalwar kameez will likely cut down on the "eager to practice their English" crowd that likes to sneak up silently behind you and then say, "Hello, hello..." in a quiet voice, in hopes that you will turn around, beam from ear to ear, shout "Hello!" in return and engage them in badly broken conversation.

This is a strange and interesting place. I really like it here. Peshawar, "City of Spies" during the Cold War and now, with its population tripled or quadrupled since the early 80s when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a city spilling out of its seams, the old culture gone, replaced by too many people with too many agendas. It has a very vibrant energy and I feel like it is easy to feed off it like a parasite, riding it, immersing myself in it. It's exactly what I
wanted.

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I'll probably post again from Kabul in a few days. I hope I won't be stuck staying overnight in Jalalabad, though there are some interesting (and completely ransacked) Buddhist stupas to see in the area. Jalalabad has little else going for it and I would rather hurry on to Kabul. It took me nearly 15 minutes to read three tiny emails on this Internet connection, so if others are equally slow, there is little chance of me uploading any photos. These computers are all first generation Pentiums running Windows 98 with IE 5. Mine has 64 megs of RAM, but it is almost unfathomably slow. I think all five computers here are sharing a single, low bps dial-up line. Ok, confirmed. I asked and they have six computers hooked up to an "ISP line" with a modem that usually syncs up at "45, 46..."

Speaking of numbers in the forties, I just asked a local how hot it was today and he said, "It is very hot today. Very hot. I think forty-four? Forty-five?" I don't even want to know what that is in fahrenheit, but showering at the hotel and then walking for two minutes to an Internet cafe, even after dark when it has cooled down a little, left my back completely drenched in sweat. My hotel room, incidentally, has a mattress with a fitted sheet and a pillow. No blanket or cover of any sort. The fan will be kept on "MAX" all night long. I've already begun making vague plans to leave Kabul for somewhere higher in elevation and cooler.

posted by daviduri @ 9:37 AM