PLACES

PESHAWAR: WHERE OLD LIES MAY STILL WORK

By: Nasser Yousaf

Ya running and ya running

Ya running away

But ya can't run away from yourself

(Bob Marley's song)

One has to keep traveling to Peshawar, so one's fate appears to have ordained. Thus, whatever one had decided to the contrary during some idle moments of rumination couldn't be.

Once again a kind of sadness was in the air in Peshawar this last January. People moved about doing their chores listlessly. Ominous signs of a sense of insecurity had reappeared in the shape of checkpoints on the roads.

There was still a kind of biting chill in the air but people had by and large discarded their warm clothing. People in Peshawar do as they like so it wouldn't have been worth the effort to tell them the virtues of keeping themselves warm.

Similarly, Peshawar's infamous dust and smoke would not deter one to walk some few kilometres on foot. The itinerary was to just stroll to the Karkhano Market from some point in the Hayatabad Township in the early afternoon.

Since most of the road network in Peshawar is now canopied by a lengthening flyover, it is no more possible to behold the western hills in the distance. In good times a sliver of snow on these hills would make it all that more cheerful to feel that snowfall in our climes wasn't really a distant dream.

One had to tread circumspectly on what went for a footpath along which ran an open drain. Lest we forget, this is the road that we ceaselessly keep boasting will take us to Central Asia.

The drain was about three feet wide and so it was in depth, but it was dry and instead carpeted with hay. This appeared to be the work of truckers carrying goods to and from Afghanistan.

Two orange-brown puppies were cuddling each other in the warmth that the drain had provided them. Some kind-hearted fellow, perhaps an addict since the area is home to hundreds of them, had built a roof of thatch for the two siblings to shelter them from the cold.

This entire stretch of nearly two- kilometres road that forms the Karkhano Market on both sides of the road could be seen drowned in a sea of garbage. Interestingly, all marketing, be it barbecuing sheep-meat on charcoal or selling of vegetables and fresh and dry fruits or dealing in luxury goods, goes on in the middle of litter of every dreadful variety. 

God is gracious, it is in this midden where you can find your favourite scents produced by the European perfumeries.

Luckily, no one appears to be minding it a bit or else we would have had to contend with a revolution of sorts. 

The office of the Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) is, as the crow flies, ten seconds from the Karkhano Market. Pakistan's disorderly bureaucratic system is so geared that PDA could be under the administrative charge of any bunch of ragtag and bobtails non professionals. Knowing this quite well, one would only be wasting one's time to put someone on notice on this or any other issue.

At the last extremity of the Karkhano Market there used to be a Line dividing Peshawar from the tribal area of Khyber. This formality has been erased after the merger of tribal areas with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It was at this point where one had very sweetened tea at a small teashop with a hot crispy bread being baked in a shop nearby.

There were a few posters of policemen killed by militants on the outside walls of some shops. The victims were all people of very young age.

In the frenetic sprawl that is Karkhano Market, some little shops were quite conspicuous. One had to peep into one of these shops to see what was being sold there. 

Such interference was prompted by the dogged steers of the shopkeepers, all of whom were of a younger age and of jolly disposition. They looked to be closely measuring the movements of the pedestrians. Curiously, there were no wares for sale in these shops. But it didn't take long to know that these cabins sold drugs of which cannabis was the most sought after.

It was time then to return back to from where the foot journey had commenced. The two puppies had now been joined by their mother who was watching over her two offsprings in a mood mixed with brooding and contemplation. She wore the same spotless orange-brown coat. 

A few feet from the makeshift kennel slept a man wrapped in a ragtag black shawl. This undoubtedly was an addict as one would bump into dozens of them lying supine in this area. Life is indeed fragile, but it would be thus treated, one could hardly reconcile to the thought.

Less than a kilometre from here, there are numerous private and public hospitals with doctors announcing on billboards their expertise in saving this and that organ of the human body. But then they do so at charges which are not in everyone's reaches. Medical ethics is not a subject in Pakistan's medical colleges.

One stood there looking at the body sprawled in the dry drain, and considered momentarily how would T.S Eliot have responded to this state of human life in his epic poem The Waste Land.

The short wintry afternoon was coming to an end. One had to attend to some pending issues in the old city. Many checkpoints had to be circumnavigated; those unavoidable had to be crossed to reach the desired locations.

At each of these posts, there was no mistaking recalling from the not too distant past which lie was to be told where. The soldiers posted there knew only too well how credible such information was. But they would let it pass only to be able to deal with the logjam.

The old city was in disarray; rendered ungainly by the monstrous bus transit route. An old cinema came in sight. It was unbelievable to see its crumbling structure still standing its ground, and showing Pashto movies with a kind of stubborn resilience.

A couple of days later, a huge blast woke up Peshawar from its uncanny slumber. The target was a mosque in the most secured police headquarters. Many dozens of people lost their lives. It took the authorities nearly a month to count its dead. 

People in Pakistan don't much mind and honour statistics; this at least, if nothing else, should explain where we stand.

One thought of the posters on the mud-brick walls in the Karkhano Market. Many more pictures will be added to the posters in the revised editions, only to be plastered with dust raised by the passing vehicles.