A flurry of memories: Pakistan and the Pakistanis we knew

u u u

Soon it became apparent Farooki was no gentleman and probably the worst traveling companion one could choose. He was rude, grabbed food out of my wife’s hands and scared most of his fellow Pakistanis out at the next stopover. One of them, Samad Abdul Khan, took us aside and said: "I can’t stand this Farooki fellow — most Pakistanis are not like him. If you ever get to Pakistan, look me up. In Rome I’m leaving and flying back to Karachi."

By the time we reached northern Greece, we had a nickname for our erstwhile pilot: "Spooky Farooki." He would race down country roads and rarely jam on the brakes when we approached herds of animals on the roads. (That was before European country roads became superhighways and animals were transported in trucks.)

"Farooki, if you hit an animal, I’ll never forgive you and we won’t travel with you anymore," my otherwise quiet and sedate wife, a confirmed animal lover, exploded.

Sure enough, he hit a baby donkey outside Salonica, and when we reached Athens, we told him we were going to continue on our own. As luck would have it, just as we were about to buy tickets on a ship that would eventually take us back home through the Mediterranean, Dolores pointed to an ad in a local paper on the desk: "Wanted, Drivers to Baghdad."

So we joined an American agronomist who had been hired to find and clean out irrigation canals originally dug by Alexander the Great’s workers on his prolonged trip to India. In Baghdad we took a bus to Teheran and from there flew in an old DC-3 to Karachi.

u u u

We called Samad and through him became guests of the Pakistani government. Karachi was a modest bustling port town where I did a story on a Pakistani woman who was president of a company that manufactured concrete irrigation pipes. It was our first introduction to a new breed of Muslim entrepreneurial women. I thought of her immediately when Mrs. Bhutto was cowardly and brutally assassinated.

Samad knew Dolores liked pottery and he arranged to have us visit a tiny village where an elderly man and his not-so-young son shaped paper-thin pottery, unique in all the world. We watched as they fired it on a pile of wood. Dolores managed to carry it home without breaking one piece.

From Karachi we were put on a train that deposited us in the middle of the Sind Desert at Bhahawalpur, where we were invited to stay in the palace of the maharajah. We noticed as we drove up the long driveway, lined with potted plants, an empty swimming pool.

At dinner our host asked if we liked to swim. We allowed as how it was a popular activity in New England. The next morning, we were invited poolside. In a setting where water was a premium, he had filled the pool just for us! Later, my wife commented how much she liked the pointed jewelry encrusted silk slippers the maharajah and his son were wearing. Paper was fetched, the maharajah got down on his hands and knees and traced the outlines of our feet.

The next morning two pairs of beautiful slippers awaited us outside the door to our bedroom.

After our swim we were taken on a ride through the countryside and I asked to stop and talk with a farmer. I recalled that our country had sent a gift of many tons of wheat to that area of Pakistan where the wheat crop had failed because of a drought.

"Ask him how he likes our American wheat," I said to our guide. After a moment of chatting, he said, "The farmer doesn’t like it, it’s a different kind of wheat than is usually grown on his farm."

I thought to myself, let him eat straw, but I restrained myself. It would have been mean-spirited in view of the hospitality we had enjoyed, as if we were royalty. We weren’t royalty but in those early days after the formation of Pakistan, itinerant American journalists were curiosities. No phalanx of big cameras, no SUVs, just me and my wife and my trusty college portable typewriter and a Rolleiflex camera.

u u u

In Peshawar, we had dinner in the home of American missionaries, a quiet couple who didn’t have much to say and thankfully didn’t try to convert us. And Peshawar, now a hotbed of insurgents, was a pleasant, busy town of narrow streets lined with merchants of every variety.

The next day we headed by car for the famed Khyber Pass. Along the way, sitting on their haunches on mountain outcroppings were Pashtun tribesmen, all holding guns and looking fierce. We stopped in one village where we watched craftsman making replicas of guns, Wembleys, Colts, et al. "We are the Colt representatives here," one of the craftsmen said slyly. We all laughed.

At one major intersection in the pass, we stopped to read a plaque on a big rock at the entrance to the road. It was here that the young Winston Churchill had his baptism in fire!

Finally, we reached the border of Afghanistan. Overlooking the border checkpoint was the office and home of a Pakistani political agent. He brought out tea while I went to the rear of the building to use a small pot.

Back on the porch, everyone was looking at a guest book. Just before our names were those of Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. "Ooh, what did Adlai Stevenson have to say when he was here?" I asked. "Nothing," was the reply. "Just used the same pot you did."

u u u

Pakistan and India hadn’t established political relations with each other, so when it was time to move on, we walked two miles from the Pakistani border to the first Indian checkpoint. Porters carried our luggage on their heads, except Dolores carried the pottery.

In New Delhi we became guests of a wealthy Hindu family, friends to our Pakistani benefactor, Samad, and were taken to see the incredible Taj Mahal.

I’ve often wanted to write to Samad and find out if he was all right, given the turmoil Pakistan has been undergoing.But I’m afraid a black car would drive up and two men in black suits would stun gun and dispatch us to ‘Gitmo.

Pakistan, we cry for you.